The idea of happiness boomed in the public as well as in the academic domain over the last decade and has not reached its peak yet. However, the understanding of happiness as being the utmost goal of human beings is hardly new. Philosophers have discussed this topic, under various terms, throughout history. One of the most recent philosophical concepts has been conducted by Wilhelm Schmid in his book Philosophie der Lebenskunst [Philosophy of the Art of Living], which is a theory (...) about the good and beautiful life from a modern perspective under consideration of the philosophical history of this topic. Martin Seligman presented the ‘happiness formula’ in his book Authentic Happiness in 2002 and research about happiness, subjective well-being and life satisfaction began to form the field of positive psychology. This article provides a critical comparative analysis of philosophical concepts of the art of living and positive psychological research from an educational point of view. It will explore the extent of common ground between these disciplines, where they differ, and where they might be complementary. (shrink)

The article aims to provide a justification for the claim that optimal development and becoming an optimiser are educational ideals that parents should pursue in raising their children. Optimal development is conceptualised as enabling children to grow into flourishing persons, that is persons who have developed their given possibilities to the full and optimally fulfil the domains that can be said to be objectively good for all people. This also comprises the development of children into persons who want to become (...) optimisers and pursue excellent aims in life, i.e. who pursue ideals. Optimal development is not only an ideal, it requires ideals too. With excellent examples of the objective goods that are good for all people, children are given examples of what it means to strive for the best and are thereby enabled to develop themselves to the full. Two main points of critique, namely that it leads to elitism and to neurotic perfectionism are discussed and rebutted. This leads to a defence of a form of realistic perfectionism. The article ends with a description of the way in which parents could aspire towards the ideal aim of realistic perfectionism. (shrink)

Emotion education is enjoying new-found popularity. This paper explores the ‘cosy consensus’ that seems to have developed in education circles, according to which approaches to emotion education are immune from metaethical considerations such as contrasting rationalist and sentimentalist views about the moral ontology of emotions. I spell out five common assumptions of recent approaches to emotion education and explore their potential compatibility with four paradigmatic moral ontologies. I argue that three of these ontologies fail to harmonise with the common assumptions. (...) Either those three must therefore be rejected or, if we want to retain one or more of them, we need to revise our assumptions about the practice of emotion education in ways that are both radical and, I argue, ultimately unacceptable. (shrink)

The increased governmental focus on happiness since the late 1990s, and particularly since the economic crash of 2008, has been informed predominantly by a conceptualisation of happiness promoted by the field of positive psychology, and adopted and developed in fields such as behavioural economics and more recently in fields such as neuroeducation. Concepts, or traits, associated with feeling happy or satisfied with our lives, such as resilience, are now promoted across both public and private domains as a means to improve (...) our quality of life, our productivity and our attainment. The promotion of this positive psychological notion of happiness in the context of education not only presents these traits as virtues of the productive learning citizen but also effects a delegitimisation of the negative. Analysis of curricula programmes, seen alongside the shift taken towards a focus on the individual as brain, highlights the pedagogical and political implications of this. (shrink)

By the year 2000, the management of education in England had lost much of its capacity to ensure the commitment of headteachers and teachers. As market forces engendered competition among schools, the bureaucratic monitoring of schools by agencies of government increased on the grounds that objective and comparable data about schools should be made public so that parents could express a rational choice of school. Levels of stress increased; workloads intensified. Thereafter, a series of ‘softer’ approaches emerged in order to (...) deal with this. They have coalesced around the concept of ‘leadership’, particularly distributed leadership and, more recently, emotional leadership and spiritual leadership. Distributed leadership draws on socio-cultural activity theory; emotional leadership is informed by positive psychology; spiritual leadership by eastern mysticism. Each has its advocates and its critics. At issue, however, is not so much their relative effectiveness but rather it is to relate them to the economic, cultural and political trends which have allowed them to emerge. These ‘soft’ normative leadership approaches have not supplanted a digitally-informed rational bureaucratic form in education; they are supplementing it. The theoretical stance taken falls within the field of critical theory. (shrink)

In recent decades education is increasingly perceived as an instrument for generating economic growth and enhancing production. Unexpectedly, however, many prominent economists, throughout history, have rejected this view of education. This article examines the grounds on which Tibor Scitovsky, who was one of the leading economists of twentieth century America, objected to the spread of production oriented education. The article begins by an historical overview of the relationship between economic and educational theory. It then explains why Scitovsky held the economic (...) growth achieved in the 20th necessitates an educational reform and presents the outline of this proposed educational reform. It is argued that by distinguishing between creative and defensive forms of consumption and by highlighting the inherent tension between comfort and pleasure, Scitovsky offers an innovative and challenging conception of the desired relationship between economics and education that can serve as an alternative to the one that prevails today and amend its many fallacies. The paper concludes by briefly exploring some of the educational implications that stem from Scitovsky’s thought. It is maintained that Scitovsky’s views provides an original defense for teaching the arts and humanities and a suggestive perspective on consumer education and teaching of high culture. (shrink)

Originating from philosophy and science, many different ideas have made their way into educational policies. Educational policies often take such ideas completely out of context, and enforce them as general norms to every aspect of education; even opposing ideals make their way into school’s curricula, teaching techniques, assignments, and procedures. Meanwhile, inside the actual classrooms, teachers and students are left in limbo, trying to comply with, techniques, evaluation forms and a growing technical educational vocabulary. Here I would like to propose (...) an antidote to this absurdity by reminding us what teachers and students already know. Such an antidote can be found in J. L. Austin’s speech act theory. In this paper, I propose we revisit speech act theory and treat it as an educational theory. That might help us dismantle false dichotomies troubling education for decades. The point is not that the discussion over educational policies and priorities should stop, but that it should be kept in appropriate perspective. A modified speech act theory can help us facilitate such a perspective. (shrink)

Over the past decades, there has been an ongoing debate about whether education should aim at the cultivation of emotional wellbeing of self-esteeming personalities or whether it should prioritise literacy and the cognitive development of students. However, it might be the case that the two are not easily distinguished in educational contexts. In this paper I use J.L. Austin's original work on speech acts to emphasise the interconnection between the cognitive and emotional aspects of our utterances, and illustrate how emotional (...) force affects communication in the classroom. (shrink)