Schools urged to teach children how to be happy
Children should learn about moral values and the way to happiness from a new cohort of school teachers specifically trained for the job, according to new academic research.
Richard Layard, the director of the centre for economic performance at the London School of Economics, argues that the major purpose of schools must be to help develop good and happy people and they should aim to train character and provide moral education.
He advocates creating a team of fully trained teachers in personal, social and health education, which should become a specialism of the postgraduate certificate of education.
Getting children to care about the wellbeing of others requires an "educational revolution" where the central purpose of schools is to teach young people about the main secrets of happiness for which there is empirical evidence, Professor Layard said.
While this all sounds warm and fuzzy, it raises some ugly problems.
First, whose morals standards will be taught?
What are the long term consequences of the school supplanting parental responsibility?
Can "happiness" be taught in an institutional setting?
Exactly when is the school going to have time to teach the academic subjects?
How much money will the government extort from the tax payers to finance this grand quest for happiness?
Effective teachers naturally model for their students how to be happy. It is a product of their character and manifest through their conduct. Neither of which has a thing to do with teacher training or certification. It is one of those "either you got it or you don't things." Worse, I've seen how the teacher certification program drives these high caliber people away.
In my school experience, about 10-20% of my teachers, for lack of a better description, were good from the inside out. These teachers had a great influence in my life not because of HOW they were trained, but because of WHO they were deep down where it counts.
I'm very glad that as homeschoolers we can avoid the social engineering experiments going on in our schools.
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Related Tags: teacher training, school agenda, happiness training, homeschool, public school, social engineering
4 comments:
My response to this article can be best expressed as answers to the questions asked therein.
-What are the long term consequences of the school supplanting parental responsibility? Learning happens best when the students is emotionally, socially, mentally, and physically healthy. Ideally this is created in a healthy home, where the parents are the primary stewards of the overall well-being of their child. However, this situation is not always possible, and it seems that the number of truly healthy homes is decreasing. The proposal given by Richard Layard seems to be an attempt to counterbalance that. Yes, the school may become a surrogate parent for some students, but those students need that far more than they need the times tables.
-Exactly when is the school going to have time to teach the academic subjects? If students aren't prepared to learn, education happens so slowly that it's almost a waste of time. This is the state that schools are currently in--moving at a snail's pace. An improvement to the overall well-being of the students will allow teachers to teach at a more rigorous pace, for which the students will be prepared.
-How much money will the government extort from the tax payers to finance this grand quest for happiness? Counter-question: How much tax payer money do you current spend on students who were unhappy in school and act out on that as adults? Students who are not properly prepared for life often have to resort to extreme (law-breaking) measures just to get by. Providing society with healthy individuals will save tax money in the long run.
-Whose moral standards will be taught? An outline of some of the standards were included in the original article.
--Care more about other people than themselves.
--Not constantly compare themselves with other people.
--Choose goals that stretch them but are attainable.
--Challenge negative thoughts by focusing on the positive.
These seem like great moral ideas to me. Christians don't have a monopoly on morality. Don't be afraid of the moral systems of others--they're probably a lot like yours.
Yes, in an ideal world, school wouldn't have to worry about these things like social and emotional health because those things would be taught in the home. Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world. Pulling out of the system and homeschooling your children may solve the problem for one person, but there are others out there who need help--lots of it. Mr. Layard's proposal gives me hope for the future of public education.
>Yes, the school may become a surrogate parent for some students, but those students need that far more than they need the times tables.
The DARE program is a good example of this type of thinking. Long term studies show that the DARE program has NO longer term effect on drug/alcohol abuse/use and in some cases actually increases it. The only thing it accomplishes is it makes adults feel like they are doing something when they are really wasting time and money.
Studies show that PARENTS are the most effective means of influencing the behavior of children. Any program that ignores the parents will not be effective over time.
It is not fair to yet again waste the time of the students who come to school ready to learn.
Good teachers and schools have always modeled the kind of thinking this program promotes. Training teachers to say the right thing if their personal lives demonstrate otherwise is a waste of time. This program also puts another hurdle for teacher training which is already filled with fluff and nonsense.
Before jumping on the band wagon of a new program and investing money and resources, let's demonstrate that it actually works, the benefits last over time, and that it does no harm to another segment of students.
California schools are a good example of the damage that can be done by embracing yet another nice sounding but unproven program.
>It is not fair to yet again waste the time of the students who come to school ready to learn.
I agree that schools should be wary of a new program, and I agree that ideally schools shouldn't need to focus on things that the parents should be doing. (And, having gone through DARE myself, I agree that it was pretty lame.)
Unfortunately, there are parents out there who don't preprare their kids well. These are the students with whom the teachers spend most of their time and effort, often with little effect. I think that this "wastes" the time of the students who really want to learn because 90% of the teacher's attention is directed at the "problem" children.
What is to be done about these students? I don't really have an answer for that--which is why I quit teaching myself (and probably one of the reasons why you're homeschooling your kids). When I tried to come up with an answer, the only thing I could think of was a sort of moral education for the students. It may not be as effective as having the parents do it, but when the parents aren't responsible, what is the answer?
>It may not be as effective as having the parents do it, but when the parents aren't responsible, what is the answer?
I agree that's a tough question. Nobody wants to see the potential of children wasted.
First step is to look at educational systems that function well, and try to figure out why.
Second, the proposed changes need to be evaluated on a long term basis.
That's why so much of public education fails. The system thinks it can force or trick students to a desired goal without the students actively choosing to follow.
As long as public education is coercive in nature (attendance laws etc.) and circumvents parental responsibility, it will fail.
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