What Would You Do? Essay, Research Paper

You pull up to the second window at the McDonalds?s drive-through to pick up the shake you just ordered and paid for, and the person working there hands you a huge bag of food while asking you if this is what you ordered. Do you A: Answer ?Yes? and take the food or B: Answer ?No? and tell him/her that you only paid for a shake? Yes this really did happen to me. What did I do? Believe it or not, I did the honest thing and gave the food back. But the real question is what would a majority of America?s youth do in a similar situation. There are two potentially dishonest acts in this situation, lying and stealing. In my opinion most high school kids are not above lying and/or stealing. The reason this is true is simply that many of today?s parents are not above lying and/or stealing. So after observing people that hold a high place of respect do things unmoral like this, their conscience says to itself, ?Okay, lying and/or stealing is not really that bad, and is acceptable to my parents.? Majorities of America?s youth today are morally confused, due to the un-honorable actions of their parents.

What can we do to remedy, you ask? Well we can start by thinking about what we do before we do it and putting ourselves into the other person?s shoes. How would you feel if you are working at McDonalds and you make this huge bag of food and give it to the wrong car. Then the next car pulls up waiting for its food and you realize what happened, so you explain it to the person and rush to make some more food. Meanwhile your boss walks in and finds out that you gave away a bag of food and takes it out of your check. All because someone decided to be selfish and not consider the consequences of their actions. That is what it all boils down to, that we have so little consideration for our fellow man that we think we can lie to and steal from them!

Our country is filled with morally confused teenagers, due to the fact that their parents are also morally confused, therefore leading to a society of heartless people. The reason kids are so confused is because they learn from their parents what is acceptable and what is not. The problem with this is that what the parents communicate to their children as acceptable is more often than not, actually unmoral. Kids learn from parents and parents learn from their parents, so logically one bad person could produce a long line of unmoral human beings, our job today is to stop this vicious cycle by redefining our views on what is right and what is wrong. In my opinion and experience honesty is always the best policy.

Robert D. Cross