Blinded by Optimism

Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, is a cogent argument about problems that could be solved if faced directly are being instead suppressed and ignored. This is not to say that positive thinking is bad, it isn’t. However, when the popular culture has the pendulum hard-wired to the positive side, real problems that are harming people get ignored. Ehrenreich says that this preoccupation with positivity has resulted in a “mass delusion” and a “tyranny and ideology” that have resulted in disastrous decisions in our culture.

I contend that there is no place in our society where this disease is more entrenched and more harmful than in our schools. Attend any school board meeting and you will see the structured offering of “plusses” that are being recognized. That is as is should be but where is the discussion of what to do about the abysmal performance of the schools in closing the achievement gap, improving overall test scores, of failed curriculum choices that are ignored rather than faced? They are never discussed.

One of the local large and “top performing” districts even has a board policy that board members cannot criticize the school district in any way. In fact a member of that board was removed from the board for violating that policy. Thus, the message goes forth, “The preservation of the school bureaucracy is more important than serving the mission to educate the kids well.” While I am not aware of other districts with this type of policy, they all act as if there is one anyway.

So who is there to support the message that the kids are not being served at an acceptable level? It certainly won’t come from within the education fiefdom. While the information is readily available for those who are willing to dig for it, it is certainly not something that you will find in the media reports. The media play a complicit role in making sure they only report favorable things about the schools. Thus, it is up to each of us to put in the time and effort to bring the message to everyone we can by writing to our legislators, speaking at school board meetings and any other way we can to demand that reality of school performance is faced and fixed.