Am I Just Old-Fashioned?

Today I tutored a student working on an essay that included an anecdote that seemed just a little suspicious to me. The anecdote related details about a local organization's hiring practices that created a very negative image of that organization.

"Where did you get this story?" I asked the student, thinking perhaps, just perhaps, my suspicions were wrong and the student would tell me that her anecdote described the experience of a friend. However, the student said, "Well, I didn't have any support for this part of my essay, and my teacher told me that I could make something up."

Just make something up. Don't take writing seriously; don't take reasoning seriously. This student is being taught that what she writes isn't important, that evidence isn't important, that the search for truth isn't important. The only important thing is that she passes the Regents' Writing Exam in Georgia.

In my twenty-five years of teaching at universities and colleges around the country, I always told my students to use facts to support their claims. If they didn't have the facts and the experience, then they could research the subject to find facts and other people's experiences to support their claims. Naturally, if this were a creative writing class--you know, fiction, where lying is accepted at least as long as it makes literary sense and is internally consistent--then my advice, and my reaction, would be different. Am I just unbelievably old-fashioned?

I thought of that earlier tutoring session this evening when I read this article in Salon: "I Ghost-Wrote Letters to the Editor for the McCain Campaign," by Margriet Oostveen. Oostveen, whom Salon identifies as the writer of a weekly column, "Message from Washington," for a Dutch newspaper, claims that she volunteers occasionally for political campaigns. From the article she wrote for Salon, I get the impression that she does this for story value--going undercover for experiences to write about. Or maybe she just doesn't have any principles. Anyway, Oostveen describes how she ghost-wrote letters for the McCain campaign, letters that would be sent to McCain supporters to sign and to submit to local newspapers as their own writing. The instructions given Oostveen were simple: Make something up, anything, as long as it supported the McCain campaign.

"Make it Up": that's the mantra of politics. That jet that Sarah Palin sold on e-bay? Uh...didn't quite happen that way. But that's all right: just change the story to support the claim. That Bridge to Nowhere that Palin refused with a "thanks, but no thanks" to the government? Uh... didn't quite happen that way. Pulled support only when it clearly wasn't popular with the rest of the country. But kept the money. That's all right. Use the story anyway.

The McCain campaign has told so many lies, such egregious lies, that writers for serious publications devote entire articles trying to explain why. (See Jonathan Chait's article "Liar's Poker," at The New Republic.)

Why lie? Well, evidently, lying works. You pass the writing class; you pass the Georgia Regents' Writing Exam. You pad your résumé and get the job. (Or you take pride in having a thin résumé because who really wants an accomplished leader, anyway.) Recent research even indicates that many people don't change their minds when confronted with facts; they become even more convinced of their false beliefs. (See Shankar Vedantam, "The Power of Political Misinformation," The Washington Post, September 15, 2008; A06.)

I've lied. But I felt damned ashamed afterward. Today there seems to be no shame in lying. And shame, I understand, is really old-fashioned.