Sandy-Cosgrove

Most point to pressure to succeed or achieve as the number one cause for this pervasive unethical behavior.  There is the pressure to get into a top college, the pressure to get good grades, the pressure to meet business objectives and deadlines, and the pressure to be Number One.  This kind of thinking shifts the blame from the individual to the system or to the society.  All of us need to take responsibility.  Michael Josephson, the founder of the Josephson Institute for Ethics and of our Character Counts program, conducted a survey several years ago that said students are just imitating adults.  He says, “ They’re basically decent kids whose values are being totally corrupted by a world which is sanctioning stuff that even they know is wrong.  But they can’t understand why everybody allows it.”  He goes on to say, “We must believe in and expect integrity and moral courage and not surrender when our principles are challenged.  We need to expect good people to do what’s right, even when it’s difficult or costly.”  How much better it would be to get children to understand why integrity is important than to spend hours policing the lack of it!

As adults, we must realize that kids are looking to us and society in general for a moral compass says Donald McCabe, a professor who heads the center for academic integrity at Rutgers University.  They do not understand why they should be held to a different or higher standard than adults.

As parents, we must understand that our children look to us as models.  All that we do is scrutinized.  Also, we need to take more than a passing interest in all that they do. We need to talk with them constantly about their work and their play.

As teachers, we must work to actively engage each student in the learning process, to make the learning process so exciting and challenging that the thought of cheating never occurs to them.  We must give them the tools to guide and direct their own learning and to understand assessments are merely the means to an end not the end itself.

Students need to learn how to handle life’s pressures without compromising their core values and their sense of right.  Pressures are a part of living but should not be used as an excuse for dishonesty. They need to be proud to be a person of honor.