It's difficult to teach "life" skills at school.
RE is one avenue, unfortunately it's rarely used properly ie; to enlighten rather than disappear into obscurity, like Millay said.
The reason things like this are becoming more important, is because parents increasingly see school as a glorified baby sitter all through a child's education, instead of a complimentary service to their own home teaching efforts.
Some parents don't even bother to talk to their kids (i see this first hand, running a youth group), a video and a plate of oven chips is a routine for many, sadly
.
School has become not only a dumping ground academically, but morally (ethically) and socially too.
Kids
are getting worse, but the spiral began long ago, because (a generalisation obviously) bad parents, breed bad kids and therefore increasingly poor future parents.
Questions like.. "
will things ever get better?" and "
do people actually know the difference between right and wrong?" are a whole debate apart.
(partially directed at the "youth" thread, couldn't find a way to split the points up)