The Santa Claus deception: The ethics of educator involvement

Abstract

For centuries, Santa Claus has proved to be a pervasive, persistent and influential mythic figure who dominates children’s lives for several weeks each year. But unlike most other fantasy figures, Santa Claus is presented as a real entity, a feat achieved through the widespread deception of children. This deception primarily involves a child’s family, but is also encouraged and maintained by wider society and its institutions. That educators could involve themselves in such a deception seems particularly controversial. Given their role as providers of epistemic goods, it appears like a dereliction of duty for them to seemingly encourage credulity and to deceive their students to maintain their false beliefs. However, I argue that there are epistemic benefits that can reaped by children through their experience of believing in Santa Claus and the process of independently disabusing themselves of these beliefs. For these benefits to be attained, educators must reluctantly engage in low-level paternalistic deception to keep their students in the dark about the truth, before then actively helping them to learn important epistemic lessons and foster key intellectual virtues as a result of their experiences. This justifies educators’ modest involvement in the Santa Claus deception.