Five things that excite me about Wellbeing Education

‘So Positive Psychology takes seriously the bright hope that if you find yourself stuck in the parking lot of life, with few and only ephemeral pleasures, with minimal gratifications, and without meaning, there is a road out. This road takes you through the countryside of pleasure and gratification, up into the high country of strength and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfillment: meaning and purpose.’

         Professor Martin Seligman

 

 

There is a beautiful, confident green to summer in Philadelphia that mirrors (or is perhaps formative of) the confidence of its people. As I walked along the Schuylkill river the verdant foliage was almost explosive in its summer growth. The beautiful boathouses along the river and the gentle clunk of oarsmen practicing on the water makes for a most beautiful morning scene. I was out walking along the river path in the morning sun to shake off the jet-lag from the long trip from Port Elizabeth, and the soul-feeding view in the bright summer sun did just that. 

 

It was in June 2019 that I was in Philadelphia as an invitee to a global summit on positive education, hosted by Professor Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. A small group of academics, Eisenhower Fellows, and educational practitioners gathered to review the global state of Positive Education, and to answer the ‘what next’ questions of this developing field. It was an incredibly stimulating summit (and to be honest, for much of it I was completely out of my intellectual depth - but since my advice to my students has always been to grab each learning opportunity and learn to swim rather than to wait to jump in until you feel ready, there I was enjoying an intellectual feast of a scale I have not experienced since).  Since that watershed conference I have been part of various initiatives that have seen the field evolve from the basics of positive psychology (and its subset, positive education), to what is now globally referenced as wellbeing education.

 

I am interested in human wellbeing in education because of its proactive nature. It seems so primitive for an educator to wait for 'deficiency' before rolling out the psychological medicine cabinet, rather than using those powerful tools proactively, to take well-functioning individuals (staff, parents, and students) and lift them to a new level of flourishing. 

 

From my own experience I have seen the benefits of human wellbeing in the performance of individual students (although I would never argue for wellbeing as a performance enhancing strategy in a mercenary way, there is no doubt that a flourishing child does better), and I have been amazed to see the benefits of wellbeing in the performance of sports teams (and indeed, the link between flourishing teams and flourishing children in the team is an interesting spiral of fulfilment to observe), and the work done by (for example) Transylvania College in Romania embedding positive psychology in their parent body has been ground-breaking.

 

I am excited that wellbeing principles can be embedded into a curriculum as a meta-structure, but that these simple principles can actually be taught explicitly too. Having taught and consciously worked through principles of resilience, for example, I was able to draw upon them in life-changing ways when facing seemingly insurmountable challenge in my own life. 

 

I am excited about the wealth of research that underpins the field (the field is not new, the time-honoured principles are not untested - I like to think of this as a way of organising, rather than a new invention). This research-based aspect is important to me - sometimes 'wellness' or 'wellbeing' is mis-sold as meta-physical, airy-fairy, cultish escapism, which it is most certainly not.

 

Wellbeing education is, therefore, not an ‘add on’ or a ‘programme’. It is, rather, an intentional way of thinking about that which we do - that we can then create the environment where our pupils may be able to identify their own unique giftedness, and flourish. By embracing mindfulness, growing positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and achievement, we create a way of viewing life that not only builds wellbeing for its own inherent good, but enhances the systemic wellbeing and performance. 

 

I am excited by the talent that we have in South Africa, and the excellent work being done by Craig Carolan (and many others) makes it possible for schools to embrace wellbeing and implement its key elements without having to invent it for themselves or travel the world to find best practice. I am especially excited by the potential that wellbeing education holds for mending the fractured social fabric in so many of the under-resourced corners of South Africa.

 

In a world where our youth are increasingly anxious and where rates of teenage depression are at record highs, the benefits of wellness are not only intuitively obvious, but they are validated by research. I am excited by positive education for all of the reasons above, but, especially, as a parent, I know that there can be no better way to raise a child than by contributing to a mindset where s/he may flourish. It’s as simple as that.