Why We Need To Add Happiness To School Curriculum

Art by ~2Happy

Young people graduate from school equipped to solve mathematical equations, arrange chemical experiments, and write essays. But often they graduate to the adult life not equipped with skills that will help them deal with everyday struggles, emotions, and difficulties. They are not equipped to be happy individuals.

Happiness is arguably the ultimate meaning of our life. Is there anything we want more for our kids than to be happy? If given a choice, would a parent prefer that her child knows capital cities of all countries or knows how to be a happy person? The ultimate purpose of the traditional academic education is to instill children with knowledge needed for for their future careers. But it does not teach kids the good attitude to deal with the many future personal experiences that make up our life. Inner well-being and peace are as crucial and necessary as the academic skills. It does not make sense to pay no attention to the development of happiness skills.

In 2011, United Kingdom published a report that confirms that lots of kids face serious emotional problems by the time they graduate school. Based on UK statistics, which probably does not differ too much from the situation in the USA, by the time an average class of 30 young people reach their 16th birthdays:

• 10 of them will have witnessed their parents separate
• 3 will have suffered from mental health problems
• 8 will have experienced severe physical violence, sexual abuse or neglect
• 3 will be living in a step family
• 1 will have experienced the death of a parent
• 7 will report having been bullied.

Relate (a leading provider of counseling, therapy, and education in UK)  cites research evidence which shows that emotional and mental health problems developed in childhood and adolescence go on to affect adults later in life. The resulting problems with poor emotional adjustment and general feelings of unhappiness are bad enough. But that is not all the consequences our kids are facing. Unhappiness and emotional imbalance can cause young people to do badly in exams or drop out of education altogether, with consequent damage to their long-term employment prospects and health. For more on the report, see http://www.relate.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/press-releases/2013/12/11/relate-calls-statutory-provision-counselling-schools.

I agree with Relate's specialist that schools are the best places to reach young people, and early intervention is effective. But I believe that the most effective solution is prevention. Adding the subject of happiness to school curriculum can help children better deal with their issues, and develop coping mechanisms for the future.

Usually, the kids get emotional guidance and character building from interacting with families and friends. As parents, we always try our hardest to raise good people: continuously pass our wisdom to our kids, indoctrinate our values to them, tell them what is good and what is bad, teach them manners, help them with the choice of profession and life partner (if they let us). But do we teach them how to be happy, joyful, grateful, peaceful? Do we live our lives with contentment and moderation, leading our children by example? Parents are people too, and not all of us are happy ourselves. Unfortunately, we do not always have the time, the vision or the skills to instill the basics of happiness into our children. So both the adults and the kids go about the pursuit of happiness by the trial and error method.

There are more and more politicians, organizations and individuals who believe that happiness skills can be learned and should be included in traditional educations. On his Facebook page, the Dalai Lama says that education is the proper way to promote compassion, piece of mind and tolerance in society, which bring a sense of confidence and reduce stress and anxiety (https://www.facebook.com/DalaiLama) . England requested that schools and colleges promote wellbeing to students (http://www.optimus-education.com/can-schools-promote-happiness). The US army uses classes developed by the "Authentic Happiness" program at the University of Pennsylvania to increase resilience levels of the troops (http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/newsletter.aspx?id=1552).

School is the place where our kids grow up, and where they are formed as individuals as much as they are at home. The school system has the infrastructure for influencing entire generations, letting out better adjusted and happier people. Unfortunately, schools spend most of their efforts on achieving high test results and good rankings. There is little emphasis on personal or emotional development. I believe happiness skills are among some of the most important skills a person possesses. To me it is obvious that the school system must help develop happiness skills as much as literacy skills in all children. I would like to see USA schools and schools all over the world to add happiness lessons to their curricula and deliver it to every kid. It will make for better adults and for better societies, and ultimately, for better world.

To see this happen, I plan to open an organization to raise public support, develop happiness curriculum and promote it to schools and departments of education in the US and possibly, worldwide. 

If you think this idea is important and worthwhile, and you would like to help, please contact me. I am looking for anyone who can contribute their skills, knowledge, and advice in the fields of not-for-profit organizations, school curricula, marketing, public relations, legal aspects and more!

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The Pursuit of Happiness

art by ~spoonbard

The pursuit of happiness is an inherent right of every person written into the American Constitution.

However, it seems that happiness is not the top priority in our current culture. People are conditioned to pursue other things, like success and wealth more persistently than happiness. It is more commonly approved to reach for various society standards such as prestigious career, sizable bank account, traditional family, good social standing, celebrity status, your own house and motorized means of transportation, etc.

