It’s a scene seen in movies, on TV, sometimes even in real life: elders complaining about the young generation. As the years pass and the world rapidly changes, many debates have risen, implying that our country experiences a moral decline with each generation.
It’s true that teenagers are often stereotyped. In movies, they are portrayed as daredevils, poor decision-makers, and the cause of all trouble in society. They aren’t well-trusted by adults. Perhaps there are legitimate, valid reasons for that. Teenagers are prone to making bad decisions.
However, there are apparent and disturbing moral conflicts that have been brought into the limelight, and in some regards, the morals of previous generations seem to be “higher” than they are now.
Clothes from the twentieth century compared to this era are very different. The fashions of even just a few decades ago were very conservative. Nowadays, it seems as if every year Forever 21 and Papaya come out with even shorter shorts and tops keep getting sheerer and flimsier.
Some of these fashions even carry over to Seminole’s campus, where girls and guys alike sport fashions that are not exactly conservative. Senior Snighda Das said, “School is a professional environment. Your dressing should reflect that belief.”
What happened to the days when women didn’t insist on putting it all on display? What happened to the days when boys knew what the proper function of a belt was?
Just like how fashion has changed over the past century, so have linguistic customs, and it’s disturbing to say the least. Back in the good old days, men never cursed in the presence of a lady.
Customs change, that’s understandable. But there’s no excuse for customs changing to the point where curse words are used as liberally in everyday conversations as icing is used on cinnamon buns.
Das said, “When people curse it just makes them sound crude and uneducated. Instead of coming up with creative ways to insult people, people just seem to start cursing.”
Just walk through the hallway for a day. It’s surprising how many curse words can be picked up.
Along with cursing, cheating happens to be another major problem. On a survey done on 24,000 high school students, 95% of students say they have cheated before. Today, it’s harder not to cheat than it is to actually cheat.
Why is there so much cheating going on? Did we have high statistics for cheating 30 years ago? 40? 50? Nope. The cheating is increasing because teenagers are less and less cognizant of what is morally wrong.
Freshman Estemoh Morgan said, “Kids are more likely to cheat if there aren’t consequences, but it’s not about whether or not it’s actually wrong.”
How disturbing. Where has the value of honesty gone? Does this society even value it anymore, when the next generation—the generation that’s supposed to lead this county out of a recession and restore its former glory—is basically a generation full of cheaters who may or may not understand what is morally wrong with cheating?
Freshman Troy Tulloch stated, “I’m not sure we’re worse than previous generations, but we may have lower moral standards.”
As much as it would be great if that statement wasn’t true, statistics don’t lie. Even older generations say we’re experiencing a moral decline. It seems that they’re right.