Student Lies

Student lies are nothing new. We’ve all been students at some point, and we all remember telling one or two fibs. My dog ate my homework. My printer ran out of ink. My alarm didn’t go off. Most lies told by students are designed to cover up basic laziness and procrastination. The general rule of thumb here is that you can use one or two of these per teacher, per semester, no questions asked.

However, some unfortunate souls slip into chronic dependence on these lame excuses. I call these students “slackers”. They know it, I know it, and usually their parents know it too. As their excuses re-run and become increasingly shameful (I had diarrhea and could not leave the house) or lacking in integrity (My grandmother died) their marks correspondingly decline. Inevitably, these chronic liars end up feeling overwhelmed and incapable of catching up. That leaves them only two choices: slink off quietly into absenteeism and failure, or come up with A Whopper to save the day.

I have on occasion, I must confess, been able to sit back in my classroom chair and look up in admiration at a wide eyed and brilliant young slacker who has come to me with A Whopper of such imaginative proportions that I have had no choice but to give them a pass and suggest post-secondary education in the field of drama, creative writing, or law. (One such story involved a TTC bus, a SWAT team, a Tim Horton’s coffee and a blind Rottweiler. Enough said!)

There is, sad to say, a darker side to student deception. It usually takes the form of plagiarism and is the direct result of despair. Typically, these liars have realized they are completely out of their depths and they have no idea how to demonstrate an acceptable level of achievement in the course. In fact these students are usually so lost and confused that they turn in work that is so obviously not theirs that getting caught is inevitable. And that brings us to the darkest kind of student dishonesty: denial.

Again, there is a direct correlation between the level of denial and the student’s achievement. The lower the achievement, the more indignant the denial. Present a low achieving cheater with an exact copy of their essay from the internet dated 1972, and you will see as grand a performance of outrage and indignation as if you had made some comment questioning their paternity or their mother’s virtue. I suspect that in these moments, the student succumbs to their own performance and sincerely begins to believe they are telling the truth! Now convinced themselves of their own veracity, they go to Vice Principals and Parents with tales of such teacher unfairness that they are unable to hold back the tears. Guidance Counselors are brought in. Special Education teachers are consulted. And finally it is concluded that the poor misguided young person had no idea that this kind of “borrowing” from another source is not allowed. The teacher failed to make this clear to the student beforehand and thus the teacher is deemed at fault.

Homework
Think about this:
Why do some students end up feeling so desperate that they are driven to cheating?
Why are so many parents unwilling to believe the teacher’s professional judgment?
Why do so many teachers stop expecting honesty and real achievement?