Perhaps you noticed the articles recently announcing the Josephson Institute’s latest installment of their annual survey of youth perceptions on ethics. It’s something I take note of, since I used to work at a think tank on ethics.

The Josephson survey is always good for some alarmist fare, and rightly so. Perhaps the most striking — and persistent — finding is that most young people see themselves as ethical yet also, by large majorities, report engaging in unethical behavior like cheating.

Most articles that cover the Josephson report dutifully trot out educators who say that students are “stressed out” and “busy” and so they cut corners. Then there is a paragraph outlining all the new seminars on plagiarism at this or that school.

What’s always bugged me about this approach is that it gets two things wrong.

• First, it excuses wrong behavior by implying that tough times somehow justify (or mitigate) cheating.
• Second, it falls into the “not enough knowledge” trap: that is, it assumes that wrong behavior is arising out of a lack of knowledge, that kids just don’t know what plagiarism is and so if only they knew more about it they would stop.

And so, I would like to draw your attention to this article by “Smintheus” at Unbossed. Written by a professor, it is an excellent discussion of the landscape adults who actually oppose cheating (and who oppose enabling cheaters) face. It touches on a number of other points, too, so I recommend reading the whole thing.

It’s not so easy, it turns out, to fight the good fight. So many places in public life, we get messages to let things slide, don’t get involved, don’t upset the apple cart.

So what can we do about this, besides mouth platitudes?

That’s a good question.