A student lied to me today. Actually, this particular student lied to me, to one of my teaching assistants, and to themselves. In a last ditch effort to salvage their grade for a course they’ve obviously never attended or done work for, this student tried to lie. I’ve never understood this compulsion to lie. I mean, I guess I “kind of” get it, but in my soul it just doesn’t make sense to me. Today I’m going to talk about honesty and success.
Before my time as a graduate student/teacher I spent time working in a bank. As you may know, lying in a bank is considered a bad thing. Most of the students I teach will be working in one field or another where telling the truth, ultimately, is a good thing. Sure, there are incentives along the way for lying, but in the end lying just makes you untrustworthy. No one wants to employ someone untrustworthy. Also, only the most unethical employees want to work for a liar. This type of behavior is not a good thing.
So, when my students lie to me in order to get ahead they must, necessarily, be called out on their failures. Lying is not okay. It is not my job to catch you in a lie it is your job to tell the truth. Accept responsibility. Deal with the consequences of your actions (or, in this case, inactions) and get on with life by doing better next time.
Information has come out describing how the lie has pervaded education. Cheating on tests is up and with it dishonesty in business (a recession anyone?). School, apparently, needs to be the training ground for honesty in all aspects of life: personal, academic, professional, and all others. I never suspected that my students would be learning the importance of honesty in college. Don’t they teach this in high school? Grade school? At home?