An Education Based on Happiness

School teaches us a lot of things, but it doesn’t teach us how to be happy. This fact alone is a stark reminder that we have not fully unlocked the tremendous potential of our education system. At the demands of our consumerist society, education’s focus is becoming increasingly career-oriented. To some extent, this has been necessary. We all need to earn a living, and our schools have a presumptive duty to help us do so. However, this pattern has gone too far. As we are witnessing a mental health crisis in our modern age, it appears strikingly clear that our priorities in education need to adapt accordingly. Our education system may not have caused increasing rates of depression, anxiety and suicide among the younger generations, but it is perfectly positioned to reverse this concerning trend.

The Mental Health Crisis

Much of society’s response to the recent decline in mental health has been admirable. Support is becoming increasingly accessible, there is growing understanding and awareness of the topic, and the stigma surrounding conversations about mental health is slowly deflating. What these responses have in common is that they are alleviative measures – steps taken in order to relieve the symptoms of the existing problem. Undoubtably, such measures are necessary. If we are to improve the overall well-being of our society, then dealing with the problem directly is a must. But it is not enough; it is only one half of the response that we require.

There has not been sufficient emphasis on preventing the problem from occurring. Society’s response to the mental health crisis has not gone far enough to protect the happiness and well-being of children in the future. A solution without a means of prevention can only ever be temporary. If a gardener wants his daffodils to flourish, he cannot just tend to them once they have wilted, he has to continually nourish the roots before any problem has manifested. This is intuitive, yet we don’t seem to be applying the same logic to the modern mental health crisis. In order to offset the decline in mental health, we have to change something about our children’s environment before they become vulnerable to mental affliction. Otherwise, how can we expect a different outcome?

Prioritising Happiness in Education

The education system is rightly appreciated by most people, but I think its potential is nevertheless underestimated. From the ages of 3-18, children and teenagers spend an enormous quantity of time in school. Because of this simple fact, it is surely undeniable that the nature of their education – the information they are given, the lessons they are taught, the skills they learn, the friendliness of their teachers, and just about everything else – has a massive bearing not only on their academic capabilities, but also their mental and emotional development. For this reason, our schools also have a responsibility to implement the kind of change that is necessary if we are to prevent the mental health crisis worsening.

Schools often talk of finding a ‘balance’ between academic performance and well-being, but I think this notion is flawed. The concept of finding this ‘middle ground’ treats the two considerations as disconnected, but shouldn’t academic performance be valuable only insofar as it promotes long-term happiness? My proposal is that the well-being of students (and others indirectly) should not be a mere consideration, but the only thing that matters. This principle may sound extreme, but it takes seriously the commonly held belief that our personal and collective well-being is the most important thing in life. If we believe this intuition to be true, it is only rational that we ought to educate children in a way that reflects it.

This principle – that well-being should be the only thing that matters in education – certainly sounds nice in theory, but is it realistic that a school could base its entire curriculum on happiness? Or is it just some blurry ideal? My conviction is that this kind of reformation is both achievable and reasonable. To demonstrate this, we ought to examine what this shift in prioritisation would actually look like in practice.

A Reformed Education

What would a reformed education based solely on happiness really look like? Providing a detailed overview is of course beyond the limits of this article, but it will suffice here to present at least a rough idea.

Firstly, it is important to note that exclusively prioritising happiness doesn’t imply that other potential benefits of education – financial comfort, knowledge, discipline, etc – are irrelevant. Rather, it entails that these considerations are only important insofar as they are positively connected to well-being. These other factors may still be instrumentally valuable by promoting happiness in the long-term. Therefore, if education were reformed according to this principle, many curricula would not need to change. For instance, teaching children to read and write, to do basic maths, or about fundamental geographical and historical facts, are plausibly important for well-being in that they prepare children to earn a living and to function as adults. Furthermore, it is clear that society’s overall functioning and happiness is improved by the presence of competent doctors, lawyers, scientists, and members of many other indispensable professions. So, facilitating students to specialise and pursue these academic paths is consistent with prioritising happiness. These are just a few examples among many, but it is enough to show that an education based entirely on happiness does not render all conventional academic teachings unimportant.

Nevertheless, the education system remains too far from an ethos that has the students’ happiness as its only concern. Too often we are seeing students take classes and degrees with no desire to learn, feeling like they’re being forced to do their work, and finding motivation only in the prospect of a paper certificate. We have normalised this state of affairs, but it is a deep and real problem. Providing knowledge for the sake of an exam result is not enough. In everything we choose to teach children, we have to ask ourselves whether it is positively linked to the well-being of the students or society as a whole – at the moment, we are not doing so.

The reality is that the current school curriculum, particularly in secondary school, is geared heavily towards prospective financial success, either directly or by virtue of a grade or degree. Of course, a certain level of financial attainment is necessary for a contented life. But one thing the mental health crisis has taught us is that, beyond our basic needs and rights, consumption does not lead to happiness. There are many individuals who are materially very successful but who suffer mentally, and likewise many who live simple, frugal lives while being very content. Beyond the necessities, external conditions have a limited effect on our happiness. Well-being is not something to be found outside of us, but something to be cultivated within. If we want future generations to live happily, it is vital that the education system adapts in full appreciation of this fact.

So, to truly adhere to this happiness principle, there is one reformative step that is imperative: we need to teach children and teenagers concrete methods for cultivating happiness. Given the widespread acknowledgement of mental health’s unmatched importance, it seems absurd that we do not consistently teach children how to manage their emotions. What if we provided children and teenagers fully fleshed-out courses on how to ease and transform anger, how to use social media responsibly, how to treat ourselves and others with love and compassion, how to handle hardships in life, how to make practice meditation and mindfulness, how to transform suffering, how to resist the craving of bad habits, how to manage excessive boredom and restlessness, how to avoid becoming reliant on others’ validation, how to relax deeply, how to cope with loneliness, how to breathe peacefully, and many, many more? Granted, such courses are not unheard of in the modern-day curriculum, but they are not treated with the required seriousness or consistency. They need the time, effort, and expertise that at least matches the more ordinary academic teachings. These new teachings, if carried out with the regularity that is needed, are capable of having a transformative effect on the mental health of future generations.

Considering that many of the reasons for recent declines in mental health are well-documented, there is a peculiar lack of urgency to address the root causes. If social media, for example, is directly linked to depression and low self-esteem, then why is its growth not being stopped? I think that this is indicative of society’s misguided emphasis on alleviation at the expense of prevention. The fact remains that until we alter something at the root, we cannot expect different results. A reformed education that not only considers happiness, but that prioritises happiness, may be one of the solutions that we need.