Can happiness be taught??

I found happiness in the Daily Telegraph comment section earlier in the week and not just because Simon Heffer is abdicating responsibility therein.

Blair biographer Anthony Seddon proposed that the teaching of how to find happiness should be on the curriculum at school. As Mr Seddon is also Master of Wellington College this deserves to be taken with due consideration.

Unless blessed with a home environment and a sense of self capable of growing in harmony with various other teenage growth spurts and transformations, school days aren't necessarily the happiest days of our lives.

In my own case, I was merrily permitted through GCSE and A levels to nurture an alarming neurosis that left me ill equipped for university and life beyond. This isn't to deny my responsibility for my actions, I was an intensely intense sullen wretch and refused to take any of the positive courses available to me from taking up extra tuition for History or Latin at Oxford to playing ping pong instead of bunking off behind Bathwick hill to smoke and idle PE lessons away.

The nurturing of a sense of responsibility at these difficult ages is vital. As Seddon explains:

Lessons are centred on the development of personal responsibility by each child. Pupils learn how to manage their own bodies, minds and emotions, and how to rely on themselves, rather than on other people or drugs, including alcohol.

The aim is to embed lessons and habits that will last for life. Children are taught how to relax when they are worried, how to make the right decision when a variety of courses is presented to them, and how to manage themselves when they feel lonely or low without resorting to pills.

Relationships with others, the greatest cause of both happiness and unhappiness in life, are also studied in detail. The pupils learn how to identify and treasure true friends, and how to avoid relationships which are damaging and destructive. The aim is for pupils to emerge aged 18 not only with excellent academic results, but also as rounded human beings.

It all depends ultimately on what kind of society we want to build. We need a new education debate about the purpose of schooling. For too long, we have been debating the structure of schools rather than their aim. While the politicians have fiddled, schools have descended towards exam factories.

For me at least, the only teacher at school who was able to listen and at least acknowledge that within my self alienated persona was somebody capable of loving thhemselves and others but refusing to show it was Dr Frank Thorn, head of sixth form and Latin, beardy weirdy, the 70s suit and kipper tie wearing Francophile powerhouse of sharp intellect and soft good humour who for me has embodied what humanistic education should be.

The pioneer for this approach to teaching happiness is Dr Martin Seligman when he was president of the American Psychological Association. He asked why so much psychology was devoted to examining illness and aberration, rather than looking at the factors that lead to a healthy and happy life. From his questioning came "positive psychology" and the teaching of wellbeing at his own university, Pennsylvania, and at Harvard, where it has been the most popular elective course among undergraduates.

SGI President Daisaku Ikeda writes from an active buddhist humanistic perspective on the purpose of happiness in an increasingly stress filled society.

His belief is that we need to fight the smaller self and develop a broader conern for the lives of others.

He cites the well known buddhist parable....

One day, Shakyamuni was approached by a woman wracked by grief at the loss of her child. She begged him to bring her baby back to life. Shakyamuni comforted her and offered to prepare a medicine that would revive her child. To make this he would need a mustard seed, which he instructed her to find in a nearby village. This mustard seed, however, would have to come from a home that had never experienced the death of a family member. The woman set out from house to house, asking each for a mustard seed. But nowhere could she find a home that had never known death. As she continued her quest, the woman began to realize her suffering was something shared by all people. She returned to Shakyamuni determined not to be overwhelmed by grief.

According to Ikeda,

Hans Selye, who pioneered the field of stress research, offered the following advice based on his own experience of battling cancer: First, establish and maintain your own goals in life. Second, live so that you are necessary to others--such a way of life is ultimately beneficial to yourself.

Now, more than ever, we need to develop the qualities of strength, wisdom and hope as we forge expanding networks of mutual support.

In the end, the key to living in a stress-filled society lies in feeling the suffering of others as our own--in unleashing the universal human capacity for empathy. There is no need to carry the burden of a heavy heart alone.

So let's see if we can't embed the lessons for living strong lives based on a sense of an indestructible sense of self!