While Congress ponders a bill to "enforce" integrity, a group of Provo schoolchildren already has concluded that integrity does not come from a piece of paper but from the heart.
America's Freedom Festival at Provo chose integrity as the theme for its annual essay contest. Event chairman Jess Bushman said hundreds of children participated this year.Five first-place winners were honored by Mayor Joe Jenkins and members of the festival committee at a press conference recently. Jenkins told each of the winners how proud he is of their insight into such an important moral characteristic.
"I read all of your essays, and they were excellent, excellent essays," he said.
Winners were:
- Renata Skousen, 8-year-old daughter of Diana Skousen, first- through third-graders.
- Anna Mayela Jensen, 10, daughter of Kent and Emilia Jensen, grades four eight.
- Christine Call, 15, daughter of Darrell and Phyllis Call, grades nine and 10.
- Kate Holbrook, 17-year-old daughter of Kathleen S. Holbrook, grades 11 and 12.
Renata Skousen, Provost Elementary School, wrote: "Some people don't have integrity and some people do. You have to be: 1. Honest. 2. Fair. 3. Trust. 4. Truthful. I want a land of people who have integrity. To have integrity is important to me because integrity means to be nice, be good and kind to people."
Kate Holbrook wrote: "The biggest trial our nation is going to face is the declining morality of society . . . (which) is directly proportional to the effectiveness of our government. If the people who vote do not display basic integrity, neither will those they elect. If those they elect do not have integrity, they will work for personal gain and not for the good of the country."
Tannin Fuja wrote that integrity "is that character trait which does not allow man (or mouse) to set his honor, his honesty or his moral values on the shelf and take them down only when it is convenient or in his best immediate interest. Integrity, though, is a driving force to maintain a constant use of one's moral code minute by minute, day by day, forever."
"For there to be integrity in the government there must be integrity in the people," Christine Call said. "How do we maintain the integrity of the people in America? We must start in the home and at school. Then these people must become involved in the activities of their country."
Anna Jensen told a story of a girl named Sherry who had guilt feelings from cheating on a test at school. Sherry realized that she must tell her parents and schoolteacher what happened. Although Sherry still had to receive a punishment for what she did, she felt better inside for telling the truth and showing she wanted to have integrity.
What began as a school writing assignment for most of the winners, ended up as a very rewarding project. Each first-place winner received $100.