The Josephson Institute's annual Ethics of American Youth Survey released today could make a raging schizophrenic look lucid.

Asked if "it's not worth it to lie or cheat because it hurts your character," 84 percent agreed. Asked if they lied to a parent about something significant in the past year, 82 percent said, yeah, at least once.

Asked if trust and honesty are essential in business and the workplace, 93 percent said yes. Asked if, "in the real world, successful people do what they have to do to win, even if others consider it cheating," 59 percent agreed.

Asked if it's "important to me that people trust me," 96 percent said yes. Yet 42 percent said they sometimes lie to save money.

Asked if it's important to be a person with good character, 98 percent said yes. Yet 64 percent claim they cheated on a school test in the past year.

As testament to the time honored tradition of criticizing everyone and everything but yourself and yours (Schools are terrible, except mine) 93 percent were satisfied with their personal ethics and 77 percent say that "when it comes to doing the right thing, I am better than most people I know." Yet  82 percent said they copied another person's homework in the past year.

The national survey is full of tidbits that titillate. Do religious school students cheat less? As noted, Overall, 64 percent cheated on a test. In private religious schools it was 63 percent. In private non-religious schools, it was 47 percent. While 42 percent overall lie to save money, it's 39 percent in private religious schools and 35 percent in private non-religious schools

Honors students, student leaders and those involved in things like service clubs may be less likely to steal, but at least one in five says they stole in the past year.

Dishonesty is up, according to the survey summary, which sports a headline claiming "Stealing, lying and cheating rates climb to alarming rates." Maybe, but two things make me unwilling to embrace such an "Alarming" claim:

1) What they lie or cheat about, or steal, has some weight. While any such action speaks poorly of a person, it's important to know if they have a threshold. Stealing a friend's pen, for example, won't bother me as much as stealing his ipod.

2) More than one-quarter of those polled said they lied on the very survey they were filling out. What does that do to all the other numbers?

If 26 percent lied on the survey, does that mean that, when 96 percent said it is important people trust them and 42 percent said they've lied to save money, the real numbers were  70 percent and 68 percent respectively?Or did they lie on the survey the other way, meaning only 16 percent lied to save money?

Of course, if the 26 percent who say they lied on the survey only lied in answering that question, then their lie doesn't affect the accuracy of the rest of the survey, right? ("DId I lie on this survey? Man what a great way to mess with them. I didn't, but I'll answer yes, which will mean I did, but I'll only have lied about lying ...")

Suggested motto? "Ethics: Just because we say we don't have them doesn't make it true ....






For a triple dose of dour, check out the stories about Pennsylvania's pension plans in the list of items posted on today's (11-28) "Pension Tsunami" Web site, a daily amalgam of bleak updates on pension funds nationwide.

The AP piece on a $12 billion loss in teacher and government pension fund investment portfolios is particularly pertinent to education junkies and property owners. As the article notes, that's nearly half of the entire state budget. And where was most of that loss? Well, this being an education blog, it's not hard to guess: the teacher fund.

The Pennsylvania State Education Retirement System, or PSERS, fund practically leaped off a precipice from July 1 through Sept. 30, dropping from nearly $63 billion to $54.7 billion. That's a loss in just three months of $8 billion (with a "B," as in "Boy, that's a boatload of bucks").

If we had to come up with that money today, it would cost every man woman child and newborn in the state $643. More realistically, it would cost every person over the age of 18 about $830.

Three important facts for context:

1) This comes after PSERS reported losing 2.82 percent in the previous quarter, as I noted in a Sept. 12 blog post

2) Even if we actually coughed up the $8 billion right now, that would just to get us back to where we were in July, when PSERS was facing a serious future shortfall anyway.

3) And the $8 billion doesn't count losses in the last two months, when the stock market took a phenomenal tumble (there was, of course, a recent rebound of relatively modest proportion).

As I've noted before, money invested by PSERS come from a variety of sources. The state chips in, the local district forks over cash as a percent of teacher pay, and teachers contribute. But since teacher's contribute from pay that comes from taxes, it's all just different pieces of the same public pie. And unless the market does a miraculous rebound, we'll be forking over a good chunk of cash to cover the abrupt shortfall somewhere in the not-too-distant future.

