Character Counts
When I was a young lad growing up in West Virginia, I was, what I suspect would be labeled today, "a victim of poverty." At times I did not have socks or shoes or adequate clothing to keep warm.

I did not have money, but I was rich in so many other ways. The old couple who raised me instilled in me a sense of the "old values," such as honesty, integrity, and loyalty. They encouraged me to work hard and to use my mind in wholesome pursuits. I had teachers who inspired in me a love for learning. And I had heroes — public figures who showed, by their example, the way to achieve important goals.

Although I was faced with a ladder of life from which the bottom rungs were missing, I learned that I could reach the upper rungs on the shoulders of those public and private heroes who showed me the way to a fulfilling and successful life.

A national organization, the Character Counts! Coalition, recently released an unsettling report on the ethics of America's youth. The coalition reported that nearly half of the high school students surveyed claimed to be active thieves, and 70 percent admitted to cheating on an exam at least once in the last 12 months. An astonishing 92 percent of surveyed teenagers admitted to having lied to their parents at least once in the last year! How shocking! According to that report, we are raising a generation rife with cheaters and liars. What a cause for despondency!

Is it any wonder? We live in a time where the noise of the bizarre and the spectacle of aberrant behavior are blasted at our young people. Too often, our children get the impression that it is the cheaters who prosper, and the unscrupulous who gain. Public heroes are in very short supply.

But, in the absence of public heroes, private heroes — good parents, good teachers, and those men and women who quietly set a good example and who give of their time to help young people formulate character and encourage excellence — are acutely important.

We all have a responsibility to guide and inspire young people. We need to teach them, by deed as well as word, that character does count. Not only is it one of the most important things any of us can do, it is also one of the most rewarding. It is not too late to save a foundering generation.
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November 11, 1998