Telling a lie can get you on Santa’s naughty list, but it could get you on the Dean’s list at one British school.
Students at the Perse School in Cambridge, England, can avoid punishment for minor offenses, provided they can come up with quick, clever excuses for their transgressions within 10 seconds.
Headmaster Ed Elliott won’t allow complete B.S., but “white lies” may be acceptable.
“It’s a great lesson in life to talk your way out of a tight corner in a very short period of time,” Elliot told the BBC.
Rewarding a child for lying may seem counter-intuitive, but Elliot believes he’s fostering important communication skills.
“As head I like to play my part in creating a quick-thinking, communication ‘savvy’ generation, by giving students who have committed a minor offense 10 seconds to talk their way out of a punishment,” he told the Cambridge News. “Many rise admirably to the challenge, and in so doing develop the charm and eloquence needed in the next generation of British entrepreneurs and wealth creators.”
The school’s alum includes luminaries such as Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, but Elliott suggests his “lie-dea” may give current students the right verbal skills to succeed in the world, according to the Telegraph.
Some wags have protested that Elliott is merely training students to be politicians, Geobeats.com reported, but rhetoric expert Sam Leith thinks it’s a brilliant idea, no lie. “You can see this being a really important lifeskill and actually politicians, some of them, are the absolute straight arrow, but often the ones who get further are the artful dodgers,” Leith told the BBC.
