English Literature – Articles ☆ Positive Education # 02:  The Science of happiness and well-being ☆ Shri Jagat Singh Bisht ☆

Positive Psychology and Positive Education

The Science of happiness and well-being

“Psychological wealth includes life satisfaction, the feeling that life is full of meaning, a sense of engagement in interesting activities, the pursuit of important goals, the experience of positive emotional feelings, and a sense of spirituality that connects people to things larger than themselves.”

Edward Deiner

Schools teach history, geography, science, maths, and grammar. Parents desire their children to do well in life and flourish. Children want to play freely and explore their dreams. Where do all these lines meet?

Positive Psychology, the science of happiness, and Positive Education, the combination of traditional education with the study of well-being, provide us an answer to this question.

Positive Psychology is the modern science of happiness and well-being. It provides a new understanding of happiness and well-being and how to achieve them.

It dispels myths and wrong notions about happiness and suggests evidence-based happiness-enhancing strategies from which one may choose activities suitable for oneself.

The science of positive psychology seeks to understand positive emotion, build strength and virtue, and provide guideposts for finding what Aristotle called the “good life.”

Positive psychology has three pillars:

• First is the study of positive emotions like gratitude, joy, and hope. 
• Second is the study of the positive traits, foremost among them the strengths and virtues, but also the ‘abilities’ such as intelligence and athleticism.
• Third is the study of positive institutions, such as democracy, strong families, and free enquiry, that support the virtues, which in turn support the positive emotions.

Positive Education

“All young people need to learn workplace skills, which has been the subject matter of the education system in place for two hundred years. In addition, we can now teach the skills of well-being – of how to have more positive emotion, more meaning, better relationships, and more positive accomplishment.”

Martin Seligman

Positive Education is the combination of traditional education with the study of happiness and well-being.

It is an approach to education that blends academic learning with character and well-being.

It is preparing students with life skills, such as, grit, optimism, resilience, growth mindset, engagement, and mindfulness, amongst others.

Positive education pairs traditional schooling with positive psychology interventions to improve well-being.

Positive Education focuses on specific skills that assist students to strengthen their relationships, build positive emotions, enhance personal resilience, promote mindfulness and encourage a healthy lifestyle.

It brings together the science of Positive Psychology with best practice teaching to encourage and support individuals, schools and communities to flourish.

We refer to flourishing as a combination of ‘feeling good and doing good’.

Institute of Positive Education

According to Anthony Seldon, “Positive Education is preparing students for the tests of life, not just a life of tests. Well-being should be at the heart of education – not the periphery.”

The concept has support from a range of prominent psychologists and practising teachers. The idea is the wellbeing of students enhances learning and develops them as good citizens.

Intelligence and Character

• Angela Duckworth says, “Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. Character education is made up of three things:
• strengths of heart (give to, and receive, from others),
• strengths of mind (think, imagine, create),
• and strengths of will (self-control, choice, grit).”

“Successful painters, dancers, poets, novelists, physicists, biologists, and psychologists seem to have crafted lives for themselves around a consuming passion. These are admirable lives, desirable lives, the sort that many young people dream of having when they look to these people as role models.”

Jonathan Haidt

Please click on the following links to read previously published posts “Positive Education” 👉

English Literature – Articles ☆ Positive Education # 01: Fundamentals of happiness and well-being for children and their parents ☆ Shri Jagat Singh Bisht ☆