High schoolers need guidance

Raise your hand if you've shown up to school drunk, lied to a teacher or cheated on a test. \nAccomplishing all of these might fall into the realm of impossible, but a study shows that most high school kids are giving it the old college try.\nThe Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics recently released the results of a teen character survey it conducted last year. Nearly 9,000 students anonymously filled out the questionnaire, and the results are nothing short of mind-boggling.\nSeven out of 10 students admitted to cheating on a test at least once in the past year, and nearly half said they had cheated more than once. \nThe survey also revealed that 92 percent of the teenagers in the study had lied to their parents in the past year. \nAnd who knows how many of the kids filled out the survey correctly because one in six students said they had shown up drunk for class at least once.\nRemember these are not college students showing up drunk for class after their 21st birthdays. The people in this study were all between the ages of 14 and 18.\nThat's scary.\nThese results show something is wrong with America's youth. \nLying and cheating usually come into play when people care about themselves more than anything else. \nThese kids appear to be self-centered to the point where they can't see three feet past their own universe. The impact something will have on their lives is pondered long before morals and ethics enter the fray.\nWhat this leads to is a disregard for others, a harbinger of doom for civility. Kids simply don't care about the people around them.\nThis results in bad behavior and violent outbursts; the survey found that 68 percent of the students hit someone in anger.\nYet violence and incivility are not only wasted on the young, misguided high school students. We are just as guilty.\nIt seems like only a coach-firing ago when we were the ones who were lost in our own little universes. We dumped our ethics and organized a "demonstration" on President Myles Brand's lawn. \nWe not only voiced our displeasure for his actions, but we decided to burn dummies and hold up banners demanding Brand's relocation to an extremely warm place.\nThis is not the example we should be setting for America's youth. If they are learning the finer points of violence and incivility from us, then we need to change our ways. \nWe need to show them that dealing with the outside world is a necessary part of everyday life. It's pervasive in just about anything you do. \nYou wake up and the outside world's there; you walk out the front door, and the outside world's there. You could even trip over Al Gore's ego, and falling on Tipper would be a run-in with the outside world. \nIt's up to us to set the standard for high school students. The reason we need to start changing our ways is simple: Monkeys seeing usually end up doing.\nSo we need to make sure those high school kids watch us make decisions that are based on character and morals.\nOh, and all you liars, drinkers and cheaters can put your hands down now.\nActually, you can disregard that last sentence. You guys probably never raised your hands in the first place.