Relentless pressure gently applied is a better way to ensure behavioural compliance than a singular and direct request.
Kids across the ages have known this too well and manipulated their parents with it. They’re well aware that the first request for an ice-cream will likely result in a “No,” but that the 37th request is roughly when their resolve breaks.
As a result, you can tell a student to tell the truth and it’ll have close to no effect. You could also make Truth or perhaps Honesty a school value that you emblazon on murals and speak to at assemblies.
It’ll change very little of their tendency to be truthful or honest when they fall short behaviourally. This is especially the case if your school runs a judicial approach to wrongdoing, where lengthy investigations are seen as crucial in determining blame ratios upon which penalties are determined.
Such systems teach students to lie by rewarding their skill with it. The most common reason for any person lying is to mitigate their likelihood of a negative outcome… by any means. Practice makes perfect and kids repeatedly exposed to judicially inspired systems learn to lie more effectively and creatively over time.
You can truly mean it when you tell a student that, ‘Telling the truth is always the best policy,’ but the end-game of your system speaks to them far more loudly.
This is largely why I developed our restoratively inspired RP2.0 methodology. It changes the system’s end-game to one where students are routinely thanked/congratulated by authority figures for taking personal responsibility.
If that’s the end-game, students tend to rush to that outcome rather than lengthen the investigation to include more of their increasingly effective bush lawyerism.
For students, we can then foster the habit of self-reporting, even as perpetrators. For teachers, that system allows you to take the detective hat off and save some much-needed time.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. Last week I joined Dr Justin Coulson on his Happy Families podcast and talked about what’s really going on in our classrooms, how parents can support teachers and schools, and why it’s so important to create a diverse environment in our schools where all children can come together to learn.
Thought you might like to take a listen here.
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