Ask a Teacher: I Just Discovered My Husband Lies to His Students

[minoanmiss]

My partner is a middle school teacher known for establishing a rapport with “difficult” students and advocating for BIPOC and LGBTQ kids. When he answered a call from a parent one evening, I overheard him talking about his sister. I confronted him about this after he got off the phone, because he does not actually have a sister. He told me that he tells stories about imaginary siblings, cousins, and other family members to connect with his students. I told him this was bizarre, probably unethical, and that I wouldn’t participate in these lies if asked a direct question by one of his students or fellow teachers. I think the lies put his entire career at risk, but he says they’re harmless and unlikely to be discovered. (He’s not on social media, which helps, but students have looked up our home address online and could easily find information on his relatives.) What’s your take on this? I’m not in education, but I find the whole situation baffling and don’t know what to do.


—Would You Lie to Them, Honey?
Whether or not your partner’s behavior is unethical is an interesting question; I suppose the answer lies in how important the truth is to you. Your letter reminds me of a strategy my friend, who is an attorney, used for many years. He was fond of using this quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes in his closing arguments: “The law is man’s feeble attempt to be fair.” Juries found this aphorism very persuasive, but Oliver Wendell Holmes never actually said it! My friend doesn’t remember where he heard the expression (I think it may be paraphrased from Bonfire of the Vanities)—but assigning it to Holmes lent the message authority, and juries therefore responded to it. Likewise, your partner probably believes his stories about imaginary relatives convey a “truth” that resonates more than an anecdote about a friend, colleague, or hypothetical person could. Is it honest? No. Will it jeopardize his career? I doubt it. If I were a principal, and a student or parent complained that a teacher was sharing stories about fake family members, I’d probably shrug and continue working on the school budget. Maybe I’d have a conversation with the teacher, but I wouldn’t consider it a fireable offense.

That said, his credibility with his students is another story. If his students discover that your partner’s stories are not real, your partner might lose the credibility and trust he’s worked hard to establish. “Difficult” students are often “difficult” because of trauma induced by the adults in their lives, which makes it harder for them to put their faith in teachers. More generally, middle schoolers entering adolescence naturally become increasingly skeptical of adults. Educators admonish kids to be honest, and so students may view your partner’s fibs as evidence of hypocrisy.

I don’t think you have to do anything at all but let your partner decide whether he should continue to tell tales about imaginary sisters. Of course, you are under no obligation to affirm his stories if you do meet a student or colleague who asks about them. They are his fibs, so he alone is responsible for any fallout.

—Ms. Holbrook (high school teacher, Texas)

Comments

[likeaduck]

I'm aghast. If it matters enough that he feels like he has to lie about it to build trust, it matters that he's lying about it and it's a breach of that trust. What would that look like for a kid putting trust in a teacher based on the teacher exposing a shared experience, investment, vulnerability, and then finding out that was a lie? That's heartbreaking.

[likeaduck]

Also that answer sucks! If whether it's unethical depends on how important the truth is to the people involved, and the people (middle schoolers, "difficult" students) are in a position where for various reasons, the truth is especially important to them, doesn't that tell us that in this case it's really unethical? Way to prove to your students that adults are untrustworthy and don't see young people as full human beings deserving of honesty, dude.

[cereta]

Yyyeah. I don't know if that behavior would be enough even for a verbal warning at my school, if only because there's no specific rule it breaks, but one of our core values is honesty, and I don't think admin would be particularly pleased about it.

But I do agree - and was thinking before I even read the answer - that the issue of not just credibility, but trust with the students is more the issue than whether or not he could get in trouble. He's working with kids who have very, very good reason not to trust adults individually and societal systems in general. These kids are vulnerable in ways that go way beyond just being middle schoolers. I'd be pretty upset if my kid came home to tell me a teacher had systematically lied, even about things outside the curriculum. I don't know what I'd do about it. My kid has a spectacularly shitty teacher right now who I think is teaching really toxic things (fortunately, the Teenager is having none of it), but at my kid's request, I'm not saying anything to admin until she graduates this year. But I've seen, from both sides, what it's like when a teacher not only loses trust, but becomes an object of scorn, and it's not pretty.

[xenacryst]

Yeah. Neither impressed with the teacher, nor the response.

