Teacher, he lies!

"Teacher he lies!"
I hear this phrase quite often during the course of the day. More correctly, the phrase should be "Teacher he/she is lying!" This is a common lament among my students. Our school has children aged from four to seven years old (five to eight years old by Korean age measurement). Most of the time, I hear this complaint in a vacuum. It is the end result of a conversation that I have not heard. So usually, I need to inquire from the two parties involved the nature of the dispute and the reason for the accusation. Due to the language barrier between myself and my students this is not always an easy task. In addition to that, kindergarten age children are very myopic and they are usually only able to relate their side of the story, which is of course extremely biased.

However, on some occasions, I am privy to the conversation which leads up to the dispute. This is was the case on Thursday morning. I heard two of the boys talking about a bee. The first boy (I'll call him Jack) claimed to have seen a bee in the garden (we were outside in courtyard watering plants). The second boy (I'll call him James)  felt that Jack was not using the correct English word or he may have felt that it was being pronounced incorrectly.  As we all returned to our chairs in the classroom, we brought the dispute before the class and clarified exactly what it was Jack was talking about.

At this point, I had to gently explain to James (and to the class) that although Jack may have been mistaken, he was not in fact lying by defending his use of the word.

I have run into this situation before.
Now, we could say that the students lack the refinement of language to claim that someone is is mistaken or that they are being obstinate. But I think this accusation goes deeper than that. It would seem that in the mind of a child, someone who disagrees with them is violating their version of the truth. In other words, If James' view of events is true and Jack is disagreeing, he must be "lying". I have tried to explain the difference between "being in error" or simply "disagreeing" and "lying" to the children on many occasions and yet the accusations continue to fly.

Think about it though. We live in a deeply divided country (U.S.A). Congress is deeply divided. The electorate is deeply divided. We have taken our sides on social issues and political ones. There does not seem to be any room for compromise in our country anymore. The people we disagree with are "liars". They have violated the truth. We demonize others for being on the wrong side of the issues.

It is very easy to see this process in a child; they are very transparent. But do we recognize this process in ourselves? Before we question someone's integrity, perhaps we should examine our version of the "truth".