When Good Teachers Lie

By Cindy Reitzi

March 2003

Forget the conventional wisdom that teachers are role models whom students trust. Good teachers lie. Really. And they have good pedagogical reasons to do so. Like teaching critical thinking.
My friend, Bruce, now semi-retired, taught reading for more than 30 years to everyone from gifted students to students who never read a book until he got hold of them. He has met everyone from the enthusiastic to the totally apathetic when it comes to reading.

He is famous for getting kids to read and to think about what they’re reading. He also actively teaches critical thinking skills using logic puzzles, twisted syntax, and various other exercises. He’s what many consider to be a great teacher. And he lies to his students.

He once had a class that didn’t question anything. The students were good kids, but they passively accepted everything Bruce told them. And for Bruce, that meant they weren’t learning much. One day when they were reading and analyzing a short story, he decided he was tired of their intellectual passivity. So he started making things up. He fabricated characters in the story; he recalled events that never happened, and conflicts that didn’t exist. He got more and more outrageous until a timid voice finally suggested that the students and Bruce were probably reading different stories.

“Uh…Mr. Piddington? That didn’t happen in the story.”

“Thank you,” Bruce acknowledged, “finally!”

As it dawned on his class that their teacher had just (gasp) lied to them and that, knowing Mr. Piddington, he might just lie to them again in the future and that all the educational bedrock they had counted on with teachers up to this point (boring but truthful) was not on a foundation of granite but flaky shale, they started paying attention. And indeed throughout the year they began to view their teacher – and the information he gave them – suspiciously and with a critical eye. Bruce was known to give wrong answers on quizzes and in discussions (on purpose). And his students became smart enough to know that he was doing this to make them think and question.

While Bruce is a proficient liar, for sheer audacity there’s my friend Mike, a social studies teacher with a reputation for telling tall tales, exaggerating, and dramatizing the truth. He is of the mind that if you’re going to lie, make it a whopper. Everyone knows to take him with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, he once convinced many of his 9th graders (and this could work on 10th graders, too) that the world was black and white before 1960.

“We had some shades of violet and gray, but in general things were black and white. Things changed to color when there was a solar flare on the sun in 1960.”

“Aw, c’mon Mr. Sullivan…” a few skeptics began.

Being the good historian, Mike offered proof. “Well, look at old TV shows before 1960. What color were they? Black and white. Look at old photos in your history book or your family photos. Black and white.”

Being the Visual Culture Generation, most kids thought he had a point. Of course, not everyone was fooled. A few smiling co-conspirators looked around, saw that the fish were nibbling and kept their mouths shut to let the practical joke unravel. To further the conspiracy, Mike enlisted the help of other teachers.

“If you don’t believe me, ask your science teachers. They’ll tell you.”

And so they did. “Who told you that?” asked one science teacher.
“Sullivan.”

“Yup, that’s right. The Solar Flare of 1960. Everything changed to color back then. Yeah, it’s true. The world was black and white before that.”

There. Two conniving teachers had confirmed this lie so it must be true. (This is how propaganda works).

Some skeptics went home and asked their parents. The evil parents (after holding in their laughter) confirmed that, indeed, there had been a solar flare and probably whipped out the black and white pictures in the family album to further confuse their gullible children. (See, pictures don’t lie).

It took his students about two weeks to figure out that they’d been had. The betrayal was even more pronounced because the truth was easy to find. A friendly librarian could have easily proved that there was no such historical/scientific event as The Solar Flare of 1960 and sent the kids off with friendly advice not to believe everything Mr. Sullivan told them.

Once the betrayed students figured it out, they collectively decided “we’ll never believe anything you say again,” which was a good thing. After that, whenever Mike said anything history-related, they were immediately suspicious.

“I don’t believe you. Are you making that up?” Then they’d dive into their books and check the facts. And probably for the first time in the annals of social studies instruction, they actually read their history books.

Now, if we could just get them to be more skeptical about their textbooks…

Posted March 10, 2003