Joanna Lumley and the Quest for Children's Morals

By Robert Golbert - Director of Projects and Marketing, JABE

In an interview with the Radio Times last week, Joanna Lumley decried the lack of morals among today's British youth. "We are very slack with our moral codes for children these days. Children find it laughably amusing to shoplift and steal. We smile when they download information from the internet and lazily present it as their own. We allow them to bunk off school and bring in sick notes."

Ms Lumley largely blamed the education system for this failure to instill moral values in young people. "When I was in school", she continued, "I was taught not to shoplift, not to steal. Not to behave badly. What are we doing with our education policies? Running from one side to the other, with no notion of where we are going. We have taken our foot off the education pedal, and I don’t think it makes anyone happy" she said.

Are things really as bad as Ms Lumley describes? Research conducted over the past 20 years by JABE seems to support many of her assertions. A survey of 34,000 teenagers aged 13-15 years old from across England and Wales commissioned by JABE found that up to 45% of teenagers showed a willingness to break the law in relation to specific minor offences. A fifth of girls and a quarter of boys saw nothing wrong in travelling without buying a ticket, almost half saw nothing wrong with the illegal consumption of alcohol, and nearly 60% admitted to taking advantage of people when they could get away with it. With regard to education, almost a third of students did not consider school to be adequately preparing them for life and a quarter were negative about the impact they thought they could have on the world.

But not all the results were bleak. The survey showed that students with some religious connection or affiliation, measured in terms of church attendance, had a stronger ethical outlook and were less likely to condone dishonest behaviour than those with no affiliation. JABE's research over the years has also consistently shown that the teaching of ethics and morals in schools can help provide students with the guidance they need to make moral decisions. The lack of such an education, on the other hand, can result in the absence of ethical thinking noted by Ms Lumley.

The Bible commands us to instill moral values in our children in all areas of our lives and in everything that we do - "Teach it to your children and discuss it with them while you sit in your home, while you walk on the way, when you retire and when you arise" (Deuteronomy 11:19). This implies not only teaching our children in an academic sense, but by setting an example for our children to emulate by acting properly in the way we live our daily lives. However, with less emphasis placed on the family today as a prime source of moral and ethical guidance and in light of rapidly dropping attendance at religious places of worship, especially among the young, the teaching of morals and ethics in school is becoming increasingly important.

There is no reason that the teaching of morals and ethics should take a back seat to the teaching of other subjects taught in school. Indeed, an ethical dimension can and should be incorporated into all subjects taught in school as part of the national curriculum such as business, economics, citizenship and PSHE, science and religious studies.

It is only by introducing the study of ethics and morals at a young age, and showing today's youth that ethical and moral thinking is relevant to every aspect of their lives, that we can stop the decline in British children's morals that Ms Lumley decries.