Education and the economics of happiness

Some excellent useful & interesting work's been going on over the past decade on "happiness economics" - bringing the focus of economic analysis back to its first principles - of measuring value in terms of "utility" - ie the using the term "values" in its broadest sense in terms of what makes peoples lives worthth living, rather than simply what generates greater monetary wealth. In other words, quality of life over standard of living.

Much of this ties in very comfortably with the values-led culture of schools and other public education institutions.

Here's a taste:

The return of happiness as a theme in economics is due to the emergence of a new fact.
Economists themselves has always known that wealth alone does not bring happiness. The often implicit hypothesis underlying economic analysis was that even if wealth or economic well-being did not always bring a “proportional” increase in happiness, it did not would not however entail its diminution.

For this reason, especially in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, economics has confined its concern
to a sphere much less complicated than happiness: that of wealth or (economic) well-being –
realising of course that much of peoples’ happiness depends on non-economic factors such as
relationships and emotions, which have nothing to do with the market.

Luigino Bruni (2004)“The Economics of Happiness”

So -how long will it take for us to incorporate these ideas into political decision-making and educational policy?

Here are some articles that may be of interest if, like me, you are just coming up to speed with these ideas. (Yes, just a quick google search....)

New Economist: The economics of happiness: a progress report

Luigino Bruni (2004) “The Economics of Happiness”

Carol Graham (2005) "The Economics of Happiness"
 
 Betsey Stevenson (2009) What are the economics of happiness?
 
Carol Graham  (2005) Insights on Development from the Economics of Happiness

Thinking about change: Becoming a more fully functioning person

The "thinking tools" Jennifer Garvey-Berger introduced us to at the Shifting Thinking conference were familiar in some respects, but different enough to offer some new and interesting ways of looking at the process of learning as transformative change  (Mezirow, Senge).

Anyone who starts their presentation with some great poets and philosophers is on the right track for me.  Jennifer used a Rilke quote to kick off her first presentation.  I didn't make a note of it but I'm hoping it will be up on the conference website soon because it seemed to capture the spirit of transformative learning and learning as personal growth (Rogers). I'm sure I've dealt with that in other posts in my other blog but I can't for the moment find it - harrumph. However, the idea is captured in this quote from The Good Life and the Fully Functioning Person (1953) which you can find quoted online here.

The good life is a process, not a state of being.
It is a direction not a destination.
The direction which constitutes the good life is that which is selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in any direction.
This organismically selected direction seems to have certain discernible qualities which appear to be the same in a wide variety of unique individuals.
The good life, from the point of view of my experience, is the process of movement in a direction which the human organism selects when it is inwardly free to move in any direction, and the general qualities of this selected direction appear to have a certain universality. ....

Rogers identifies the characteristics of this process as  

1. An increasing Openness to Experience ...a movement away from the pole of defensiveness toward the pole of openness to experience. The individual is becoming more able to listen to himself, to experience what is going on within himself. He is more open to his feelings
2. Increasingly Existential Living ...an increasingly tendency to live fully in each moment. ...the self and personality emerge from experience rather than experience being translated or twisted to fit pre-conceived self-structure... [so that]... one becomes a participant in and an observer of the ongoing process of organismic experience, rather than being in control of it.
3. An increasing trust in his Organism ...as a means of arriving at the most satisfying behavior in each existential situation. 

His conclusion is that "It appears that the person who is psychologically free moves in the direction of becoming a more fully functioning person." That, I believe is the touchstone for effective pedagogy (and in fact all successful human relationships) - to conduct ourselves ina a way that contributes to the other party (in this case the learner, and since teaching is transactional, ourselves as well) becoming a more fully functioning person. 


This is in fact closely echoed by the National Education Goals (NEGs) that govern New Zealand's education system, which specify

Goal 1: The highest standards of achievement, through programmes which enable all students to realise their full potential as individuals, and to develop the values needed to become full members of New Zealand's society.

New beginnings

Well, it's almost exactly three years since my last post over at Mary's M.Ed Journal . In the mean time a lot of things have changed, one of them being my primary email address - and another being my ability to recall my password.  One of the advantages of a linear thought process is presumably that it makes it easier to backtrack when you forget things or need to revisit them. In my non-linear, visual-spatial world, it's not that easy. (Conversely it's always interesting.) Somewhere over the past 3 years of trying out various social networking sites, web applications and the like I've lost all track of how to access my earlier blog. So, now that I've conceded that I can't go back I'm ready to move on.

One thing that hasn't changed though is my interest in education - feral learning - and my own learning journey. So here I am again.

Like last time, this blog will be intermittent, reflective and personal. I hope it will also be of interest to others, but its primary purpose is to provide a vehicle for me to work through and to express my response to some of the ideas and experiences that shape my understanding, my world and myself.

If there's anyone else out there reading this, welcome along - and please leave me a comment.