A Survey of Students’ Concepts Concerning Lost and Found Property

Abstract

To live together well is a social problem. It involves ethical principles, law procedures, citizenship training, religious doctrines, and educational guidance. Most persons accept the assumption that certain rights of others must be respected. Paying debts, keeping one's word, adopting safety regula tions, avoiding trespassing, refraining from slander, doing no bodily injury, and respecting property rights are among those social acts which individuals expect others to respect. These acts involve certain fundamental legal knowledges, socially accepted right attitudes, and approved overt behavior. Besides the governmental sanction of the individual right to hold prop erty, present moral sanction is given to the principle that it is dishonorable either to take or to fail to return property. Our society holds that the act of stealing and the failure to aid owners to obtain lost property marks the individual as a type of unsocial being who has not learned to live together well with his fellow men.