News, Students lie, cheat, steal, but say they're good. (high school, interpreting, history)

[JD59]

NEW YORK - In the past year, 30 percent of U.S. high school students have stolen from a store and 64 percent have cheated on a test, according to a new, large-scale survey suggesting that Americans are too apathetic about ethical standards.

Educators reacting to the findings questioned any suggestion that today's young people are less honest than previous generations, but several agreed that intensified pressures are prompting many students to cut corners.

Students lie, cheat, steal, but say they're good (OneNewsNow.com) (http://www.onenewsnow.com/Headlines/Default.aspx?id=337502 - broken link)

[jabm67]

I have a hard time interpreting the numbers quoted. Thinking about my own high school peers, now 35 years or so back, I doubt there's much different now compared to then. I'm perfectly willing to believe that 30% of my peers had stolen at least once from a store, and 2/3 of them had cheated on at least one test (though I also know that not all cheating attempts are competent ... it is possible to cheat and still fail), so I don't find the numbers particularly shocking.

If this study was one with a long time history so you had genuine perspective with hard data over the years, that'd be something else. But with just "now" numbers ... the percentages quoted are in a vacuum, and the way they're presented lead me to suspect there's an agenda being furthered by releasing them.

[stan4]

I agree with jabm...I don't think people are all that different from, say, 100 years ago. We just hear about it more.

[texdav]

Well if thye same numnber are cheating thatwould surprise me with teh number of dropouts how days in many districts. I really thnk that many just don't care one way or the other to cheat.Many only seem to think of school as another social meeting place really.

[60-minutes-II]

Don't forget they also are having sex outside of marriage.