What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy?

"What bums me out is to know that a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and loved for who they are. So it seems to me, when adults say, What do you want to be when you grow up? they just automatically assume that you'll be happy and healthy. Maybe that's not the case.

Go to school. Go to college. Get a job. Get married. Boom! Then you'll be happy. Right? We don't seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools. It's separate from schools and for some kids, it doesn't exist at all. 

But what if we didn't make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy? Because that's what it is: a practice. And a simple practice at that." 

~ Logan Laplante, from "Hackschooling Makes Me Happy," TEDxUniversityofNevada

Sticking with Your Future

"We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year, and of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students? We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money?

In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't I.Q. 

It was grit.

Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint."

~ Angela Lee Duckworth

See also:

• How much grit do you have? 
• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House. [library]

We Can't Mass Produce Students

The Simple Solution to Education

by Seth Godin, from We Are All Weird: The Myth of Mass and the End of Compliance

A different approach to education is almost impossible to conceptualize and seemingly impossible to execute.

The simple alternative to our broken system of education is to embrace the weird. To abandon normal. To acknowledge that our factories don’t need so many cogs, so many compliant workers, so many people willing to work cheap.

It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

It’s not easy because we can’t process weird. We can’t mass-produce students when we have to work with them one at a time or in like-minded groups. We can’t test these kids into compliance, and thus we can’t have a reliable, process-oriented factory mindset for the business of education.

No, it’s not easy at all.

When we consider whom we pay the most, whom we seek to hire, whom we applaud, follow, and emulate, these grown-ups are the outliers, the weird ones. Did they get here by being normal students in school and then magically transform themselves into Yo-Yo Ma or Richard Branson? Hardly.

The stories of so many outliers are remarkably familiar. They didn’t like the conformity forced on them by school. Struggled. Suffered. Survived. And now they’re revered.

What happens if our schools (and the people who run them and fund them) stop seeing the mass and start looking for the weird? What if they acknowledge that more compliance doesn’t make a better school, but merely makes one that’s easier to run?

My proposed solution is simple: don’t waste a lot of time and money pushing kids in directions they don’t want to go. Instead, find out what weirdness they excel at and encourage them to do that. Then get out of the way.

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See also: "How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century," by Claudia Wallis and Sonja Steptoe, Time Magazine, December 10, 2006

Decreased Symptoms of Stress in Students

Excerpt from "Mindfulness Programs In Schools Reduce Symptoms Of Depression Among Adolescents: Study," by Carolyn Gregoire, The Huffington Post, March 15, 2013:

University of Leuven study looked at the experiences of 408 students from five different schools in Flanders, Belgium, all between the ages of 13 and 20. At the beginning of the study, the students answered a questionnaire designed to reveal symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress, and were then divided into a test group and a control group. The test group followed an in-class mindfulness training program which consisted of instruction in mindful breathing and body scan exercises, sharing experiences of these exercises, group reflection, inspiring stories, and education on stress, depression and self-care. The control group, meanwhile, received no training. All students filled out the questionnaire after the training, and again six months later.

The researchers found that students who adhered to the mindfulness program exhibited decreased symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression both immediately after and six months after the program. Whereas before the training, 21 percent of the test group and 24 percent of the control group reported symptoms of depression, after the mindfulness training, 15 percent of the test group versus 27 percent of the control group had depression symptoms. Six months later, 16 percent of the test group and 31 percent of the control group showed signs of depression.

The study is the first to examine the effects of mindfulness on depression among adolescents in a classroom setting, but previous research has found that mindfulness meditation can reduce symptoms of depression and chronic pain in adult patients...

This month, the first international conference for mindfulness in schools will take place in London. And in the U.S., the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) program, supported by Congressman Tim Ryan, is bringing mindfulness training into schools as a way to boost students' emotional resilience and help improve academic performance.

More...

An Instant's Recognition

"Paper on paper" (aka "Origamis") series, Marc Fichou

"Thinking is of immense importance, and we might have a better world if we all learned how to think. But at the same time, thinking may only be the prelude to meaning. We read, take classes, converse, study, and perhaps write.  These intellectual activities are priceless, but their value may be to prepare us for an instant's recognition of the vital seed, what the ancients called the scintilla, the spark, that gives life to everything we do and see.  Once we glimpse that spark, we will have learned that there is indeed a beyond that can be found in what is closest at hand. All our education might be brought to a point where it allows us to glimpse in wonder the slightest breath of life in front of us."

~ Thomas Moore, from Original Self: Living with Paradox and Authenticity

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See also:

Marc Fichou
“Contenant Contenu” (Containing, Contained…)
Robert Berman Gallery
January 5 - February 16, 2013