When one of my students grows up to be a moral adult, I'm shocked. And inspired.

I worry about students — the ones in my classroom and the ones who used to be.

I worry that my colleagues and I have not adequately prepared them for a confusing and dangerous world of corruption and delusion, vindictiveness and brutality to go along with shrinking opportunities and increasingly unaffordable necessities.

I worry that we’ve allowed some kids to be too idealistic.

I worry even more that I might have encouraged them to be ethical!

A few weeks ago, I spoke to a former student who had resigned from her job as manager of a fast food franchise because the owners insisted on serving perishables that had been left outside in the sun for several days during renovations. She already had another job lined up at a department store. It was less money — minimum wage — but she had no regrets. She had been offered a better-paying position at a car dealership but turned it down because the friend who referred her revealed some of the dealership’s legal but deceptive business practices.

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What is wrong with this young woman?

And what was wrong with me and her other teachers? How did we let her end up this way, and how do we expect her to navigate a world that rewards corruption and marginalizes morality?

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Perhaps if she were affluent she could afford such folly, but this young woman comes from deep poverty and has been on her own for a long time, pretty much since she was 7 years old. That's when her mother was deported. After that, her father was in and out of her life, sometimes leaving her in the care of teenage brothers. She sometimes fainted in class from malnutrition, from eating only the food provided her in the school building.

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She had a B average in college before dropping out when her financial aid was cut off. That happened because she could not locate either of her parents to fill out and sign a Free Application for Federal Student Aid and provide a tax return, and the college’s financial aid department was either unable or unwilling to help her file an appeal. They didn’t even inform her that there was an appeal process.

How the hell did this young woman become a person of principle?

Was it my fault for bringing her sandwiches when I was her teacher and giving her gift cards for Subway and Burger King so she could eat on the weekends?

Did I give her the false impression that there’s a world of people who care?

Maybe she read too many books about courage and the exquisite power of the human spirit. One of my colleagues likes to assign literature of that sort. Perhaps it is her fault.

How can we teach moral reasoning?

I suppose there’s another way to look at this. I mean that if this young woman is not the exception — if we could raise and educate a generation of young people like her — who disdain cynicism and corruption, who care about others and have a passion for justice — they might actually transform the world into a place where honesty and ethics are not a vulnerability.

I know this might sound ridiculous. It is easy to believe that humanity is just wired to be fearful and selfish and perverse. But what if, by accident or design, we transcended all the fear and blindness?

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To be sure, there are other principled people — just nearly enough (of any age), I’m afraid. This was studied more than half a century ago by Harvard professor Lawrence Kohlberg and, though his work has been criticized, his theory that most people never advance past a moral reasoning based on the needs of themselves and their group seems confirmed by all the deep divisions in our society and our politics.

That is why religion has not been a reliable means by which to ensure moral reasoning. Yes, many of our most inspirational civil rights and human rights activists have been informed by their faith, but organized religion has too often been infected by dogma, intolerance and even bigotry. Meanwhile, degeneracy and scandal have undermined the credibility of those who used to be our moral exemplars.

Teachers, we must model morality

As the 2019-20 school year begins, I would like to propose — to fellow educators as well as parents and all other stakeholders (which is to say, everyone) — that we take it upon ourselves to develop the moral reasoning of our children.

Of course, the first order of business is to make schools moral institutions where all children are safe and valued, where conformity and obedience are replaced by mutual respect. Adults must all be exemplars of ethical reasoning. Arrogance and contempt are indulgences we ought not afford ourselves, at least not those of us accountable to children. Small-minded group-thinking has got to give way to imagination, empathy and compassion.

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I’m not talking about some myopic hypersensitive humorless political correctness. You don’t have to surrender critical reasoning for compassion. You don’t have to stop telling jokes. Maybe just imagine that anyone in the world might hear your joke and think about who would find it unfunny and why.

Teachers, let’s engage the moral reasoning of our students. Don’t tell them what to think. Teach them how to think. Challenge their assumptions about right and wrong — and everything else — and resist the temptation to replace their faulty logic with our own.

We must model honesty and integrity, though they might be rewarded far less than expediency and exploitation. If we all do it, then none of us has to feel foolish for trying. If teachers can organize and strike for better wages and working conditions, why not organize for a generation of moral thinkers?

Who knows? One day, perhaps, we won’t have to worry about what is going to happen to a young person who, somehow, despite poverty, abandonment and an indifferent world, has a strong moral code. Perhaps one day that will be a blessing, not a liability.

Larry Strauss, a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and the author of more than a dozen books, most recently "Students First and Other Lies" and, on audio, "Now's the Time" (narrated by Kim Fields). Follow him on Twitter: @LarryStrauss

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Back to school: Teachers, make your classrooms model morality