Advanced Video script Unit 6

Teaching happiness

T =Teacher, P = Pupil, N = Narrator, IL = Irene Lucas, UST = US Teacher, USP = US

Pupil,

MS = Professor Martin Seligman

T: Why is happiness important?

P: Well if you weren't happy you wouldn't, you wouldn't want to go to school.

N: For the first time the idea that we might teach happiness in schools is being taken

seriously. At this primary school in South Tyneside they think happiness is almost as

important as numeracy and literacy. It's more than just one school's policy though,

under new legislation the local authority has a duty of well-being. That means they

reckon pupils should be taught how to be happier.

IL: We believe that it's absolutely fundamental to quality of life in South Tyneside that we

take account of happiness. We would like our children to be able to put as much of a

premium on happiness in their life as they do on being very good at geography or very

good at history.

N: The Tyneside project is a spin-off from an experiment in Philadelphia in the United

States. A couple of years ago, local schools started teaching happiness as part of a

psychology research programme.

UST: OK, so who'd like to be first to share?

USP: One of my friends got leukaemia, and it's just like, I think through this, like, having to

deal with this I got, like, I've learned a lot from it.

MS: Friday you have a lesson about what's known about kindness. And then the next

Wednesday you have an assignment to do five kind things. Then you have an

assignment about what's known about strong families.

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 Advanced Video script Unit 6

N: So, does it work? Does teaching happiness make people happier? The first results are

encouraging, if not conclusive.

MS: We've been doing this now for two years and I'm not ready to, to make any claims

about teenage pregnancy or drug abuse or depression, but, you know I think these

kids are better people as a result of this, I think they're deeper people.

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 Advanced Video script Unit 6

World view

T = Tom, Y = Yvette

T: I think people these days maybe should be happier than they were in the past because

many things are, um, a lot easier, like I don't know for example, if you think in the

house, like doing your housework, like hoovering, like in the past you would have to

take your rug and bang it outside your window, takes ages, or your washing it would

like, you know, – these things were so laborious in the past and – and nowadays

they're really easy. So, you know.

Y: Mm, that is true, I mean technology makes our lives an awful lot easier nowadays,

doesn't it, and it makes a lot of these daily tasks easier, I see your point but, if you

think about, you know, during the war people were going through really difficult times

coping with men away, fighting the war and that was a really difficult period, but even

with all of that going on people bonded together, there was a sense of community

which I feel is really important in, um – in someone's feeling of, of happiness in – on a

daily basis.

T: Yeah, well it is true I mean, you know, you speak to old people and they sou– they

make the past sound as if it was real– all, you know they – much better like great fun

and lots of camaraderie, etc.

Y: But don't you think that, for example nowadays people have so many of their basic

needs met, so for exam– in a developed world, a developed country like the United

Kingdom, so many people have their basic needs met, you know, we've got shelter,

we've got food, um, we're very lucky in that, that people are striving for more, people

are striving for higher forms of happiness –

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 Advanced Video script Unit 6
T: Yeah.

Y: – that are kind of more intangible and harder to reach and I think that that causes quite

a lot of frustration actually and often depression and those kinds of feelings.

T: Like things like advertising and, um, the media, so people aspire to being something

that's not really realistic –

Y: Exactly.

T: – they're constantly looking for that, but it's not really there.

Y: Yeah, it puts a lot of pressure on people, I think, that they need to have all these things

in order to feel happy when, when you don't, well you could – I believe you don't.

T: Yeah, and then there's a lot about, um, kind of like physicality so a lot of people get

de– get depressed about, they think they don't look, look good enough because they

compare themselves to unrealistic kind of celebrity models and, and what not.

Y: Mm definitely, I think there's a real danger that our culture is putting way too much

emphasis on superficial things like the way you look and the way you dress and the car

you have.

T: Sure, yeah.

T: So what do you think about this idea that happiness can be taught, that people can

teach, for example, children at school to be happy?

Y: Mm, I think that's a, a lofty ambition, a lovely ambition but I think that that's a very big

area to, um, to have as a learning goal in your classroom as a teacher, um, how would

you go about teaching happiness because, as you said earlier, different things make

different people happy. What I think is really important is that we teach our kids to have

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 Advanced Video script Unit 6
confidence in their decisions that they make, and that we foster independence so that

they're happy making their own decisions.

T: And do you think that's more of a – a teacher's responsibility or a parent's

responsibility?

Y: I think it's both. It's obviously got to start at home, but if you think of the amount of time

that kids spend at school, eight or nine hours a day, then that has to be the school's

responsibility as well in consultation with the, with the parents definitely.

T: Mm, and one thing is – we are assuming that the teachers are all happy in the first

place, so –

Y: Exactly, you've got to have good models there as well haven't you, you've got to be a

good model as a parent and you've got to be a good model as a, as a teacher and I

think it's important to impart to students that, you know, happiness or contentment is

not something that you feel every single day, every minute of that day.

T: That's important, yeah, I agree.

Y: It's something that, you know, in general over your, your life or that phase in your life

that you're, you're happy with what's happening in your life.

T: Absolutely.

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