Going out With a Lie

What is the truth? It's near the end of the semester and once again I see students who leave the lab with a lie rather than a grade. As the final deadlines near, students who: slept in class, surfed the net, shortcut or skipped the tutorials, and rushed into multiple attempts guessing mastery test questions, begin to see the consequences of their choices looming. They then begin to exhibit elaborate rationalizing behavior.

Girls who have 100% attendance begin to talk about child care conflicts, sick babies, or suddenly uncooperative parent or grandparent babysitters. These comments increase in frequency as it becomes more obvious they cannot pass the class. Coming down to the wire they are absent, perhaps even missing a final exam worth the points needed to pass.

People who have insisted on absolute independence throughout the semester, suddenly cannot do anything without a teacher at their elbow, approving their every choice, suggesting possible answers--a mental/emotional equivalent of guiding their hand as they write. This behavior is most often followed by comments or gestures suggesting they are not being helped if the teacher is not at their side immediately or does not have a ready list of suggested answers for each question.

Possibly the worst behavior, at least most disturbing to the learning environment, is the student who begins to push his behavior boundaries, possibly even pushing the "teacher's buttons" to create conflict in class. Students are very adept at detecting what behavior they can exhibit that will draw the teacher towards his own worse behavior.

Without conscious intent, these students build reasons, rationalizations, to which they ascribe their academic failure. I'm not sure whether they truly believe these constructs themselves, or whether they perceive the lie while they avoid it.

I still believe the real apocalyptic battleground of this age is within our individual hearts. If it is so easy, if it is perhaps an innate ability, to construct rationalizations to avert responsibility of and consequences for our own behavior, then the battlefield of the heart is lost. The defeat we avoid facing is "not our fault, beyond our control," and we secretly claim a kind of victory, but the victory is a lie. While we believe the lie, we are lost to the truth, defeated utterly, and a path back to the truth is less possible.