Thursday, May 7, 2015

Is Integrity a Thing of the Past?



Educators were convicted April 1 of racketeering and other lesser crimes related to inflating test scores of children from struggling schools. One teacher was acquitted.  CNN
Pacquiao faces possible sanctions for shoulder injury. Boxer, who lost to Mayweather, failed to disclose an 'old' shoulder injury. Aljazeera

Tom Brady likely knew of 'inappropriate activities,' Deflategate report says  CNN

These are just three recent examples that caused me to ask the question, Is integrity a thing of the past? I ask that because it seems that in no arena do we find anything to be what it's supposed to be. People are telling us one thing and doing another. I often hear the question is chivalry dead?, but I think the more important question is the one I am asking here in this post. Where has our integrity gone? Think about the tainted records of Bobby Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemons, Mark McGuire, Bernie Madoff, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and the list could go on and on, enough to fill this entire post with just names alone. All who have broken the trust of the public......our trust.

Integrity is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as (1) the quality of being honest and fair (2) the state of being complete or whole. Where has this quality gone? Do we want to win so bad that we are willing to do anything? Do we want to be rich so bad that we are willing to do anything? Do we want to be famous so bad that we are willing to do anything? Apparently so.

In Atlanta, educators were so consumed with a system that required students to be proficient, they were driven to alter test results in order to what they thought, keep their jobs or obtain their increment/raise. As a fellow educator, I can understand their desperation; however, as that old adage goes, "Two wrongs don't make a right."  Is an educational system that focuses so much on test scores wrong? In my view, yes. Is altering the results of student test scores wrong. In my view yes. Whether it is education, sports, business, law enforcement, government, politics, religion, or whatever, where has our integrity gone? Integrity has become like "Where's Waldo?"  Where's Integrity? Unlike Where's Waldo, integrity is far more important and if we've lost that, we've lost close to everything.

I don't have the answer, but I do know this, we have got to do better than this because if we don't, we are going to fall just like the Roman Empire and any other empire that fell due to the lack of morals. integrity, and compassion. I often hear that chivalry is not dead and I pray to God that integrity is not dead either. Something to critically think about.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for that food for thought, I absolutely agree with u but I think it's more of how we project ourselves and our society. The society these days care less about the truth if it's ugly the only truth they want is that painted truth, the one that is so perfect and looks like fairy tale which in many cases are all lies. People live and dream of fairy tales forgetting it's not life and they end up doing everything just to get a bubble of their fantasies...In a world that is so quick to condemn even without understanding first, people are always ready to point fingers and blame others, P.R is seen to be everything some will even tell u bad publicity is good publicity as long as the ratings r good like your life is some kind of a show,what does that even mean? No one wants to called a looser I get it but that attitude of winning at all course (the end justifies the means) that is what we need to stop preaching in the minds of our younger ones. Life is never a competition but a journey best traveled with values that will leave your path very memorable that people will talk about it and get inspired from it and will always remember it when u r not there anymore.
For me integrity is still alive though in the hearts of few but we can still change that if only we change our mind set and start facing life the way it is and not always wanting to be seen as perfect! Live nobly forget the ratings