RIGHT OF CENTER: STUDENTS WEIGH ETHICAL ISSUES

We hear a lot today about the lost and wayward generation of youths soon to become adults. Kids increasingly must face a harsh and unrelenting world without the anchors accorded past generations.

Those anchors -- a set of established presuppositions upon which to base their existence, their past and future -- constantly are disengaged by alarming divorce rates, rampant immorality and violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and a pagan culture of situational ethics based not on absolutes but on opinions founded in nothingness. From my own experience, particularly in college in the late 1980s, I saw little to refute this general perception. But a group of students from Cape Girardeau's two high schools this week helped dismantle that perception.

I participated in a workshop Thursday on "Ethical Decision Making in the Workplace and Society." The workshop, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and local businesses, involved several business representatives divided between groups of students interested in their professions.

During the day-long workshop, the groups discussed various ethical dilemmas and methods to solving them. The experience left me craving more time with these students. They were refreshingly bright, optimistic and charming -- characteristics I thought were waning in many young people.

The only disappointing part of the workshop was when various tables of students struggled to decide which one of five candidates would get a life-saving heart transplant in a hypothetical variation of the old "lifeboat" game. The exercise forced the students to make a life-and-death decision based on each heart-transplant candidates' circumstances and character. Each has qualities that favor his being allowed to live over the others as well as liabilities that tend to disqualify him as the choice. Some students decided the loner, who would leave few mourners, must be eliminated. Another candidate was in his 50s and on the downward slope of life. Better to save a young person. Students considered whether to save the brilliant scientist who might discover the cure for cancer or the young mother of four.

The exercise, which forces students to gauge other persons' value solely on their function, is patently offensive.

While other tables struggled with the question, our table took a different tack. The students immediately voiced dismay over the challenge posed by the ethics instructor. Refusing to play God and weigh the candidates against one another, we simply selected the recipient by lottery. I asked the students, "Why do you think it's wrong to make a life-and-death choice based on practical circumstances?" Their answer was that all humans are valuable. "Why?" I asked. They said everyone is valuable to someone, regardless of how prominent or successful they might be. "Could you eliminate one of the heart-transplant candidates if he was a crippled, elderly loner who provided no practical benefit to society?" They couldn't. "Why not?" I pressed. "Because we're all creatures of God, which alone gives us value."

Given other ethical dilemmas, the students invariably made their decisions based not on financial gain or loss, or on specious situational ethics, but on a transcending morality stemming from Judeo-Christian tradition.

Maybe these students are the exception. Maybe most students at Central and Notre Dame are anchorless moral anarchists. I'd like to think otherwise. I'd like to think this small group is representative of most high school students in this area.

As they enter college and the working world, their core beliefs likely will be challenged further. To Chad, Shaun, Kara, Chris, Amanda, Alyson, Julie S. and Julie W. I offer, with the hope it might help anchor you in the turbulent sea of relativity, the sage words of the estimable Paul Johnson on absolutes:

"It is not true that all codes of human conduct are relative... It is not true that our behavior is wholly determined by environment... What is true, is that every rational human being is in a moral sense free, capable of reacting to moral absolutes, and of opting for good or evil."

The key then is to opt for good over evil. Truth sometimes is difficult to ferret out, and society's enemies are adept at making evil seem good. The ultimate good, though, always will be found in truth. More from Johnson:

"The pursuit of truth is our civilization's glory, and the joy we obtain from it is the nearest we shall approach to happiness, at least on this side of the grave. If we are steadfast in this aim, we need not fear the enemies of society."

Jay Eastlick is news editor of the Southeast Missourian.