Abstract

This chapter exposes significant shortcomings in current education, where honesty and truth are rarely discussed. Some commentators have argued that we need to fight post-truth by arming students with more facts and media literacy skills to enable them to sort out fact from fiction. This chapter argues that those approaches are often naive and shortsighted insofar as they do not develop more long-lasting commitments to or practices of honesty. Aiming to address that missing component in the development of good citizens, this chapter explains how a pragmatist might cultivate habits of honesty. Rather than a virtues- or character-based education for honesty, a habits approach reflects a deeply social understanding of democracy and provides civic, rather than primarily moral, motivations for being honest. This chapter describes how schools can nurture the disposition to be honest as students take up real and pressing problems in the world around them.