My 8th grade English teacher, Mr. Bayshore, used to say, "Character is what you do when no one is looking." To this day, if I am walking down a deserted hallway and see a piece of trash, I may start to walk past it; then I hear his voice saying, "Character is what you do when no one is looking." And I turn around, pick-up the trash, and throw it away. Thank you, Mr. Bayshore. I also remember someone else telling me that "Integrity is much easier kept than restored."
I point out these two vivid memories from my own childhood only because, if you have been following the news lately, you must surely have noticed a dramatic rise in the number of serious cases of cheating/plagiarism occurring across the country, even in the most high profile schools (e.g. Harvard, the Air Force Academy, and Stuyvesant High School). A recent NY Times article pointed out that studies are confirming that more students are cheating, and that cheating is become more pervasive by high-performing students as a way to get an advantage over other high-performing students.
While I am an educator, and I do have to deal with plagiarism, copying, and other forms of cheating occasionally, I find this article more disturbing as a citizen of the United States and a patriot. The ubiquity of dishonest behavior that lacks integrity in our country is a symptom, I think, of a much larger cultural issue. I've blogged before about corporate greed and a lack of integrity in financial systems and on the part of those who manage those financial systems, and how thoroughly un-American I believe that kind of behavior to be, but I think we're seeing an entire generation being raised with no moral compass, no sense of integrity. In the wake of all these cheating scandals at high-profile schools, some people will, no doubt, seek to lay blame for these incidents. But I think the blame game is too easy (because we are probably all to blame to some degree), and it distracts us from the real challenge: how to fix the situation.
I see what a group of greedy amoral individuals have done to the US economy (Bernie Madoff, the Enron scandal, sub-prime mortgages, derivative trading, the executive who was caught buying and smuggling into the US highly controlled cooling chemicals, etc.), and my real fear is that the up-and-coming generation of future leaders and workers are sunk in this mindset of "make more money at any cost". And that, as a country, our future looks more bleak than our past when it comes to a record of integrity and wisdom in economic and public affairs.
Howard Gardner has done extensive research on teenage and young-adult Americans, and with respect to this problem, his research offers some interesting insights. First, most teenagers and young-adults do not believe cheating/plagiarizing/copying is wrong; they understand that if they get caught, there may be negative consequences, but because most students who cheat never get caught, they consider the "reward" to be worth the risk. Second, many students believe that "everyone" is cheating, and that for them to keep up with the highest achievers, they must cheat and cheat alike; otherwise, they risk falling behind (this, by the way, is something that came up in a brilliant op-ed piece written by a former cyclist, Jonathan Vaughters, addressing the issue with doping in cycling).
The question is: how do we reframe an entire country's cultural skew so that achieving my personal goals is no longer more important than retaining my integrity? Essentially, this is the juncture we have reached as a country. Most individuals are willing to sacrifice both their personal integrity as well as the well-being of their fellow citizens for personal gain and benefit.
My one idea is that perhaps we should develop a nationwide class or curriculum on virtue/character that addresses what students should be learning and practicing in the realm of virtue/character at each grade-level. The biggest challenge I see to implementing something like this is that the best way to pass on these traits is to learn them from elders who possess them, but as fewer and fewer living people possess them, there will be fewer and fewer people having these traits passed on to them, and it becomes a decreasing cycle.
DISCLAIMER: I am not perfect, I make poor choices sometimes, and I live with the consequences. I have never cheated or plagiarized. In fact, if anything, I am acutely aware of how intellectually indebted I am to the giants who have come before me (one of the sources of inspiration for this blog), and I am often over-zealous in giving credit for ideas to others. I try to live a life of integrity, and know that I sometimes fail.
I point out these two vivid memories from my own childhood only because, if you have been following the news lately, you must surely have noticed a dramatic rise in the number of serious cases of cheating/plagiarism occurring across the country, even in the most high profile schools (e.g. Harvard, the Air Force Academy, and Stuyvesant High School). A recent NY Times article pointed out that studies are confirming that more students are cheating, and that cheating is become more pervasive by high-performing students as a way to get an advantage over other high-performing students.
While I am an educator, and I do have to deal with plagiarism, copying, and other forms of cheating occasionally, I find this article more disturbing as a citizen of the United States and a patriot. The ubiquity of dishonest behavior that lacks integrity in our country is a symptom, I think, of a much larger cultural issue. I've blogged before about corporate greed and a lack of integrity in financial systems and on the part of those who manage those financial systems, and how thoroughly un-American I believe that kind of behavior to be, but I think we're seeing an entire generation being raised with no moral compass, no sense of integrity. In the wake of all these cheating scandals at high-profile schools, some people will, no doubt, seek to lay blame for these incidents. But I think the blame game is too easy (because we are probably all to blame to some degree), and it distracts us from the real challenge: how to fix the situation.
I see what a group of greedy amoral individuals have done to the US economy (Bernie Madoff, the Enron scandal, sub-prime mortgages, derivative trading, the executive who was caught buying and smuggling into the US highly controlled cooling chemicals, etc.), and my real fear is that the up-and-coming generation of future leaders and workers are sunk in this mindset of "make more money at any cost". And that, as a country, our future looks more bleak than our past when it comes to a record of integrity and wisdom in economic and public affairs.
Howard Gardner has done extensive research on teenage and young-adult Americans, and with respect to this problem, his research offers some interesting insights. First, most teenagers and young-adults do not believe cheating/plagiarizing/copying is wrong; they understand that if they get caught, there may be negative consequences, but because most students who cheat never get caught, they consider the "reward" to be worth the risk. Second, many students believe that "everyone" is cheating, and that for them to keep up with the highest achievers, they must cheat and cheat alike; otherwise, they risk falling behind (this, by the way, is something that came up in a brilliant op-ed piece written by a former cyclist, Jonathan Vaughters, addressing the issue with doping in cycling).
The question is: how do we reframe an entire country's cultural skew so that achieving my personal goals is no longer more important than retaining my integrity? Essentially, this is the juncture we have reached as a country. Most individuals are willing to sacrifice both their personal integrity as well as the well-being of their fellow citizens for personal gain and benefit.
My one idea is that perhaps we should develop a nationwide class or curriculum on virtue/character that addresses what students should be learning and practicing in the realm of virtue/character at each grade-level. The biggest challenge I see to implementing something like this is that the best way to pass on these traits is to learn them from elders who possess them, but as fewer and fewer living people possess them, there will be fewer and fewer people having these traits passed on to them, and it becomes a decreasing cycle.
DISCLAIMER: I am not perfect, I make poor choices sometimes, and I live with the consequences. I have never cheated or plagiarized. In fact, if anything, I am acutely aware of how intellectually indebted I am to the giants who have come before me (one of the sources of inspiration for this blog), and I am often over-zealous in giving credit for ideas to others. I try to live a life of integrity, and know that I sometimes fail.