The real key here is sustainability. PSERS has long done an excellent job of investing, yeilding returns consistently higher than pretty much any average you care to use for comparison. Even in losses, it tends to lose less. The problem is on the payout side, where - thanks to a numbskull decision by lawmakers made just at the end of the 1990s market boom - teachers who work long enough can now get 100 percent of their pay in pension upon retirement. Even after working 30 years, they can be eligible for three-quarters of their pay.

That kind of generosity, while admirable, puts enormous pressure on PSERS to perform  far beyond any reasonable expectation, and to do so indefinitely. It's the "indefinitely" that makes the mess. Markets tumble. Even the best fund manager makes mistakes, at when you're managing $50 billion plus, one mistake can make a huge difference.

It is just unrealistic to believe PSERS can make enough money to cover the high cost of the legislature's largesse, and any shortfall falls straight on your bank account.

Right now that shortfall is heavy enough to potentially crush a lot of lives, particularly those of homeowners living out their years on little more than paltry Social Security payments, modest savings, and no pension (think, in particular, widows who spent their lives toiling to raise a family rather than in the workforce)

I have said it before. I am truly indifferent to the outcome of disputes between teachers and school boards in this area. But it seems to me that members of the two unions still holding out over contracts that expired years ago (Northwest Area and Lake-Lehman), should consider these developments as they bargain with their school boards and seek public support.



 
  Wednesday's Wyoming Valley West school board meet began as usual: Late. While I waited about 40 minutes for the board to emerge from a private "executive session," I strolled to the Middle School gym down the hall, the old wooden doors muffling the laughs and screams of grade-schoolers.

They were playing what you could call scramble tug-of-war. Divided into two teams on opposite sides of the mat, students apparently given numbers paralleled on each team, they waited as an adult set a short towel or similar cloth in the center of the mat, then called a number.

One person from each team rushed out on hands and feet. If you were fast enough, you nabbed the holy grail and headed for your side, easy winner, challenge done. If you both got there at the same time, you still tried to do the same thing, except, of course, now there were two of you yanking in opposite directions.

The really fun part came when the adults yelled out a second number ... and a third ... and sometimes a fourth. At one point eight kids vied for the prize at once. It was, mind you, far too short for 16 hands to latch onto without bodies clambering every which way. It looked, in fact, a bit like a cluster of crabs tied tightly but haphazardly together, attempting to go their separate ways.

They certainly seemed to be having fun, even if there was an occasional scuff or bump (physical or ego). And, frankly, it could serve as a near-perfect visual metaphor for some school board meetings I've attended.

Once the board got around to seating itself, the first order of business was to hand out mounted certificates to 14 students who got perfect scores on the state standardized tests last school year. They were actually getting them after already moving up a grade, meaning, for example, a fourth grader was awarded for scores achieved in third grade.

It was a pretty diverse group, grade-wise (I'm giving the grade they were in when they took the test here): three fourth graders, two fifth, and three each from six, seven and 11 (the tests are not given in grades 1,2,9,10 and 12).

After individual presentations they lined up for the obligatory  group shot, prompting parents and kin to clamber about, raising and shifting digital cameras and cell phones in a quest for any available clear shot.

Stars for less than five minutes, and already hounded by the paparazzi...

Congrats to the perfectionists, and to the board for the public acknowledgment.

One of the most perverse yet endemic quirks of school board meetings is the "approval of interim actions." It happens at pretty much every meeting of every board.

It goes like this: Board hasn't met for a month. Stuff had to get done, so superintendent done did it. Board meets, and votes to approve what is already past fact. Repeat as needed.

Physicists, historians and Rocky Horror Picture Show fans can rejoice, the district has apparently created a time warp.

I'm simplifying. The process is (at least theoretically) more complicated, since paperwork had to be filed and checked by appropriate department heads (business manager, buildings and grounds supervisor, curriculum director, folk like that). The logic is that the superintendent is just doing something administrative while following policy and requirements the board has already set, a task for which board approval is typically routine anyway.

Which doesn't make it any less bizarre to hear the board vote to approve something done and over with. And board members rarely balk.

At Monday's Dallas School Board meeting, a few balked. Richard Coslett came close to a bellow.

The interim actions being approved were mostly non-controversial part-time hirings like special needs aide and lifeguards, but included seven approvals of outside organizations using district facilities.  All seven uses had either already happened or at least begun.

So on Nov. 10 the board voted to allow a bonfire rally on Oct 28 in the high school parking lot, hosted by the Dallas Gridiron Club. They also agreed to let the Lifesmarts Club use the high school auditorium on Nov. 4., and to allow the Wycallis Elementary school PTO to use the school library for a meeting Oct. 15.

