The Policy of Truth

All summer here in our Teacher Corps training, we have been exposed to a number of experienced teachers who take the notion of lying to their students quite lightly. Sometimes, such as today, lying has been recommended to us as a way to avoid unwanted attention. What’s more, our assistant instructor has routinely entertained us this summer with the “harmless” stories (lies) he used to tell his students. Now I have absolutely no doubt that Jaws is an excellent teacher. He may be a better teacher than I will ever be—who knows? And his students probably enjoyed the tall tales he would tell them.

But I abhor inconsistency. I prefer actions to be governed by principles, and the more concise and consistent those principles can be, the better. Now, my position of absolute honesty is a peculiar view to say the least, one not necessarily shared by many others. I realize that. But my tolerance has been exceeded. I have heard so many teachers, good teachers, advocate dishonesty so many times this summer, and have disagreed on some vague, unspoken level, so many times that finally I have to take issue, realizing almost no one else besides me probably even cares.

When at first I look inward to justify my stance, I recall intensely personal affirmations that have come from my closest acquaintances. I believe that on one-to-one terms, my honesty, my integrity, while not necessarily recognized at first glance, eventually becomes more and more evident and increasingly valued by my friends as the relationship matures. In that sense, I think of honesty as an investment. Often it is easier, in the short-term, to be a little bit less than honest. Maybe you just want to smooth things over, for yourself or for others. You take the easy way out, or maybe you just want to protect someone’s feelings. Whatever the case, the truth eventually comes out, given enough time. You hear the snickers. You see the tell-tale signs. You hear it from so-and-so’s friend what she was really thinking all that time. Remember how much more you resent finding it out like that? And how do you respect the person who hid the truth from you? Dishonesty, no matter how small, once uncovered erodes trust, and trust is a fundamental element of intimacy, not to mention respect.

Even in humor, dishonesty can be risky. I remember one time in college, I had a poetry writing class with a girl I considered attractive. I had come to have a mild crush on her, felt a sort of kinship even, because I admired her writing. Frankly, she was one of the best writers in the class. (Well, besides me of course, hah, hah!) Well one evening, she and I happened to be in a computer lab at the same time. She was hanging out with a friend at a station near me, when she made some playful comments, addressed to her friend and supposedly out my earshot, about me being cute and her liking me. Well perhaps I should have known better, but I believed her. I wanted her words to be true, and so I gathered up all my courage, and I called her a few days later to tell her I liked her too, and what do you say we go out some time. Well imagine both of our embarrassment when she had to tell me, Oh, I’m sorry, I was just kidding! Certainly she meant no harm. She completely expected I would “get it,” right? But for whatever reason, I didn’t get it. And in the end, both of us felt bad about it. Was it worth it? On a similar note, a couple veteran teachers have warned us that our students probably will not understand irony if we reply with sarcasm in class.

On a more abstract, general level, I see honesty as a right, a basic human right each of us are entitled to as part of the dignity of being human. To feed misinformation is to taint someone’s perception of reality, whether physical, historical, or social. You never completely know where the ripples may end, how long your audience may go on believing your untruth and how much that could impair their judgment. To tell a lie is to steal, to impinge on an individual’s right to make their own judgment about what information is relevant and how to act upon it appropriately. At the extreme, dishonesty can even stunt an individual’s intellectual development, because no one can make rational judgments from faulty information. Every person has a right to make their own choices, and if they break laws they suffer the consequences, but if you misinform someone, you ill-equip them, you rob from them of the prerequisite knowledge, the raw materials if you will, necessary to make a choice in the first place.

Now obviously, some may argue, whether your students think you are married to Hulk Hogan or not is hardly a crime. On the surface, of course, they are right. No immediate harm will come of it. But remember as Teacher Corps we are among the few people of our particular demographics—racially, geographically, educationally, etc.—that many of our students may ever know so well. To a certain extent, we are representatives of a reality outside their everyday experience. What right then do we have to tease them with cartoonish depictions of how the other half lives? Essentially to do so is to take from them an opportunity to learn something valuable, a mini-social studies lesson, if you will, about someone whose personality and character every weekday morning is plain for them to see (and hopefully respect). Jaws writes about how his students refused to believe when he finally told them, quite truthfully, how he grew up in a lighthouse, without a TV. To me that seems sad. After so many “harmless” lies, his students were unable to learn something unique and valuable about their own teacher, something so far, far away from their immediate experience of the world. It could have been an interesting conversation for everyone, but instead it was just another tall tale, one of many apparently.

Furthermore, it is ethically vapid, without serious justification, to demand honesty from our students if we are not prepared to be honest ourselves. Do we expect situational honesty from our students, or absolute honesty? I for one expect absolute honesty from my students. It does not matter to me whether they are cheating for my test or another teacher’s test, it is wrong. Well then it is only fair that I reciprocate. Authority gives us the right to set reasonable and justified expectations and consequences, but it does not give us the right to hypocrisy, no matter how harmless it may seem. Arguably our position of authority carries a greater burden of honesty, because our audience, being younger, less educated, and less wise to world, is less capable of sorting out the truth than our peers would be.

There: I have laid out my principle and my arguments for upholding it. Obviously in particular, conflicting scenarios, the application of principles can become stickier. I mainly wish to change the basis of discussion from: What can you tell your kids to deceive them in funny ways that will also serve your own purposes, as a teacher? -to- In light of everything, do your legitimate interests as an authority figure but also as a vulnerable human being truly outweigh the risks of dishonesty, bearing in mind that the full price of dishonesty can be unforeseen?

Perhaps the answer sometimes is yes, go ahead and lie. If it makes you feel safer, maybe you do tell them you have a husband. But in my opinion, to do so wantonly and without thought or reflection, is irresponsible. Generally, a more attractive, straightforward alternative to inappropriate probing from students is simply to say that entire line of questioning is inappropriate. End of story. However, an exam-proctoring tactic I recently heard, and considered it pure genius by the way, involves an implicit deception: Mark the top of each test with a different color marker, red, green, blue, orange, etc., and then very carefully instruct each student to be sure they write down which color mark they have on their test—even though their papers are all exactly the same! I think I will probably use that trick this year, and that will be the closest I ever come to lying to my students. If they ask me where I live, I will probably tell them straight up. If they ask me how old I am, I tell them. I plan to answer all their appropriate questions at an appropriate time. I was thinking about having a regular sharing time at the beginning of class, just to take a couple minutes, only every now and then, when I ask a student to tell me something about themselves, and then in return they get to ask something about me. I want to know about them, and they want to know about me. Only fair.

But that’s just me. Every teacher is different. My personal strengths are clearly different from Jaws. I intend to be good at what I know, and honesty is one of those things.