Sixty-one percent of the students admitted cheating on an examination during that year, and 83 percent said they had lied to their parents. Thirty-three percent of students said they were willing to lie on a resume or job application or during an interview to get a job, and sixteen percent said they had already done so. In addition, in a 1997 survey of teachers conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, more than half of the respondents reported perceiving a decline in student morality since they began teaching. Even among those teaching 5 years or less, forty-four percent said they have seen a decline in ethical values and an increase in illegal drug use among their students. Clearly, a moral decline among our young people affects all of society.
Schools teach values every day, by design or default.
When schools do not teach values, they are teaching that values are not important. To succeed, schools must teach such values as academic integrity, civility, responsibility, perseverance, cooperation, self-discipline, and respect for self and others. Clearly we can all agree about the importance of teaching our children, both as individuals and as members of society, the importance of common values such as respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, and citizenship. Many schools shy away from formal character education, citing a national diversity in beliefs and values that make such education a family, rather than an institutional, imperative. Research shows, however, the existence of a national consensus that makes values education in public schools both possible and desirable.