Should I Lie to Children?
I'm a 6th grade Social Studies teacher. The topic of religion as a part of culture comes up all the time. Today during a discussion of Greek myths, a student (a 12 year-old girl with a sweet smile) asked me if I believed in god. I paused and said, "Well, sure."
I felt that I was having a discussion with a child about Santa or the Easter Bunny. I didn't want to be the one to tell the child that all the adults in her life have been lying to her.
This has been bothering me all day. When this comes up again - I'm sure it will - should I lie as I did today, or should I tell the truth?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Strong on -
It isn't.
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Permalink Reply by Alberto Pineda on -
If a child inquires about your personal beliefs, you should take the secular route and choose not to discuss such matters in school. Children at this age are frankly too immature to handle what is candid; a child needs something to believe in. The inquiry of existence is not within a child's mental capacity, and should thus remain out of the child's psyche.
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Permalink Reply by Alberto Pineda on
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I was in sixth grade about four years ago; I still vividly recall how I thought and how I acted. I can honestly say that I was too immature to handle the truth and that tender age.
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Permalink Reply by Mike Mooney on -
Totally agree. One of things that most upsets me is when I see "Christian pre-schools", etc. - filling young minds with nonsense and INSISTING that it is the truth.
It's what made me an atheist at age 12 - the sudden realisation of how much I'd been lied too when I wasn't old enough to be able to sort the truth from the crap.
And that's in secular Britain. God only knows ;-) how I'd feel if I had to live in some of the more God-deranged states of the U.S. I think I'd explode.
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Permalink Reply by Eoganacht on -
I would say that a child does not need to believe in something. A child does not need santa to be happy or to be normal. And could you please explain what you mean by "The inquiry of existence is not within a child's mental capacity, and should thus remain out of the child's psyche.". I would have thought that even a child could comprehend existance.
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Permalink Reply by Alberto Pineda on
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To word it quite bluntly, kids are stupid. That being said, they should not concern themselves with how the world came about.
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Permalink Reply by Becca on -
Kids are not stupid. They are only limited by their biology and the experiences they've had. Almost every kid I have worked with (and please mind you I have worked with hundreds of 3 to 6 year old children) has at one point or another inquired about life, death, god and how the world came about. 'Should or should not' doesn't even work into the equation the fact is that many children if not most of them do concern themselves with life, death, god and how the world cam about.
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Permalink Reply by Danny Sanchez on -
you are just wrong kids are smart and their ability to learn is probably 1000 times greater than yours
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Permalink Reply by IEatDinosaurMeat on -
Lying hurts trust. It's not good to lie to a child especially when you're teaching them. The question was 'out of bounds' and the child needs to know that you are the master of the boundaries. The context of the question is somewhat unclear. What do you think was the motive behind the question?
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Permalink Reply by Mike Mooney on
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To be fair, few of the parents are lying to their kids as such - they are telling them what THEY believe to be the truth (absurd though it may be).
Only if the parents were "closet atheists" and still filled the kids' heads with religious mumbo-jumbo would they truly be lying.
It's telling that this is still an issue in the US. I'm quite sure that no teacher in a British (secular) school would have any problem at all admitting that they were an atheist.
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Permalink Reply by Bailey McNulty on -
That's really tough. You might want to take my advice with a grain of salt since I'm only a teenager however usually teachers in my grade schools and jr. highs just changed the subject when a topic came up that they weren't comfortable with. If the student asks repeatedly they would usually answer the question and move on without elaborating. That's what I would suggest.
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