If you say that you would rather be happy, people will think you strange.

If you have a traditional family and a prestigious career, and you say you are not happy, people will say: “and who are?”, or “so what?”, or “maybe it is in your future”, or “see my shrink”.

Happiness is not commonly considered too terribly important, or a goal in itself.

On the other hand, it is unfashionable and even impolite being unhappy. Maybe you are not happy, but you are not to show it. You are supposed to readily answer “Fine, thank you” to “how do you do”. This simple exchange represents our mentality.

It seems like happiness is not a priority, but we are still supposed to put on game face and be happy. This gives us a very slight margin of getting it right, and a lot of stress to keep smiling even if we do not feel like it.

Of course, each of us wants to be happy. The Dalai Lama said that everyone is similar in their desire for happiness and avoidance of suffering. If we get right down to it, all our choices and actions are powered by this goal, conscious or subconscious – the pursuit of happiness.

Each of us does it in our own way. We race after happiness, and we look for it in lots of different directions. Majority of us try to get the happiness from the outside - we search, we try, we pray for it, we play games of chance, we look for that special someone to spend our life with, we make friends to be a part of a group, we have kids (or pets) to fill our lives with love and purpose, we strive for more power, for a better paying job, for a nice vacation to finally get a chance to relax and again reenter the cycle of our lives.

All of the above are perfectly fine goals in life. But we elevate them to a higher level, we ascribe our ability to be happy to them. We believe they have the power to make us happier. If only I had more money… If only I met the perfect partner… If only my kids had better dispositions… then I would be happy for sure.

This way of thinking disregards the most important piece of knowledge about happiness: it is in our attitude. It comes from within us, from our perception of things.

To be happy, we have to embrace this knowledge. We have to put top priority to our perceptions of life, not the society’s perception.

No “pursuit” can bring us closer to our happiness. There are no specific things or qualities that we have to possess or achieve in order to guarantee a happy life. We should not think of happiness in terms of “pursuing” it. We should cultivate it, grow it in our heads and hearts. Instill it into our daily outlook, our habitual attitude. Take a moment to acknowledge yourself as you are now, in this moment, and learn to appreciate it, be at peace with it, be happy about it without regard to anything.

The practice of the skill of being content with whatever we are and whatever is around us is the path to lasting happiness.

Happiness vs. Pleasure

One of the dictionary definitions of happiness is "pleasure" (www.dictionary.com) or "a pleasurable experience" (Merriam-Webster online dictionary). A lot of times, we substitute these two concepts one for another. Happiness is defined by feeling pleasure. And conversely, whatever brings us pleasure, makes us happy. It seems that pleasures are the stepping stones to happiness, and we are chasing pleasures believing that we are looking for happiness.

In fact, these two are not at all the same, and in our pursuit of happiness, we have to recognize their difference.

Let's consider everyday examples of what might bring us pleasure. To eat a good meal is a pleasure. To watch a movie. To enter air conditioned building on a hot day. But do these things make us happy? And I mean really happy - not feeling good for a while, but knowing that we are happy individuals? 

The Dalai Lama in his book "The Way to Freedom" writes that pleasure is replacing one kind of suffering by another kind of suffering. For example, you stand for a long time and you are tired, so when you sit down; it's a pleasure. But as you continue sitting down, you will find that you feel uncomfortable, and now you want to stand up, run a little, walk around. If you are hungry, to eat is a pleasure indeed. But if you keep eating past the point where you feel full, it will become unpleasant. When you are hot - you derive pleasure from cooling down. But you get cold in a while, and yearn for warmth. You get the idea. The pleasures we crave are actually the very beginnings of suffering of one kind or another. If we keep doing and doing the things that bring us pleasure, they will not be pleasurable for long. That proves the wisdom that everything is good in moderation only. That also contradicts the notion of lasting happiness. 

The other observation that helps distinguish happiness from pleasure is that pleasure is something that mostly comes from the outside sources. It's the food, the climate, the money, friends, technology etc. that bring us pleasure. And these pleasurable occurrences only bring us pleasure as they happen. As soon as  we do not get the next scheduled meal, enough money, or the friends leave, the pleasure rapidly subsides. Happiness is something that comes from within us. It is a lasting feeling that ideally does not depend on the food, the climate, the money, friends, technology, etc. 

Pleasures are fleeting, while happiness is a sustainable constant within us.

This is not to devalue pleasures. Truly, they are great! (Well, most of the time.) But we have to be able to clearly distinguish between the two ideas, and not mix one for the other. When we've separated the concepts of happiness and pleasure, we become one step closer to understanding what happiness is and what it consists of.