The Equivocation of ‘Positive’ Part I

There is a lot of talk about being ‘positive’ these days in educational circles.  But with all of this ‘positivity’ going around, why, by all appearances, do things seem to be getting worse as far as student attitude and achievement is concerned?  Why are students responding to all of this ‘positivity’ by becoming increasingly rude, disrespectful, defiant, socially inept, and academically inferior?  Why do I receive emails daily about the increasingly poor behavior and performance of students?

How could such a ‘positive’ culture entertain such negative results?  Could it be that what is being labeled as ‘positive’ is by no means positive?  I’m going to propose just that. 

The word ‘positive’ and ‘positive’ as a concept is being seriously equivocated by educators—that’s to say, what is being called positive is largely used as a cover for naivete, wishful/magical thinking, logical contradiction, and as a substitute, abstract smokescreen to hide the lack of achievement going on in schools by redefining reality to satisfy politically correct objectives (I will note here that politically correct objectives are signaling the death of our school systems as students and teachers suffer ridiculous policies, programs, and mandates for the sake of appearances, profits to useless entities endemic to education).

It is also used as a cover for plain academic laziness:  it is easier to talk about being positive than it is to demand hard, persistent, rigorous academic achievement from students. None of these things are positive, yet they are enjoying the cover of that misnomer like a shiny wrapper hiding a poison pill.  Like a smiley slick used car salesman quick-talking to distract you from looking inside the hood at the crummy, rusted engine.  Like a magician using sleight of hand to make failure disappear.  That is called redefining reality, not positivity. 

Here’s an example of redefining reality.

We are watching a basketball game.  A player takes a shot and misses by 3 feet.  You say that it was actually a good shot if you consider not making the basket not the essential here, but the effort involved, the style of shooting, that making a basket isn’t as important as the way it is thrown, that the basket simply wasn’t big enough,  if it were a larger basket the shot would have gone in, and that I don’t understand that the player has not had the background and opportunities of the other players on the court.  This is not positive talk, it is nonsense, redefining reality for your own ridiculous reasons.

I say, ‘Nah, actually, that was just a lousy shot.’  You can now point out how negative I am.  But who is negative here?  By denying or redefining reality, you cannot help that player achieve better in the future.  You will make a basket 3 feet bigger.  Next time he will miss it by four feet.  Pretty soon you can just redefine the rules to say that if the ball hits anywhere in the court it’s a good shot.

This is where education, at least where I teach, stands. 

When you are the one being ‘positive’ you can easily take the moral high ground no matter how incompetent a teacher or administrator you happen to be; you can criticize anyone with objections to your false sunny-arity as ‘negative’ and label them as the bad guy or gal.

Suppose we’re about to take a trip in a truck with a nice new paint job.   I tell you the truck’s engine is rusted out, the tires are flat, the pistons warped, and the car won’t make the trip, and you criticize me for being negative. 

I tell you my students are ill-equipped to do the work required of them for a certain course because they lack the requisite skills which take years to acquire and you can dismiss that as negativity.

(more on this topic later)