The are several ways to solve our problems. Let's explore some options.

Parents Raising Good Children

In a speech given on 5 March 1994, Gordon B. Hinckley, a world religious leader, shared "that observance of four simple things on the part of parents would, in a generation or two, turn our societies around in terms of their moral values. They are simple these: Let parents and children (1) teach and learn goodness together, (2) work together, (3) read good books together, and (4) pray together."

Value Based Leadership

Speaking to college students Gordon B. Hinckley urged: "You are good. But it is not enough just to be good. You must be good for something. You must contribute good to the world. The world must be a better place for your presence, and the good that is in you must be spread to others." He added: "In this world so filled with problems, so constantly threatened by bark and evil challenges, you can and must rise above mediocrity, above indifference. You can become involved and speak with a strong voice for that which is right. ...you cannot simply sit in your laboratory, or your library and let the world drift along in its aimless way. It needs your strength, your courage, your voice in speaking up for those values which can save it."

Everyone Gets Involved

The most important approach is one that is the most obvious. Jonathan Alter described it best in a May 29, 1995 Newsweek article:

"Leadership, it's now clear, begins not with politicians but at home, where the line "it takes a whole village to raise a child" has moved in a few short years from an obscure African proverb to a Middle American cliche. Our fervid rescue fantasies are just that. We've seen the calvary--and it is us.

 

But within this dawning acknowledgment of responsibility lies another old American virtue: pragmatism. We want our ideas to work. The perception that they haven't is what lies at the root of the crisis of faith in government. Often programs that sound terrific expand too quickly, rely too heavily on leaders who leave or turn bad, misdiagnose the problem, create new dependencies or just plain waste money...

 

Too often, the hard task of separating promising programs from futile ones gets lost in the mists of ideology and media indifference. Members of Congress would rather posture about the big picture than dirty their hands on the details. Members of the press prefer scandal and failure to the harder task of finding and explaining success. And all of us too often forget to take our gratification where we can find them. While we wait for the moral equivalent of war, the real equivalent is that sense of grace, exhilaration and even power that comes from actually helping change something small in our own communities, child by child, block by block."

 

...The best interventions essentially re-create a sense of family... The key is finding adults who will give kids what your parents gave you: love, discipline, attention, the ability to fail and still be cared about."

Celebrate Success

A highly successful stimulant for boasting U.S. competitiveness for a long while was the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. This award's criteria quickly became the benchmark of excellence and are used as an assessment and improvement tool by large and small organizations throughout America. The award's standards are rigorous, encompassing and are upgraded yearly by the nation's best.

The truth is, recognition and friendly competition inspires Americans to excel and innovate. Even more consequential than industrial competitiveness is our country's economic, criminal, educational, societal and environmental situation. A surefire way to stir up improvements in these areas is to establish improvement awards - similar in concept to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The awards should be given to those state and/or communities with the greatest rate of improvement in each of the areas. These awards should be the most coveted, publicized and celebrated in America. These awards should be given by the President of the United States, be aired by all the major networks, and should be grander than winning a gold medal, a tony award, or anything else.

Different states may eventually be encouraged to establish similar awards. It is time to make models and heros out of those communities and states that are the real heros.

Database of Best Practices

A comprehensive database, accessible to all via the internet, should be developed containing easy to read abstracts and case studies of those best practices or approaches used by states and communities to achieve improvement results in the areas of economics, crime, education, social, and environment.

Values Advisory Groups

A comprehensive strategy would need to be one that focuses on family, church, media, friends, school, employees and government. Even with the best strategy, noticeable improvements could take several years to realize.

One approach might be to establish advisory groups to define, implement, monitor, and continually adjust plans for improvement.

Values Coordinating Advisory Group

This group would be the highest level values advisory group in the country. It would be comprised of advisory group chairpersons of family, church, media, education, employers, and government values advisory groups. The purpose of the values coordinating advisory group would be to:

• ensure that values and plans developed by the different advisory groups are complimentary,
• develop an overarching strategy that integrates plans of each of the advisory groups,
• monitor overall progress,
• help to establish different advisory groups as seen appropriate.

Nonprofit Organization

A small nonprofit organization that would report to the values coordinating advisory group (- who would also serve as the organization's board of directors) and help establish and then support, principally administratively, the different advisory groups. The specific mission and responsibilities of the nonprofit organization would be defined by the board of directors.

Family Values Advisory Group

It is recommended that a family values advisory group be established. This advisory group would be comprised of highly principled conciliatory individuals who represent different political, racial, and religious backgrounds. The objective of this advisory group would be to identify and develop a comprehensive plan for effectively promulgating those critical family values. The representatives of this advisory group should first and foremost be comprised of exemplary fathers and mothers who have raised happy contributing children.

The charter of the advisory group would be to:

• Analyze the current and projected trends of the country in the areas of crime, economics, education social welfare, and environment,
• Analyze and depict current values,
• Identify those values prevalent in most successful families,
• Review and identify those relevant values stated in constitution or federalist paper,
• Develop a comprehensive plan to aggressively work with the media, education system, government, and so on, to initiate meaningful change,
• Develop measures for effectively tracking the efforts and success of organizations such as religion, media, schools, employer, government in promoting the adoption of the critical.

Nondenominational Religious Values Advisory Group

A nondenominational religious values advisory group could be established to identify ways churches could more effectively help church members and others to adopt critical values.

Media Values Advisory Group

Media values advisory groups (e.g., press, T.V. movie) could be established to plan and monitor efforts to change poor media practices (viz-a-viz values) and to embellish efforts to successfully promote the adoption of critical values.

Education Values Advisory Group

Different education or school (e.g., elementary, secondary, college and university) advisory groups could be established to plan and monitor efforts to significantly change values.

Employers Values Advisory Group

Different employer values advisory groups (by industry or even employer) advisory groups could be established to plan and monitor efforts to significantly promote the adoption of the critical values.

Community

Community values advisory groups could be established. Additionally, communities need to help citizenship to most effectively get involved in and help the community. Government

Advisory groups of government agencies could be established. The Department of Justice and the Department of Education are two agencies where identifying and promoting critical values are particularly important. In addition, the Department of Justice needs to work to:

• Increase the accuracy and quality, while significantly reducing the cycle time and costs, reducing the cycle time and costs, of legal proceedings,
• Significantly increase the effectiveness of punishments.

Stricter Penalties, Truth in Sentencing

All of the data has led to public calls for truth-in-sentencing laws (requiring criminals to serve a significant percentage of their sentences without a chance of parole) and "three strikes, you're out" laws (requiring life in prison for repeat offenders convicted of their third violent felony). Evidence suggests that there is a strong correlation between increased incarceration and deceased crime rates: from 1990 to 1991, states with the greatest increases in criminal incarceration rates experienced, on average, a 12.7 percent decrease in crime, while the ten states with the weakest incarceration rates experienced an average 6.9 percent increase in crime.