Lesson 3-34 "Avoiding Dishonesty"

Why is this lesson title a double negative, instead of "Being Honest"?

This one is so straightforward that I hope I'll have enough to talk about (usually not a problem). Lying, cheating, dishonesty = bad, sad. Truth = good, happy. Is there more to say here? My brain is so fried from my first week of teaching a full-time college courseload that I am not coming up with anything creative to turn this lesson from a ho-hum binary, either/or, into something that they will feel was worth coming to church for. (See? I'm even ending a sentence with a preposition).

Small children experiment with lying, storytelling, the process of narrativizing, and exploring what truth means. It's part of the process of maturing for kids to come to an understanding about what honesty means, and it's part of the parenting and mentoring process to help them get there sensitively and recognizing their varying levels of maturity. We desire and need honesty from our health care providers, our political leaders, and our friends. And then there's the subject of "radical honesty," in which you're supposed to say exactly what you think without regard for whether it's tactful or kind. That seems like it might have some potential for harming relationships, despite what its guru, Brad Blanton, claims. I guess dishonesty and tact are different enough to recognize in everyday practice, but the line between them might be fuzzy now and then.

Maybe one angle I'll take is the new policy my college has just issued on academic honesty; perhaps I'll introduce that as a opening wedge for the conversation. (You can find one in just about any college's student handbook). Students, I was told at faculty orientation, might not even realize when they've crossed the line into plagiarizing the work of others - by, say, paraphrasing without citing, or restating a quote too closely. The session leader pointed out that "kids these days" do musical sampling all the time, and might not understand that there is no equivalent to "sampling & mixing" in doing academic or scientific research. She also noted that at our college, as in most (all?) others, many students do know when they're plagiarizing for a paper and that they are getting more creative and more bold about it. That's why services like "Turnitin" are more popular in high schools and colleges, where students have to upload their papers to a central "database" of material to prevent identical papers from being submitted as independent work.

With such policies and procedures, "avoiding dishonesty" is an external motivation. What we hope for in ourselves and in our teens is an internal compass that makes these external structures unnecessary or redundant.

Update: As often happens, the week I am going to teach a lesson presents me with some real-life episodes that I may end up using in one way or other.

In the comments late last week, I mentioned that I was thinking about how to best obtain a textbook for a student who was having trouble paying for it, without injuring her dignity or starting a bad precedent. I thought perhaps I could say there was some book fund. Rachel gave me some good advice and said the truth was going to be my best policy. She was absolutely right. When I talked to the student after class on Monday I just came out and said I'd like to buy the book for her. I cannot describe the size and wattage of the grin on her face. We went down to the bookstore together. Afterwards she told me that she had spent the morning crying and praying for a way that she could purchase the book. So that was the right thing to do. I knew that, I guess I just needed a nudge in the right direction. Thanks, Rachel.

Then yesterday, I caught a radio interview with Lee Israel, a writer in New York who made a career out of forging correspondence from deceased famous writers and selling them to dealers. Her excuses were completely pathetic ("I had to, I didn't have any income") and, sadly, the interviewer (Day to Day's Madeleine Brand) got the tone of the interview all wrong and fawned over her guest as if what Israel did was some great and laudable accomplishment. Link to the interview here. I might even use it in class, both as an example of how low someone might stoop while KNOWING they're being dishonest, but also as an example of how accepted & even celebrated this kind of dishonesty is in today's society. Day to Day got an earful email from me this morning.