Broken rules are denting society

A realistic view of human nature reveals that the fear of punishment is the most powerful and possibly the only way to deter certain actions. If anyone could do anything with impunity, the law would have no force and there would be chaos. Increasingly in America, there are fewer and fewer people willing to hold people to account for their behavior. \nIn Piper City, Kansas, almost a fifth of a high school biology class plagiarized a term paper that counted for half the grade. When the teacher, Christine Pelton, discovered their plagiarism, she presented evidence to the principal and the superintendent who both agreed with her assessment and punishment: All students who plagiarized their papers got a 0 for the assignment, meaning that each would fail that class.\nThe parents of those children were enraged at the teacher but, strangely, not their own children. Parents took their case to the Board of Education, which directed Ms. Pelton to change the grades to give the plagiarizing students partial credit. Ms. Pelton promptly resigned.\nWhen I first read about this, I didn't know who made me most angry -- the parents who supported the cheaters or the Board of Education. The parents' and the Board's actions are simply inexcusable.\nPart of being an adult is being accountable for actions. For the past twenty years, it seems as if everyone who misbehaves has had an excuse: A troubled childhood, a bad day, ignorance of the rule or some other country's foreign policy. So when people decide to break the rules, they claim they were provoked, that they're not really at fault, that the cause for their action lay outside themselves.\nThe more dangerous practice is of parents like those in Piper City. The children of these people learn that when they mess up and break the rules, there will be someone there to make it all better again. Even when they pass off someone else's ideas and work as their own on a term paper worth more than half the final grade, they won't be punished. When you don't punish behavior, you condone it.\nChildren need to make mistakes and learn from bad outcomes. If there are not negative outcomes for kids, then anything goes; they begin to believe themselves to be untouchable. \nOur unwillingness to hold people accountable imperils the future. \nWhen a kid tragically dies after drinking at a fraternity, the parents sue the fraternity and the hospital -- their son is surely not responsible for his own drinking.\nWhen a kid joins the Taliban and conspires to kill Americans, the parents go on national TV and declare, with a straight face, that the kid was brainwashed -- surely their son couldn't have chosen his actions. \nWhat kind of moral framework have our parents wrought? How long can this pernicious permissiveness last? \nWe must begin to insist that our fellow citizens bear fully the responsibility for their actions, which includes punishment for breaking the rules. The integrity of our youth depends on it.