Negative Education (or Learning from the Negative) in the Classroom and in the Workplace

We are use to learning leading to something tangible, such as more career options or learning to appreciate something more-- notice the word "more." Learning can also lead to something less. Less anxiety, less awareness, less understanding. But, maybe a more accurate way to view learning would include "mistakes" attempts and other ways of monetizing failure, maybe not in the economic sense but in the creating value sense. 

We tend to value rational/scientific education, either professional or general, for its own sake, but sometimes I wonder if all people should learn all things. For example, if someone does not know how to do something then perhaps she/he will not do it and this lack of action may be good on an individual and/or societal level. Groups of people, by the same token, could not do something without leadership in a given situation and that might also be to the good. Usually when a group of youngsters break curfew for example, it is often the inspiration of one or two of the group. And, then there is the view of that the over use of reason could lead to faulty arguments, as posited by the German philosopher Theodor Adorno who wrote that boldness and creativity had given way to the "salaried profundity" of university professors who train their students to think like everyone else and therefore become "spokespersons for the average." These could be an example of negative education. 

Some culturally specific (dead white men, etc.) material might be seen as negative learning, but also triumphant dogmas, propaganda, and forms of religious ministry as well.  

When I searched the term "negative education" I found that Rousseau advocated such a term as part of his naturalistic education, which called on children to develop in harmony with nature and learn things when they were developmentally (although he probably did not use that term) ready and not before. There is also the concern of the negative aspects of education (failure to get good grades, etc.) and impact on self esteem and other personal and interpersonal characteristics such as self determination.  

I suppose people paying tuition that they can not afford might also be considered an aspect of negative education. 

When we discover that education as an industry has positives and negatives then this might give us pause as we develop curriculum and give students (and ourselves) personal and professional advice.   

There is of course information in resistance, which is a form of negativity. When you hear complaints, criticisms and what seems like an endless list of questions, listen carefully. There is gold in them. Perhaps this negative learning can also take place in the work environment. The Wall Street Journal discussed this in the "Value of Annoying Co-Workers" in which Peggy Drexler, the writer, points out that many people like their jobs but struggle with the work environment because of co-workers. Drexler notes that adapting to different personality types at work (narcissist, scorekeeper, gossip, etc.) does not have to mean abandoning your principles, and perhaps we can learn from these disrupters and improve our work and our attitude at work -- not negative learning, but learning from the negative. 

The Platonic idea of education, that it is a way of organizing society by giving leaders the skills they need to order to society gave way to a more nuanced view that education is the way for all to improve their social/intellectual standing. But, perhaps we have only looked at the positive thrust of classical education; its generative ability. Perhaps a more complicated view of education needs to be more nuanced. Where perhaps we grasp that true learning can and should also be degenerative. That it should question the economic and moral order. By seeing the questioning nature of the process we can grasp that learning is generative in the long run but not necessarily duplicative in that we need to mirror the thought patterns and social order of the past. That the enlightening can have challenging results that the degenerative process can lead to something greater. Creative destruction may be part of this, but that is not the only element.

There might also be the case that we expect too much from education and change. There was a nice analysis of the impact of Arab Spring and how perhaps Western thinkers/American thinkers were overly optimistic about the results of democratic training and how if we just educated leaders and others about the virtues of democracy, they would change if/when given the chance. As noted in "How can America Really Promote Democracy Abroad" 
                                             "This dominant school of thought is called “voluntarism,” and it is fundamentally optimistic: It assumes that individual actions can change the course of nations, and that democracy can be nurtured by giving the right skills to promising leaders and activists. Duke political scientist Timur Kuran, in a highly influential 1991 paper on the Eastern European revolutions, put forth the notion of “cascades.” In a fear-based dictatorship everyone hides their opposition, he wrote, but if one or a few courageous individuals take a public stand, they might suddenly be joined by great waves of supporters emboldened to reveal their preferences."

Rather than this emphasis on the expectation of change through the importation of democratic principles, the author notes that it might be more effective to concentrate on developing economic resources of the people and then having change come from within.

          "Masoud and two fellow political scientists studied 14 Arab states under authoritarian rule and found that in the end only Tunisia experienced an unequivocal improvement on the democracy scale. Elsewhere, within a few years of the revolts, even countries that had appeared promising, like Egypt, Syria, and Libya, were headed in a negative direction, their hopeful democratic movements having crashed against an immovable structural obstacle.

"What made the difference? Masoud and his fellow researchers found that the biggest determinant of whether authoritarian regimes survived had nothing to do with civil society, individual protest leaders, or even the workings of the political system. The calculus turned out to be much simpler. As long as regimes had sufficient money and loyal security forces, they seemed able to ward off any pressure to democratize, regardless of whether they were monarchies or republics, or whether they were endowed with oil wealth. Though Western countries had spent enormous money and effort to support the development of democratic institutions in these places, this factor seemed to make little difference."

I wonder if education is also a little too positive in its expectations. Simply expecting people to understand how learning will impact them to improve their economic conditions. Perhaps if we improved their economic positions first, they would grasp the role of education on their own and be more engaged in the process. 

And, in terms of negative education, we might also include negative or judgmental feedback/communication, both inside and outside the curriculum. Day-to-day life and negative pushback provides a constant flow of information that could be instructive if used properly. If we can become adept/qualified at using negative (or what we perceive as negative) in a positive way, then our learning options really open up-- the information and the deliverer of the information might be seen as coaches, if not always recognized publicly or even privately as such.

Perhaps this is why psychology is such a powerful movement. It gives the individual more control over their environment by empowering them to make inferences and conclusion based on their own observations and feelings and how they relate to their own situations rather than comparing only based on the interpretation of others or some common set of moral principles.  This might be part of the educational ramifications of what Freud and others pioneered.