Talk:Lie-to-children

Use In Adult Education section

I removed this part of a sentence because its meaning is not clear: "...leading up to a stage where the one 'lying' are the students themselves as they formulate their own elaborations." (diff) If the original editor or others would rewrite this part, perhaps as a separate sentence, it might be appropriate to include it in this section. I did not try to rewrite it because I do not understand the intended meaning and I did not want to make it worse! :^|   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 03:22, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Although I made a few minor tweaks, I think this section ("Use In Adult Education") is an excellent addition--heck, it helped me to better understand the Lie-to-children concept! :O)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 04:19, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Freudian theory

So I removed:

Sandor Klapcsik acknowledged in a 2008 article in the journal Extrapolation that Freudian theory functioned as a reductive form of lie-to-children, and went on to note: "True, it happens to be an extremely useful one."

with the edit summary:

Freudian theory is generally regarded as incorrect; didn't seem like a good example here

and Jayron32 reverted with the edit summary:

That's the IDEA behind the lie-to-children. They are wrong, but useful...

Good point, but I'm not entirely sure what psychological theories are taught to advanced students of which Freudian theory are a simplification taught to new students. For example:

• Freud's psychoanalysis doesn't really help in explaining why cognitive behavioral therapy works or how to do it
• If you look at the article unconscious, it explains that Freud's theory on the structure of the unconscious mind (ego, superego, id) is not a simplified version of the modern cognitive psychology models of unconscious phenomena.
• If you look at dream interpretation, Freud's theory that dreams manifest repressed desires seems to be one of several equally simple answers to the question of what dreams mean.
• Freud's views on sexuality are not simplified versions of a more complex explanation; they are simply weird and in some cases now just considered offensive.
• Death drive is in direct opposition to, not a simplification of, modern evolutionary psychology.

I don't have access to the article to check, but I'm wondering if Klapcsik was using "lie-to-children" in a metaphorical sense, as in a theory that was useful to hold in psychology for a while to propel the field to further discovery? In that case I'm not sure it's a good example of a literal lie-to-children, because it's not actually used for teaching. I've certainly seen Freud mentioned in psychology classes, but mostly just to explain the history of the field. I would think of it as similar to the celestial spheres - it might be mentioned as part of the history of astronomy, but no one is taught that theory anymore; Newtonian physics are the simplified form of modern orbital mechanics. -- Beland (talk) 16:40, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

• Sounds good! --Jayron32 01:10, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I concur with Beland removing that section today. Freud as an example of lie-to-children makes no sense to me.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 08:53, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

---

Bloated, weirdly focused

This article makes a mountain out of a molehill. Someone gave this not-even-very-catchy name to something with which every parent, grandparent, and schoolteacher is familiar: explanations are often oversimplified to the point of even being false in some sense; this article then belabors the use of this phrase lie-to-children here, there, and everywhere, as if it's some breakthrough concept. I have no idea what we're supposed to learn from this unending trip to nowhere, and it has a strongly promotional feeling to it, to be honest. EEng 12:52, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

David Eppstein, you're an educator. What do you make of this weirdness? I can't find any uptake in the outside world of this as a term or as any kind of significant "concept". EEng 19:16, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

It's a standard and familiar concept to me at least, enough that I've used it as the title of a blog post [1]. Google scholar finds 175 hits for the exact phrase "lies to children", and I think most are on-topic. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:58, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Perfectly familiar to me too, because it's a perfectly obvious and old concept. What I don't get is the implication that these two or three authors were the first to point it out, like nobody realized it before. EEng 00:19, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Looking around WP, I see very little about milk before meat, a related notion discussed in an LDS church context. I think I first started noticing it some time after the turn of the century, but quick searching has not yet turned up reliable details. Just plain Bill (talk) 02:29, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

The "see also" section could use some pruning or expansion. I'm not sure how not even wrong deserves a place there. Moving the goalposts might belong, along with bait-and-switch, and my personal favorite, motte and bailey. Maybe discussion of how related topics fit on a spectrum from "good intentions" to "deceptive shenanigans" belongs under another heading on this talk page. Just plain Bill (talk) 04:24, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

How come if your not logged in your contribution is deleted?

i added an extensive series of notes to this talk page. Yet now when I return it has been deleted? 82.6.88.43 (talk) 09:36, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

It can be deleted by someone who disagrees with your argument but it should be in the history of the 'talk' pages. If it's not & is not a result of user error when trying to post. Then that is rather more worrying 82.6.88.43 (talk) 10:19, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Check the edit history of the page, where your edits still exist and try to read what you wrote down. It actively broke the entire page's formatting, duplicated itself 2-3 times, and copied in pages of Wikipedia's help text into the middle of itself.

At one point, one of your comments said "Please provide a title for your discussion topic. If you click "Add topic", your topic will be added without a title. Style text Switch editor", which is obviously not what you were trying to do.

It was a mess. Feel free to retry. Reil (talk) 15:59, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

A lie to children is an example of a wider range of similar phenomona

[See Note at end of entry]

1. One of the first most obvious link to a similar idea is that of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb

2. They are both examples of Shorthand For! Which is linguistic application of the idea of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand

Another example of the use of [Shorthand For] is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand_for_orchestra_instrumentation which is "The [Shorthand For] the instrumentation of a symphony orchestra (and other similar ensembles) is used to outline which and how many instruments...are called for in a given piece of music."

3. But [Shorthand For] is just an example of the Sociology of Science & especially the creation of Language (Jargon is a similar example of language creation) is detailed in Bruno Latour's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_Action_(book)

[[Note.]This is an attempt to recreate some of what was lost from my previous time here. I need to check the history of the talk page to see if it was deleted and if so why? But if there isn't anything & all the notes I added were subsequently deleted. Then something has changed, because ir should not be possible in wikipedia. Even if at first viewing it can.] 82.6.88.43 (talk) 10:06, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Weird article

Lies to children are a pest, because they are indistiguishable from a teacher that doesn't understand what he's talking about himself. See that Sussmann, who managed to confuse himself to the point where he forgot that Ohms law is always correct, only a resistor labeled with "100 Ohms" is not actually a 100 Ohms resistor at 250°C, and will never have 100 Ohms again after an excursion to 1000°C.

Anybody who lies, i.e. teaches a simplified model (all models ultimately are) without explaining its limits, does his pupils, students, and everybody else, a grave disservice. No teacher ever did that to me, at least none that I care to remember.

I have no idea why lying is supposed to be a popular concept nowadays. Perhaps has something to do with Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton, or general politics. 2001:9E8:2B0F:7B00:6D85:E572:F0CA:CCAC (talk) 21:37, 20 December 2023 (UTC)