Being Creative with the Truth

#UKEdChat session 482 – Research says that the average person lies 300 times a day… OK, I made that up!

Truth seems to have been under attack in recent times, with opinions and outright fraud being presented as indisputable objective facts and reality. Whether this the beginning of a post-truth era or a short-term fib-fest where the truth will prevail remains to be seen, but how does this impact on the adage often espoused by teachers that honesty is the best policy? Should we switch our moral interpretation of The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’ from ‘it was wrong’ to lie, to ‘it was wrong to tell the same lie over and over again so people stopped listening’?

Indeed, can lying be a force for good in education? At parents’ evening should we be brutally honest about Little Johnny being a total… darling, or should we moderate our comments so parents are more likely to work with us, rather than against us in solving the issues?

Can teachers be creative with the truth to provide unique learning opportunities for the pupils they teach?

In this #UKEdChat discussion, we discussed an eclectic range of ways fibs are found in education… or will we?!

Questions

Are there circumstances when teachers should withhold the truth from their pupils?
In this post-truth world, should we still teach our children that ‘honesty is the best policy’?
How can we teach about truth and lies with young children?
How can we teach about truth and lies with older children?
How do you unravel conflicting accounts in behaviour management?
How can imagining different realities be used as a teaching strategy?
In what situations are teachers sometimes ‘economic’ with the truth?
What are the best pupil fibs, or at least excuses, for not completing tasks, such as homework?

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