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Lying in School
How schools encourage students to tell lies.by Geeksta
You might have heard people complain about how "young people never tell the truth." It is probably true. I sometimes catch myself lying even where it would be better to be honest. Why? I think that should be obvious to anyone involved in the school system today: Schools encourage lying! Not officially, but the policies they implement have the same effect.
The most significant thing is that there is no drawback to getting caught. You get told not to lie again, get the punishment you'd have gotten anyway, and then in a day or two all the teachers forget. It never happened. If you pull it off, then you just gained everything. No punishment, no problem. If you've got caught lying enough times, it doesn't matter if you tell the truth, because no one believes you anyway.
Now add to this that the punishments are way out of proportion to the offence. Forgot your homework for the first time? Detention! Leave class five minutes early? Detention! Get in a fight? You are under arrest! Now, given that at lots of schools there are plenty of ways to avoid supervision for those who know how, and that most students use it, it is often a my word versus yours situation.
In this situation, a my word versus yours situation with no punishments for lying, only a crazy person word choose to tell the truth if it incriminates them in any way. And once you've been at this for several years, it becomes second nature to lie about anything that could incriminate you. Thus, young people never tell the truth because it is dangerous. The truth may set you free, but a well done lie lets you escape the hell called detention.
Written by: Geeksta
8 April 2011
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