What, you may ask, would have happened if the board voted against allowing the past to have occurred as it did? Possibly  Time Lord Dr Who could pop in and fix things up. Maybe Superman could reverse the world's rotation to let the vote catch up to the action. More likely though, nothing happens beyond a symbolic gesture.

In fact, Coslett asked that very question of Solicitor Ben Jones III who said it would be, at best, "diminimus," a legal term for minor, trivial, laughably irrelevant even if technically against the law, too small to merit punishment or even any real attention.

"It would be nice to approve these things before the event," Coslett quipped.

Yes, yes it would. But don't expect such post-dated approvals to fall off the agendas any time soon. It's become a deeply ingrained habit, as routine and absent-minded as breathing for many boards. Still, Coslett decided to take a stand. He argued that maybe -- just maybe -- stopping the rubber stamp might prod organizations to request use of district facilities far enough in advance to let the board meet and vote before the event.

"I might as well take a stand now and vote no," he said. Board President Karen Kyle agreed with the reasoning and also voted no.

Alas, the outcome of their revolt was, dare we say, diminimus ....

 

 

No, Lauren Richmond told me, she doesn't usually wear gingham and a bonnet to school at Hanover Memorial elementary. "I think people are just looking at me like I am crazy," the fifth-grader laughed.

No, Luis Avila noted, he doesn't really like straw hats. "I wear Columbia hats," he said with a hint of boasting.

The two had been chosen to model kid styles from the 1850's, outfits including in a trunk 'o goodies provided by the  Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor in an effort to teach fourth and fifth graders about a big piece of local history, the brief but vital use of canals for coal transportaion along rivers, including the Lehigh from Jim Thorpe to White Haven, and the pivotal role of railroads.

I loved the trunk stuff, which Corridor Outreach Coordinator Dennis Scholl opened for me after the kids left a brief assmebly introducing the program. A conch shell, a mule shoe, parchment and quill pens, a "Jacob's ladder" toy, reproductions of old school books including a McGuffy's reader, arrowhead reproductions, a miner's oil lamp ... In the hands of a good teacher, these things are almost guaranteed to spark student interest at that age.

But it was, as usual, the kids that made the day.

Luis whispered jokes to nearby schoolmates while Scholl talked. When Scholl pointed out the straw hat, he tipped it in a gentlemanly way with a wry grin. Though the period ensemble looked complete, his feet revealed one missing acoutrement: shoes. Both he and Lauren wore modern sneakers.

And when Scholl told Luis to pull his muslin shirt up enough for the crowd to see the buttons in front of his pants and draw string in back, children craned and scrambled out of their seats for a closer look.

"What's in the trunk," one child asked.

"I'm not telling you," Scholl grinned, keeping the suspense in the hands of the two teachers trained to work with the new curriculum.

One kid asked if the things in the trunk are stuff they really used in back then?  "Absolutely," Scholl replied.

Do Lauren and Luis actually look like kids then? Girls typically wore their hair long, so, yeah, "We could send her back to 1850 and she'd fit right it." Boys, he noted, often had a bowl put on top of their heads and "they took scissors and cut all the hair off that was sticking out of the bowl." This evoked what sounded like distinctly disapproving gasps.

"When do we get to wear the costumes?" one youngster asked. "When your teacher says you can."

It was, in short, everything about covering education I like: sparked imaginations of inquisitive kids generating grins.

Here's hoping the trunk of treats keeps the fire going.

 

 

 

About the Author

A West Hazleton native, I worked as a service technician repairing electronic mailing and shipping systems, a bike shop owner and an Emergency Medical Technician (among other jobs) before landing a reporter job at the Times Leader Hazleton Bureau in 1995. I started by covering primarily politics in Hazleton City and outlying municipalities, eventually became "social issues" team leader in the Wilkes-Barre office with the accent on education, and headed the Hazleton Bureau for a spell before returning to full-time reporting, my preferred position. I'm an avid cyclist and rode across the country in 1990, a trip of more than 5,000 miles from New Jersey to Seattle and down the coast to San Francisco. Years in the Boy Scouts made me a life long backpacker and camper, and I've yet to find a better way to enjoy the quiet lure of winter snow than cross country skiing.

Mark also writes a regular blog for timesleader.com.

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