If commonsense values are no longer being taught in many American homes, then perhaps its time to incorporate ethics courses in all of our schools, starting at the primary levels. Lets teach our kids about courtesy, sharing, honesty, pride, character, and humanity. Lets teach them in the very earliest grades about humane treatment of animalsthat civilized children do not tease cats, blow up frogs, stone birds or other living creatures, or torment even the lowly ant. Hardly a day goes by that we dont read in a newspaper or hear on TV some horrifying story about children brutalizing animals or even other children. We need to start with preschool or kindergarten, and continue right on through high school and college.
Theists are wrong when they insist that morality hinges on religion and the gods.
Religious indoctrination is not essential to the teaching of commonsense ethics, nor has it ever been. Its obvious that too many children are growing up today in homes with absentee or incompetent parentsmany of them in neighborhoods where the law of the streets is the only means of survival. We seem to have spawned a whole generation of parents who confuse discipline with cruelty and can't muster the gumption to insist that their kids observe parental boundaries governing such things as courtesy, curfews, and acceptable conduct. The boys were also barred from at least one restaurant. Even in their immediate neighborhood, the lads were the scourge of the block.