According to the BBC News today, there are plans afoot to make UK schools monitor children’s well-being, as well as their exam results.

On closer inspection of the source report in the Guardian, 18 new social targets are being proposed, among them:

* bullying
* teenage pregnancy rates
* pupil’s drug problems
* criminal records
* obesity levels.

Apparently the move is part of a government attempt to reduce drug use, and the teenage pregnancy rate (ours is the highest in Europe). How setting new targets for schools is going to achieve this I’m not entirely sure. ‘What gets measured gets managed’ say some business people. OK, but that’s a long way away from ‘what gets measured gets managed well’.

Incidentally, the above 5 measures are not well-being measures, strictly speaking. The assumption being made by the government (wrongly) is that if you reduce what is negative (ill-being) you automatically increase what is positive (well-being). Personally, I think we’d have far more of a positive effect if we actually focussed on what makes children flourish in the first place.

If you have any views on this, I’d love to hear them.

This month’s posting for Positive Psychology News Daily focuses the importance of space in the development of well-being in children, and what this means for the rest of us.

In Wednesday’s HARDTalk programme, BBC journalist, Stephen Sackur, interviewed Professor Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology, about such questions as whether positive psychology is truly scientific or mere psychobabble, whether or not well-being should be a political issue, and whether it would be better to put our efforts into alleviating mental illness instead.

If you have 30 minutes to spare this is an excellent introduction to the background and current issues in positive psychology. Sackur’s argument that helping mentally ill people is a more worthwhile pursuit for psychologists than increasing others’ happiness is one which many in the first MAPP cohort have wrestled with. Seligman’s response is interesting – getting rid of depression and anxiety does not in itself lead to well-being because the skills you need to fight these conditions are not the same as the skills you need to experience positive emotion and find engagement and meaning in life.

Asked whether his ideas can live comfortably with ‘ruthless capitalism’, Seligman says no; his point is that there is bad consumerism (material goods to which we habituate) and good consumerism which creates engagement and meaning.

I’m wondering whether Seligman would have come out of the argument quite so well had Jeremy Paxman been interviewing him. Sackur doesn’t ask, for example, why the schools Resilience project that Seligman is spearheading in South Tyneside (and Hertfordshire and Manchester) is aimed at helping kids combat depression; surely what the project should be focussed on, if you buy the whole happiness argument, is increasing kids’ well-being?

For me, there are two important points. Firstly, no-one in positive psychology is asking why depression levels amongst school-kids (and adults for that matter) in the UK are increasing in the first place*, and what we are doing to address the causes. I’m sure Seligman would have had an answer for that.

The other point is that ‘people muddle through’ is not a very sound argument with which to criticise positive psychology! Not only does depression impact life-chances negatively e.g. it affects ability at school, attendance at work and your immune system (all of which are huge costs to society), research shows that happiness brings benefits such as increasing health, longevity and productivity. I think these seem like very good reasons for taking positive psychology seriously, don’t you?

* But see child psychologist Oliver James’ work “Affluenza”.

Thanks to Thanos Karanatsios for the link

There’s increasing coverage in the UK media of the so-called “Happiness Lessons” which are finding their way into the school curriculum, not all of it helpful in explaining how the application of Positive Psychology can be beneficial in schools.

This article from the Scunthorpe Telegraph describes a Centre for Applied Positive Psychology project called Celebrating Strengths which is taking the latest research on how people flourish and applying it to learning. What is particularly interesting about this project is that teachers are being trained first, so that they can use the new ‘positive teaching’ techniques with their pupils year after year.

This is also a crucial change management principle, i.e. ensuring that those people who are responsible for making the new approach work on the coal-face are involved and engaged in the project right from the start. Just think about the problems Jamie Oliver had introducing healthy food into UK schools, because he didn’t get the school dinner ladies on board first.

Contrary to what it says in this article, however, there is plenty of other work going on in the UK in positive psychology (and using strengths in particular) in education, the private sector and not-for-profit, and this will increase as people see the tangible benefits it can bring to their organisations.

Thanks to my UEL MAPP colleague Viv Thackray for this article

There is increasing media coverage of the government’s plans to introduce lessons in emotional intelligence (EI) in schools in England, not all of it positive. Some argue that this initiative is needed to create a healthy balance after years of focusing on targets, league tables and standardised testing brought about by the introduction of the national curriculum. Others think it’s a load of liberal mumbo-jumbo which has no place in a system which fails to ensure all school leavers have basic maths and literacy skills. According to the recent 2007 CBI / Pertemps Employment Trends Survey 52% of employers are dissatisfied with the basic literacy of school leavers, and 50% with their basic numeracy.

But does it have to be an either/or solution? It might be more effective if separate EI lessons aren’t added into the curriculum (which would mean that some other lessons have to be squeezed out) but if existing subjects, like English, Drama and History are adapted to focus on the relevant EI topics (like self-awareness and motivation). In this way, an EI approach becomes incorporated into the fabric of the school, and ultimately becomes ‘the way we do things round here’. It’s a bit like trying to change the culture in an organisation – it doesn’t work unless behaviours also change.

And there are a couple of interesting points which do need to be explored further in order to get parents and teachers on side with this. The first is whether or not EI can actually be measured – as with happiness and well-being assessments, much of it is subjective. Does that mean they are any less meaningful or useful? In a system so tied in to targets and league-tables, this may not be an easy one to resolve.

The second is whether EI can be increased through teaching or training. It is true that a greater number of EI assessments are being used in the business world today, to help enhance ones skill in recognising and understanding emotions, ultimately enabling them to be managed more effectively. What we don’t know is whether ones EI can be increased – even the experts behind the original EI theory, Mayer, Salovey and Caruso are unsure about this.

Most people working in the positive psychology field appear to welcome the introduction of EI into British schools. If we want it to be successful, however, there is one big caveat….DON’T create an EI league table!