Can negative be positive?
‘Learning experiences are stronger when there is an emotional element’ is a notion few would disagree with. But out of the whole gamut of emotions that us as humans are capable of (yes, sorry robots), it would seem that this is only half the story. Negative emotions inscribe our memories like a vivid marker, whilst positive emotions seem more like a pencil. It’s a trend that appears to pop up everywhere, from the ability for people to recall details about tragedies compared to moments of joy, to the explanation given to the spread of fake news. As The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer reminds us, “we’re attentive to novel threats and especially attentive to negative threats.” So whilst the vehicle for negative emotions can hardly be a positive one by very definition, from a memory perspective it can appear to be pretty useful. The question then becomes, as educators can we tap into this and exploit it for learning?
There is of course the approach taken by Jane Elliot in the 1960’s to have students feel the effects of discrimination themselves, so brazen and powerful that it earned her a ‘influential educator’ lists everywhere. But, like many others, have my doubts about how that would go down in my classroom on Monday. Is there a way to detach the negative emotion from the pain of experiencing it first hand? Well I believe that my colleague across the corridor has kind of figured this out. As a History teacher, he pulls the kids into a web of intrigue with gore and death (along with great charisma too) and, like plenty of other History teachers do, has success in etching the memories of historical events, figures, and places into memory. Of course seeing other people’s negative experiences can serve as a poignant means of developing empathy in our students, and can catalyse some very insightful and meaningful conversations that can lead to learning. But is this really the same things as the strength of feeling negative emotions? And is there a way to do it which promotes positivity?
When I was an outdoor instructor at a US summer camp there was a sign up on one of the trees that proclaimed ‘feeling embarrassed hurts’ which was followed up a few trees later by ‘being embarrassed helps’. There is a profound lesson in that, I believe, which is to look at experiences objectively and learn from them through an observational process of reflecting on why something happened and why it made us feel a certain way. Yet even in this case the negative vehicle is waiting to pick us up and drive us to our destination - the place which we have learnt something and are better off because of it. This example is, therefore, like any failure which we strive to teach our students to make into a positive through learning and growing out the other side. Though if we are successful in this utopic pursuit of teaching a steadfast belief in ‘failing forward’ then might we serve to erode the very negative feeling that spurs us forward in the first place? Or will it not matter because there will be an innate drive to fail and push forward anyway because of the positive feedback we get from it?
Perhaps I am confusing ideas here, mixing things which shouldn’t be mixed. But nonetheless, I will continue to consider how this innate human wiring for negativity might be used positively for learning and at the very least, remind myself to inject a bit of emotion into my lessons. Students are, after all, still human.
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