negative?

I was accused in a public email by an administrator this year of being "adversarial," promoting "negative feelings." (While I am tempted to quote his statement in full, to do so could indeed promote negative feelings, as it is highly revealing of his thinking and difficulties expressing himself.)

His statement popped to mind at a meeting this week, when a non-adversarial, positive director interrupted multiple times with comments about problems. When questions were raised about situations harmful to children, she piped up that it had always been like that, it was like that in her school when she was a kid, it would always be thus and could not change, and the students would just have to deal.

I might concede when tired that she is realistic and I am naive, but I walked out of there that particular day feeling like the most positive, optimistic person on this planet.

I thank her and that administrator for renewing my motivation to face the laziest propositions in education: This is how we have to do it. This is how we've always done it. It's the law. If you don't question it, everything will be OK. It's human nature. Nobody cares. It's inevitable. Kids can't be trusted to chart their own course. Parents can't be consulted either, because they are not much better. The "experts" know best. Discussion is messy, inconvenient, and a waste of time.

We owe our kids much better than that.