Inspiration for Lying

     At the end of January, I was reading an article at ZenMoments.org called “My Favorite Liar”. To quickly summarize the article, a college professor spent 10 weeks lying to his students. He would lie to them once a day about something related to the content the class was learning. After reading this article I was inspired to turn over a new leaf and give up my job as content expert, in History, to become a compulsive liar. Before starting my new professional life as an educational deceiver I felt I had to make some decisions about how to approach lying.


1. What types of things would I lie about? Would the lies be about content, assessments, etc.? Frequency of lying?

2. Is there anything considered so scared to students were lying wouldn’t be appropriate?

3. When do I start?

     First, I decided I would follow the one approach of the professor in the article and have the “lie of the day”. Unlike the professor in the article I don’t want the lie to be just a verbal lie but a trail of lies and even deceptions to keep my students thinking and wondering, “Is this true? He is lying? Is all what it appears to be?” Next would anything be sacred, and to this question I answered “yes!” I decided tests and offering clarification/guidance on projects would be areas where I would not lie to my students. Since, projects and tests cause a great deal of stress/anxiety in some students and I didn’t want to deepen or create test anxiety in my students. Secondly, to purposely steer a student in a wrong direction on a project is unethical, plain and simple. Lastly, I started on day one of the new semester. In my introduction to the class, I told them what I typically tell a class, how long I’ve been teaching, college, kids, favorite music, etc… but this year I decided to add the statement “… and I AM A LIAR!” With this statement, I got some chuckles and laughs of course; I began to live a “life of lies” (educationally speaking)!

Next Post: "Let the Deception Begin"