The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

In this month’s article for Positive Psychology News, I look at the government’s plans to measure the UK’s well-being in 2011, and Martin Seligman’s new Well-being Theory.

Stop Press: the Office for National Statistics has now announced the four well-being related questions that will be included in this year’s Integrated Household Survey. They are:

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?

Image: The British Parliament & Big Ben: ** Maurice **

How the next generation will be better prepared for the challenges of the workplace.

The Times today reported that “lessons in happiness, well-being and good manners are to be introduced in all state secondary schools”.

It’s unfortunate that the SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) programme is being labelled in this way by the media, because it instantly downgrades its importance, putting it firmly in the category of pink and fluffy fads which we’d be better off without.

What SEAL is actually for is to promote children’s social and emotional skills which underpin effective learning, positive behaviour and emotional health and well-being in schools. “So what?”, I hear you ask. Well, for many years now, various employment and business related organisations in the UK, such as the Confederation of British Industry, have been highly critical of employees’ lack of (so-called) soft-skills. In 2004/5, Sir Digby Jones, then Director-General of the CBI said of new graduates:

“A degree alone is not enough. Employers are looking for more than just technical skills and knowledge of a degree discipline. They particularly value skills such as communication, team working and problem solving. Job applicants who can demonstrate that they have developed these skills will have a real advantage”.

So you could say that the real point of the SEAL programme in schools is to start providing kids with the necessary tools to develop their self-awareness, empathy, motivation, social skills and ability to manage their emotions, so that ultimately they can become successful members of the community and successful in the workplace. Makes perfect sense now, doesn’t it?

Thanks to Bruce Stanley for the Times article.

We wrote a couple of blogs in February / March about the UNICEF study about child well-being in rich countries . On Thursday night the BBC Radio 4’s Analysis programme, Miserable Children , looked at the subject again.

The presenter, Andrew Brown, points out that whatever the criticisms of the study’s methodology, the popular explanations for the unhappiness of British children (like one parent families, working mothers etc) don’t stack up in the light of international comparisons.

I’ve read the UNICEF study for myself and was concerned to see that British children are at or near the bottom of the league table for both subjective and material well-being. You could be forgiven for thinking that increasing material affluence would therefore be a good thing to do.

When you start unpacking the figures, however, British children don’t do badly when it comes to the absolute level of material affluence, coming out above average in the league table (in 8th position out of 20). But in terms of relative poverty they fare much worse, coming 23rd out of 24 (the USA is 24th). Notwithstanding that there are children in Britain who do have very little, what the UNICEF figures suggest is that happiness for most children today has more to do with the perception of how well they are doing compared to others.

It is the case that children these days are under increasing pressure to be more successful compared to others (whether in terms of educational or sports achievement, beauty, acquisition of material goods etc). But as Professor Richard Layard of the LSE points out in the Analysis programme, by definition it’s impossible for more people to be more successful compared to others, and therefore it’s a recipe for perpetual dissatisfaction, both in childhood and later in adulthood.

The programme concludes with the suggestion that measuring status only in terms of material success is a recipe for never-ending and needless misery, and judging by everything I’ve read recently, I tend to agree.

If you want to hear this Analysis programme yourself, it’ll be repeated tomorrow, Sunday 15th April at 9.30pm.