The opposite is true
A phrase intended to be humorous nevertheless often describes the reality
Here’s a tweet that popped up in my timeline recently:
Well, there is a difference. The difference is that these days, rather than call something by what it it is (open plan), some people prefer to call it by what it isn’t.
Take that phrase “Innovative Learning Environment”. First of all, it isn’t innovative. It was tried fifty years ago. Secondly, it’s an environment where learning tends not to take place because of all the extraneous noise and other distractions.
In other words, the name and what it refers to are opposites.
Other examples come to mind:
Authors who have books about self-publishing published by a mainstream publishing company.
A lecture I attended once which lasted well over an hour -- on the importance of participatory learning techniques.
A whole conference, which consisted of six hours of lectures, on using question and answer techniques in teaching.
More recently, one might add those globe-trotters who visit different parts of the world to deliver lectures on the importance of reducing carbon footprints.
But there is a far more powerful manifestation of this sort of thing: the conjuring up of names for initiatives which are really the precise converse of what the initiatives are actually about. The coining of the term “Innovative Learning Environment” is merely the latest in a long line.
For example, some years ago in the UK there was a welfare initiative called "Supporting People". Under this initiative, the hours of work of wardens in sheltered accommodation were cut, and sometimes reduced to zero, thereby placing at risk some of the most vulnerable people in our society. When I enquired why this was being done, I was told that the organisation concerned had chosen to do it: apparently, it was not an inherent part of the policy itself. Well, maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't, but the point is that once Supporting People arrived on the scene, some people stopped being supported.
Another initiative, this time in the Health Service, was called Fit for the Future. Note the clever play on the word "fit", which in this context meant fit as in healthy, and fit as in suitable. Apparently, the architects of this shiny new policy believed that in the future there will not be traffic jams, and there may not even be accidents and emergencies. Why else would my local Health Trust have tried to use Fit for the Future as a means by which to axe perfectly good locally-based Accident and Emergency units in hospitals, and force people to travel to a modern hospital that can barely cope now? In other words, like "Supporting People", "Fit for the Future" seems to me to have meant the exact opposite of what it sounds like it was supposed to mean. (Fortunately, local protests prevented it from going ahead. I doubt that anyone would seriously resurrect the policy in the light of record hospital admissions and a massive backlog, courtesy of Covid-19.)
Stephen Potter described this phenomenon half a century ago
Stephen Potter is the author of series of books on One Upmanship:
Gamesmanship, or the art of winning games without actually cheating.
Lifemanship, which was concerned with the application of the principles of gamesmanship to everyday life.
One-upmanship, which was a further extension of Lifemanship, and
Supermanship, or the art of staying on top without falling apart.
In this universe, courses in “upmanship” are taught by the Lifemanship Correspondence College, based in Yeovil, Somerset.
Potter's "day job" was English lecturer in the University of Oxford. So there is a kind of in joke running throughout the books whereby Potter gives spurious academic-sounding names to types of behaviour. To give you an idea of what I mean, he came up with such immortal terms as "Trojan Horsemanship", "Book Reviewership" and "Derby and Joanmanship" (with its associated phenomenon of "still-ridiculously-in-love-with-each-othering"). It will therefore come as no surprise to learn that Potter came up with a very apposite term for what I've just been describing.
In the Supermanship book, there is a riotous exposition of the natural one-upness of babies, and how to counteract it. In one paragraph, he says that as well as being undermined by the baby itself, parents will also start to be got at by external forces in various guises. He writes:
"Baby Literature makes itself felt first, and Baby Instruction. Many prettily got-up booklets start with the dictum 'Enjoy your baby'."
To this last point is appended a footnote which states:
"This is known in Yeovil [where the Lifemanship Correspondence College is located] as 'The Petrification of the Implied Opposite'."
Now, you have to admit: that is a marvellous phrase, still appropriate after all these years. You see it in action all the time. You can hardly fail to miss it, even if you’re nowhere near as cynical as I tend to be when it comes to official pronouncements!
In my neck of the woods (the UK), there are some used copies of The Complete Upmanship, which contains all four of the books mentioned above, available on Amazon. I have owned the book for several decades, and it still makes me laugh. It is a very astute observation of some common behaviours.
There was a film of it made in 1960 called School for Scoundrels. That link takes you to a place where you can rent it on Amazon Prime, in the UK at least. Hopefully there will be a rentable version where you live too. It features some key moments from the books, and adds one or two of its own. Well worth watching! Here’s a trailer:
Humans are fantastic manipulators! I loved this piece.