"Golden Rule" Education

I just saw a story on the Star Tribune (http://www.startribune.com) website about Minnesota appropriating funds for “Golden Rule” education.

As it says in the article, not much money is devoted to this concept -- only about 1.5 million. What makes me disturbed is that they felt that it was necessary at all.

A few basics – don’t lie, don’t cheat, be on time, etc – common courtesy items as well as basic societal values. What’s going on out there with child rearing that makes it necessary for public schools to teach this simple concept to kids? It’s really just a sad state of affairs.