When I was a young, bright-eyed school girl (oh, about 2nd grade) a very memorable April Fool's Day event happened to me.
During school that day, my teacher told the class that we would be allowed to leave early. You can imagine the excitement that swept over the group of children. An unplanned early-out day? It was a miracle!
I held the excitement in me all day, and around the scheduled early departure time I started packing up my backback.
Then the teacher got the attention of the class and made the devastating announcement: "April Fools! You don't get to go home early. Let's get back to work."
So my question is this: is it okay to lie to a bunch of little kids (or anyone) just because April Fool's day is designated for pranks and jokes?
I'd say an actual PRANK takes a lot more thought than just lying to someone and saying "April Fools!" to make it okay.
I could get into the ethics and questions of lying to kids/people for various festive reasons (Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc.) but that's a whole other subject that I really haven't come to a conclusion about yet.
It just doesn't seem right to use a certain day of the year as an excuse to lie.
Or maybe I'm just bitter that I didn't get to go home early from school that fateful 2nd grade day.
Discuss.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Well, if tricking you into looking at this is wrong, I don't wanna be right!
Mike and I read this last night and were so excited to be Rick Roll'd!
As for lying to kids, I've questioned this before when it comes to Santa Clause and stuff like that. I'm torn about it. I think what your teacher did was pretty mean though. As a young child it might cause trust issues...maybe. I dunno, I'm not a psychologist. I think pranks are different than flat out lying. Like the eye marble in your drinking water or something like that. But I think I'm going to have to agree with you about April Fool's day not being used as an excuse to lie to people. One year a brother of a friend of ours called to say that our friend had been in a horrible accident and was life-flighted to the hospital and needed us to come to the hospital right away. I was at work at the time and started crying and asked my boss if I could leave and she said I could. Then like 5 minutes later as I was about to leave work they called back and said "April Fool's!" What a horrible, horrible joke.
Post a Comment