“Character”
Purists, Cleanse Thyselves
Mike
Males
Americans hate adolescents and
never hesitate to let them know it. How else do we explain March’s ugly rush to
typecast all teens by the tiny few who shoot up a school rather than by the
record millions who volunteer to clean beaches or visit invalids? Adult
bigotry, a serious threat to youths’ well-being, persists despite decades of
research by respected scientists such as Daniel Offer, Joseph Adelson, and
research reviewers debunking stereotypes of teens as impulsive, rebellious,
hormonal, immortality-deluded, and violent.
Modern authorities reinforce
myths of adolescents as dangerous risk machines through unethical “behavior
risk” surveys. Consider again the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health (“Add Health”), which dismissed adult-imposed social disadvantage (race
and poverty) as tiny factors in teenage risk compared to youths’ own misbehaviors.
Contrary to glowing media
reports, including Youth Today’s (2/01), there’s nothing original or “shocking”
about Add Health’s claims. Researchers Robert Blum, Trisha Beuhring, and Peggy
Rinehart of the University of Minnesota rigged the study to bury socioeconomic
factors by creating absurdly broad “risk” categories: carrying a pocketknife once was equated with shooting dozens;
drinking one beer annually equaled getting drunk weekly; safe sex with a long-term
partner equaled doing Dallas. Presto! By defining as “high risk” mild behaviors
practically every teenager engages, Add Health made race and class differences
“disappear.”
Then, when evaluating teens’
personal habits, Add Health switched to complex behavior scales refined to
enhance subtle “risk” differences. Abracadabra! “Adolescent health risk
behaviors” are paramount! Blum et al then compounded their statistical
malpractice by comparing social conditions evaluated by a method designed to
minimize them with individual characteristics analyzed by another method
designed to magnify them.
Don’t expect criticism of such
institutional “lying and cheating” from the Josephson Institute on Ethics.
Founder Michael Josephson condemns young people as “moral illiterates,” but
he’s “comfortable” with the morals of the rich and powerful like George Bush
and Al Gore. Josephson conducts negative surveys of high schoolers featuring
gotcha! questions such as, “Within the past year, I lied...” or, “I feel very
safe at school.” Then, when 92% of
students admit lying (who hasn’t?) and 38% don’t feel “very safe” at school
(how many American feel “very safe” anywhere?), Josephson issues inflamed press
statements berating all youths as “serial liars,” “cheaters,” and “downright
scary.” (When pressed, Josephson admits he’s lied, too!).
Moral illiteracy? Take
Josephson’s recent commentary: “This isn’t the first generation that has been
bullied, taunted, and tormented, but this is the first that has resorted to
mass homicide as a response.” This slur isn’t just false (students in past
generations committed school shootings, and Josephson’s “scary” middle-aged
generation commits more murderous rampages now), it would be rank bigotry if
hurled at any other group. The younger “generation” didn’t pull the trigger at
Columbine or Santee any more than the black “race” commits drive-by shootings
or the Islamic “religion” bombs skyscrapers.
Josephson’s survey projects
eight million teens easily can get guns to take to school. Yet in March, when
“school shootings” were headlined, only four of America’s 2,500 gun murders and
suicides occurred at school. If accurate, Josephson’s survey shows schoolkids
handle gun availability far more safely than grownups do. More died when one
suburban Santa Cruz father shot four to death one typical family massacre in
March than in all of America’s 50-million-student schools that month.
Josephson’s one-sided “surveys”
are just promos for his Character Counts! curriculum, which preaches “honesty,”
“tolerance,” “self-restraint,” and “fairness.” But when his interests benefit,
confessed “serial liar” Michael Josephson practices distortion,
finger-pointing, alarmism, and prejudice. He lauds the super-rich Rockefellers
for espousing “good values” amid “ruthless” business dealings, then berates
lowly teens for “inconsistency in what they say they believe and how they
act.” Unfortunately, youths emulate not
the pious platitudes, but the real behaviors and values they see luminaries
like Josephson, Blum, and nearby adults practicing and profiting from. Please,
kids: aim higher!