Ok, let's put it this way. If I were a "difficult" student, I'd probably already know all the ins and outs of how to work the system and make life hard for adults. If I were such a student identified with a marginalized group and I found out that my advocate was in the habit of making up stories, I would be livid, disgusted, and betrayed, and I would use all my ill-gained knowledge of the system to make life hell for that person and anyone who supported them. And I would make sure my friends also knew, and then circle the wagons and become even more "difficult." This teacher is playing with matches underneath the kindling of his career, and the resulting bonfire is likely to get several people burned.

[melannen]

I think it's not necessarily unethical to be a bit vague or even slightly mendacious about the source of personal stories, especially in a professional setting where people may not be entitled to know the exact relationships you have out of work (Sorry, DW, you have been "my good friends from out of state" for years! And I don't, for example, think there's anything wrong at all about telling about a true thing that happened to a person who you are totally cousins with.)

But when it's a situation of systematically lying about things that don't put you at any risk, while deliberately trying to establish trust and closeness with someone you are in a position of power over, in order to gain more power over them? That's really fucked up. Don't do that.

This is actually the kind of behavior that's often a coping strategy of "difficult" kids, and other people who have been relatively powerless - they have had no success with honesty getting them anywhere with authority figures, so they've learned to say whatever gets them what they need, instead. But your partner's students aren't in a position of authority over him; and if he's conceptualizing them that way, it's a big problem.

I don't know that lying on this level would jeopardize his career per se, but if he's building his career on a reputation for being close to vulnerable kids, the fact that he's using dishonesty and manipulation to do it could absolutely come back to bite him hard in terms of professional reputation.

Also, "using cynical manipulation tactics in order to gain a position of trust with vulnerable children" is setting off *all* my warning bells, LW. Maybe he's not doing anything else unethical with them once the trust is established. But it sure does make me wonder.

[cereta]

The only thing about the "totally cousins" thing is that I get that a lot from students, as in they totally know someone who's been on "welfare" for 20 years because they keep having kids, and they have a friend who's a cashier who sees people used food stamps to buy cigarettes and booze, and you get the idea. I am constantly telling them no, they need to look up {$Actual Law} or {$Actual Event}, because fairly often, what their "cousin" knows is not so much a fact as made up bullshit. And it drives me absolutely nuts when someone clings to "what they heard" about, say, the McDonald's coffee lawsuit despite actual factual evidence.

Not saying all "totally cousins" stories are like that, but I try to keep that sort of support for an argument to a minimum. That said, that's sort of specifically my job, so used vary.

[melannen]

Oh, I was using "totally cousins" in the Achilles and Patroclus sense there, not the "somebody microwaved a poodle" once sense, I was trying too be too clever, sorry! I meant I would never object to someone saying their "sister" did something when it was really their wife if saying wife might get them fired.

I think the situation you're describing is kind of a lost cause as an ethical question. That's just a human thing humans do that is part of how humans communicate and process memory. Most of the time people who do it think they're being truthful. (Like. Obviously correct misinformation when you can, and try to get people to think through why *that* is the story they tell - so much kudos to people who do it as a job! We can change what the stories that spread that way *are*. But the mechanism is fundamental primate social behavior.)

Also still different from deliberately lying to people under your power to bring them further under your power.

[lemonsharks]

an oldie but still a weirdy

[vindoletta]

Also, "using cynical manipulation tactics in order to gain a position of trust with vulnerable children" is setting off *all* my warning bells, LW. Maybe he's not doing anything else unethical with them once the trust is established. But it sure does make me wonder.

I was going to comment on this. He might just enjoy being seen as that approachable and understanding guy by the kids, but that might also be a first step towards something worse like abuse.

[lavendertook]

Appropriating the lives of others as if they are his own family instead of saying, "there’s this guy I know who" because he feels he gains status by making it his family. Typical white male cis het able bodied guy tactic of shoring up his position of power. The fake ally. Dangerous for these BIPOC and LGBTIQ kids--what is he telling them? How is he misleading them because he knows jack shit about the world? How is he using their stories for his big book sale or pod cast--whose lives is he stealing for his gain? Because he doesn’t actually have BIPOC and LGBTIQ friends because he hasn’t taken the time to interact with any. She should be worried. He doesn’t respect other people’s most intimate boundaries, especially of those most vulnerable, and he’ll take whatever he can use. Does she really want to live with this liar?

[ioplokon]

LoL the monseigneur at my church growing up was NOTORIOUS for this except he also would source his homilies and stories from like. Chain emails? So everyone saw through it & it became a total joke. So I guess that is the consequence if you get caught: everyone laughs at you and no one trusts you (and probably the people you tricked feel shitty)