Mentatrixes #8: Subject Happiness

Should Schools Teach the Art of Being Happy?

Can happiness be learnt? And if yes, should it be learnt in school?

My generation grew up thinking that happiness is a dream for everyone to pursue, but its realisation depends on chance. Sometimes, on how stubborn you are in your dreaming: your dream will come true if you believe it with your whole heart, don’t they say that?

In communist Romania, happiness was officially no dream: it would result naturally from dedicating your life to motherland and to the goals of the Party. As simple as that.

But can we learn how to be happy, when happiness seems to be a state we achieve as a result of external events?

Strangely enough, happiness is a school subject in some schools in Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. It’s commonly treated as a curricular area within Ethics, and it even features as such in the official Bavarian school curriculum for grade 8, followed by Shaping one’s life, Dealing with consumer products responsibly, and Love and relationships.

Subject Happiness is apparently an interface between philosophy and psychology, and follows along the questions:

Who am I? What do I need (to be happy)? What can I do? What do I want?

There are happiness classes as early as primary, up to senior high school. The approach is not limited to positive psychology or mental health, as a way to counter or prevent depression, for example. It integrates self-reflection with an awareness of the importance of diet, sports, the body feeling, mindfulness, and even broader themes such as poverty, clean environment, or safety.

Here's the syllabus outline of a Happiness course:

I’ve had a look at various classroom activities and there seem to be three main patterns.

Purpose: awareness raising; format: discussions, pair work, use of pictures, symbols, input texts

Typically, students reflect here on what happiness means to them, or what is a good life in general. For example, younger students can be prompted to choose one statement about happiness, and then talk about it with the other mates:

Older students may reflect on what makes them feel good: “I’m happy when I feel my body is fit”, or “I’m happy when I’m with like-minded people”.

Kids may come up with a list of rules for being happy, for example: “I will not compare myself to the others”, or “I speak up when I’m happy about something”.

Building on that, discussions can integrate environmental issues, or discussion questions related to social justice, consumerism, or promises of false happiness (such as drugs).

Purpose: develop self-reflection and mindfulness habits; various formats

In groups of three, one student picks a postcard they like, and then the other two try to find connections between the student and the postcard; this way, the group practise empathy, while the student under the lens may discover surprising ways in which the others perceive them.

Young kids get a handful of beans to put in a pocket on the left; during the day, they should remove one bean for each happy moment (real, or recalled), and transfer it to the pocket on the right. This way, goes the narrative, they can take them out one by one in the evening and recount the happy moments of the day.

Alternatively, they may keep a happiness journal, where they record each happy moment, at the end of the day.

Purpose: experience their role in the group; format: games, group activities

Students do playful group activities that often involve movement, such as assembling, building, or balancing. The classroom becomes a stage, a playground, a dancing hall. The kids reflect afterwards on what went well, and what didn’t. They discover their strengths, and learn to deal with their weaknesses, gaining trust in the others and confidence in themselves.

There are no tests in school subject Happiness. In some schools, students are graded; however, they are not penalised for not participating, or not “performing” well in the activities.

---

One final comment: the German word Glück means both happiness and (good) luck, or chance. One of the early topics in subject Happiness is to reflect on the difference between the two.

They come in distinct grammatical patterns, too: in German you say you have luck, but you are happy. Having, versus being.

Which of these building blocks of a happiness education do you miss most? Which do you wish you’d had back in your school days? Which would you most like to offer your kids, or grandkids?

Is there a specific mistake, or a past challenge, that you could have avoided or overcome more easily, if you had been trained from a young age to develop the life competences above?

Some people say you can only learn the hard way. A school subject Happiness implies that we can learn some lessons in a safe, controlled environment. Are there lessons you learnt the hard way, which you believe in retrospect you could have been better off without?

That’s it for this week. Thanks for staying with me!