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My mother’s favourite song was Happiness sung by Ken Dodd, which
was released in 1964. Indeed I went, with my mother, to see him in
‘Doddy’s here’ at the London Palladium in 1965, a show in which he
sang his signature song (How cool is that?) See him below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEjlKOEjM1M Whilst you’re on
youtube take time to watch a bizarre interview with Ken Dodd and
the Beatles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbjHqnb3dMM) This
song does not have the greatest lyric ever but it made my mum smile
every time she heard it, which is why she liked it. Below are a couple
of verses from the song.
To me this old world is a wonderful place
And I'm just about the luckiest human in the whole human race
I've got no silver and I've got no gold
Just a whole lot of happiness in my soul
A wise old man told me one time
That happiness is nothing but a frame of mind
I hope when you go to measuring my success
That you don't count my money count my happiness
The now veteran comedian clearly had an intuitive grasp of
something which has been consistently proven, by academic
research, over the years; that there is no correlation between
increases in income and happiness (Happiness: Lessons from
a New Science by Richard Layard and Happiness, Economics
and Public Policy by Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod). The
graph below is typical of the research, in the USA and UK,
which shows that although incomes rose steeply in the 20th
century people’s reported state of happiness fluctuated but
remained stubbornly stable. This finding is not as clear in
other European countries.
The recent release of the new film by Mike Leigh, ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’,
about a relentlessly optimistic and happy primary school teacher,
Poppy Cross, started me thinking about how do people become
happy. Happiness is something which is a common aspiration
for all of us. Happiness was enshrined in the American
Declaration of Independence ('We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness');arguably the most
successful nation in history. But Americans have not become
happier. Indeed the only country in the world (so far!) that has
identified happiness as a goal for the country is Bhutan. King
Jigme Singye Wangchuck who came to power at the age of 16,
in 1972, coined the term Gross National Happiness (GNH). The
four pillars of GNH are the promotion of equitable and sustainable
socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of
cultural values, conservation of the natural environment and
establishment of good governance. A film shot in the mid 1990s
gives an idea of GNH in Bhutan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXJwNSkdTH0 ).
There has however been a massive growth in research on happiness
and related topics in what is broadly termed ‘positive psychology’
which was pioneered by Martin Seligman. There is little agreement
about a definition of happiness. Is happiness permanent or transitory? Do we judge happiness by external criteria or our internal state of mind? Some psychologists define it as life satisfaction or the
degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his or her
life-as-a-whole favourably. In other words: how well he or she likes
the life he/she leads. An article published in 2005 in the Journal of
Happiness Studies analysed 916 surveys of over a million people in
forty-five countries and found that, on average, people placed
themselves at seven on the zero-to-ten scale of happiness according
to this definition.
This research has begun to influence politicians in the USA and UK.
David Cameron, in a speech delivered two years ago, set out a new
political agenda; ‘GDP. Gross domestic product. Yes it's vital. It
measures the wealth of our society. But it hardly tells the whole story. . . It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being. . . It's about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture, and above all the strength of our relationships’.
This was developed, in an educational context arguing for the
continuation of Ancient History a level, last year, by the recently elected Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who said in an article, ‘We do what we do because we hope to achieve happiness. Every skill and every pursuit and every practical effort or undertaking seems to aim at some good, says old Aristotle, my all-time hero, and that goal is happiness . . .(Gordon Brown) does not understand that an educational system can be a eudaemonic triumph even if it encourages disciplines that add not a penny to national output . . . the advantage of study can consist in the happiness engendered by knowledge itself; and though you can certainly argue, as I do, that we are likely to have a much stronger economy if young people have the intellectual and emotional satisfaction of understanding their civilisation, and how it evolved, that is not the point. The point is that these subjects are a joy and an end in themselves’.
( http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/30987/the-pursuit-of-happiness.thtml ).
Richard Layard argued in an article http://cep.lse.ac.uk/centrepiece/v12i1/layard.pdf ), also published last year, that the primary purpose of schools should be the development of good and happy people. He suggested that students should have compulsory lessons about topics and skills that promote happiness including managing feelings, serving others and appreciating beauty. Anthony Seldon and Frank Furedi debated the topic of whether it was possible to teach happiness earlier this year. Seldon argued that schools should teach students to handle relationships with technology, the environment, other people and with themselves. This would enable them to be happy. Furedi argued that teaching happiness was really promoting psychobabble and was a distraction from teaching subjects that matter like English and Mathematics. Happiness could not be learnt but resulted from life’s encounters and challenges. The debate is summarized at http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2257747,00.html .
If happiness leads people to be more sociable, generous, productive
at work and mentally healthy then should we have ‘happiness lessons’
at NHGS? If the pursuit of happiness is our goal then should we
not educate students about happiness and its achievement?
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