Cheating as a High-Priority IssueIn ContextGeorge S. Morrisonbr>For a long time, the state of children's moral development has been on my mind. The ongoing intergenerational decline of children's moral development and lack of moral teaching by early childhood programs has been on my mind so much that I have gone from just thinking and talking about it to doing something about it. ABC's Primetime was the catalyst for my action. Primetime aired a program "Cheaters Amok: A Crisis in America's Schools-How It's Done And Why It's Happening." In the report, Joe, a student at a top college said he was just doing what the rest of the world does. "The real world is terrible," he told [Charles] Gibson. "People will take other people's materials and pass it on as theirs. I'm numb to it already. I'll cheat to get by." According to the report, Primetime heard the same refrain from other students who cheat: cheating in school is a dress rehearsal for life! Primetime portrayed college youth as preparing for life by enrolling in cheating 101. College professors were fingered as accomplices and enablers. "Some professors make it easy," students said. "They overlook even the most obvious instances [of cheating"]. As a university professor who teaches large sections of undergraduates child development, I was angry and deeply saddened by my colleagues' acquiescence to student cheating. Who's to blame for student cheating? You and me. All of us. Jane Brody in her New York Times' column "Too much TV is taking our kids down the tube," (August 8, 2004) painted a picture of the moral and physical toll television viewing has on our children. Brody reports that the average young child in this country watches about four hours of TV a day and each year sees tens of thousands of commercials, often for high-fat, high sugar, or high salt foods; thousands of episodes of violence, and countless instances of alcohol use and inappropriate sexual activity. Brody relates a conversation she had with a parent. "Recently a woman complained that her 9-year-old daughter watches television for eight hours a day and she couldn't get her to stop. Why not? I asked. 'Because,' the woman answered, 'the TV is in her bedroom.' My next question to the mother was: whose fault is that? Who's the boss in your home-you or the 9 year old?" Who is boss? By all accounts, not parents, not early childhood professionals, and not college professors. More and more those who are responsible for educating children and youth to take the high road of life are content to let them take the low road. Parents and teachers who are responsible for being the boss have passively abrogated their responsibilities for guiding children's moral development. Over the last few decades children and adults have reversed roles. Children are now the boss and parents are children. If you don't believe me, you haven't watched television lately. Television casts parents as dumb and dumber and incapable of being the heads of families and the boss. Children, on the other hand are all knowing and have all the answers. If you can't figure it out, children will figure it out for you. They have all the answers for their inept and bumbling parents who can't make a decision. Children tell their parents what car to buy, what product to use, and what's good for them. And, for good measure, they tell their parents off! Decorous and polite behavior, once taught by all parents and teachers to all children has been replaced by one up-manship, the smart rejoinder, and the demeaning put-down. One parent told me that after she corrected her child, he retorted. "You s_ _ _!" "Who is the boss?" This is a question we all have to answer. And, it has to be answered sooner than later. As an early childhood professional, I have always said that children are the hope of the future. I've changed my mind. I now believe that parents and early childhood educators are the hope of the future. We are the ones who have to say "No!" to cheating, "No!" to too much and the wrong kind of TV, "No!" to bad behavior, and "No!" to surrendering our rights and responsibilities to raise children in the ways they should be raised. We are the ones who have to reclaim the moral high ground and teach our children how to walk on it. Several weeks ago at a conference I had the pleasure of hearing Jerry Mathers speak about character and its importance for children. Jerry said that each episode of "Leave it to Beaver" was a morality play. Beaver was involved in a moral dilemma and with the help of Wally, his parents-Ward and June-and others, he learned life lessons honesty, generosity, and kindness. This is one of the challenges confronting us, how to restore character to homes, classrooms, TV, and society. I refuse to believe that cheating is preparation for life. More parents are feeling the same way. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recently reported that 1.1 million children ages 5-17 are now home-schooled. Sixty percent of the parents who home school say they do it for two reasons: they are concerned about the environment in their children's regular classrooms and they want to provide their children with religious and moral instruction. I refuse to believe there is nothing we can do. I'm not ready to abandon another generation of children to the wastelands of TV and sleazy entertainment. What have I done? Through my Success For Life Programs at the University of North Texas, I have sponsored two faith-based conferences on children's spiritual and moral development in collaboration with faith-based programs in the Dallas Metroplex. They were well attended and I plan to sponsor additional conferences during the coming year. What can you do? You can develop programs that engage children in learning the right things and doing the right things. Take the case of Barbara Vogel and her fifth grade class in Denver. After reading about slavery in the Sudan, they founded Slavery That Oppresses People (STOP). The children saved their allowances, sold lemonade, T-shirts and old toys. They raised money and bought the freedom of hundreds of slaves. I talked with Barbara last week. She is retired from teaching now but has not lost her passion for inspiring children to make the world a better place. Barbara told me that "Helping children do small things with great love gives a whole new meaning to learning. Once you have touched the heart of a child, the mind easily follows." I thought for a minute I was listening to Maria Montessori! We can join the parents who are home schooling and others to reclaim the hearts and minds and character of children. We can begin by rededicating our own hearts and minds and character and careers to making a difference where we are in the lives of children and their parents. We can rise up and say "No" to those who would lead children astray with the pied piper song of anything goes and nothing matters. George S. Morrison is the author of Early Childhood Education Today and is the Velma E. Schmidt Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of North Texas. |
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