What if We Taught Happiness in Elementary?

Happiness by Nick Youngson
 CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

This morning I was listening to the CBC radio show The Current. Anna Maria Tremonti was interviewing a Yale professor who was offering a widely popular course about happiness. With all the stressors of these times it makes sense that high-achieving youth want to know more about happiness and how to achieve it. It's fantastic that Yale is offering credit to students to learn how to live a better life rather than solely focus on a successful life. A bit of poking around led me to find Berkley's version called "The Science of Happiness". Happiness is what I felt when I learned both of these are offered to all of us for free - just follow the links to learn more.

Also this morning, and for the last two months, I have been struggling with how to help my school overcome some of the bullying issues it currently faces. Being new at the school makes it hard to know what has been tried or even make a guess at what didn't work with what has been tried. There are resources on numerous websites aimed at educating students and teachers in how to end bullying. A person can get lost in all the information!  And I did. But a couple things were repeated: bullies lack empathy and victims are or become insecure. Our students are struggling with unknown issues and where some seek power, others feel insecure and are therefore vulnerable -  and some are both.

All this thinking led to more questions, as it so often does. What if we taught a course about happiness? Would this help bullies gain empathy? Would it help students overcome insecurities? Would it empower bystanders to become upstanders? What if ...