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The Resistance:Schools need a happiness index PDF Print E-mail

 By Susan Ohanian


People who care about public schools need to ask why the school research approved by the U. S. government under the label of No Child Left Behind pays less attention to the happiness index than does the chicken research sponsored by McDonald’s.

Marching in lockstep to demonstrate its allegiance to a Big Business model, a few years ago the New York City school district trumpeted its hiring of Neutron Jack Welch as chief advisor to their academy for training principals. Now, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken have given the nation’s public schools a somewhat different corporate model to consider. Just take a look at the lead sentence in an article titled “Animals Seeking Happiness” from The New York Times: “Can a white leghorn hen be truly happy?”

These corporate giants are sponsoring research to find out answers to that questions as well as others: “Are cows ever happy? Do pigs feel pain? What do chickens really want?”

The Times reported that researchers videotape chickens at play and they rig doors so pigs can use their snouts to choose between eating their food alone or hanging out with other swine. “Asking scientific questions about an animal’s feelings is brand new,” says Edmond A. Pajor, an associate professor of animal behavior at Purdue University. “It’s hard to talk about happiness, so we’re trying to reduce the number of negative emotional experiences.”

Reduce the number of negative emotional experiences. Now that’s a mission statement I could subscribe to. I’ll get out my tambourine and march to it.

Put aside, for the moment, the question of whether McDonald’s and KFC are being somewhat disingenuous. Just consider the new territory they are entering: asking scientific questions about an animal’s feelings. That’s worth repeating: asking scientific questions about an animal’s feelings.

Consider how far Federal and state policy mandates have driven schools from the territory of the feelings of children or their teachers. The fact that it is inconceivable to imagine the current U. S. Department of Education sponsoring research to find out answers to such questions as “Are schoolchildren ever happy? Do schoolchildren feel pain? What do schoolchildren really want?” should give parents and teachers pause. And it should give them a cause for which to join hands and march together.

These are our children, and they don’t get a second chance at childhood.

Recently I came across a lament by a California middle school teacher whose school just had to send out a letter to parents, inviting them to transfer their children to one of the other two middle schools in the district. “For the past two years,” the letter read, “Barnard-White Middle School has not met the NCLB criteria adopted by the State Board of Education and so has been identified by preliminary reports as needing program improvement.”

A whole lot of teachers — and parents — write me, complaining about how damaging such letters are to a school. Damaging and unfair. What struck me about Dave Ellison’s objection is that instead of pointing out that 75 percent of the school’s population are students of color speaking 22 language, he brought up the faculty’s emphasis on happiness.

In Dave Ellison words, “Clearly, we, the staff and students at Barnard-White, had been doing a lot of things right. Many of these things — such as creating an environment where most everyone felt safe, supported, cared-for, and happy (one of our strongest suits) — would never show up on a standardized exam.”

Happiness as a category on a standardized exam. What a notion.

I looked up the school’s mission statement. Okay, there’s a lot of verbiage (but there’s no mention of preparing workers for the global economy or any of that corporate twaddle), but these words are there: All persons have the right to be treated with respect, kindness, and courtesy.

Clearly for this faculty “all persons” means children . And I fear too many educators have forgotten this. Too often, people who are themselves treated badly forget how to exercise care and concern toward others, even the smallest among us.

When I wrote Dave Ellison, asking him about this happiness thing, I was struck by the fact that he credits the staff and the students. Together. With an emphasis on the students. In his e-mail, Dave said that the kids at Barnard-White are just plain nice kids. How refreshing to hear from a teacher, and a middle school teacher at that, who says kids are nice. Dave wrote: “We notice that our kids are more mannered and kinder when all the district’s middle schools’ bands get together, or the color guards, etc. These kids are just nice kids.”

Please note: nobody is trying to ascribe these kids’ good manners and kindness to some sort of behavior mod program or a rewards system. Not even Small Schools gets credit. In a building housing 856 kids, 75 percent of whom are students of color speaking 22 languages, the predominant quality is niceness. And happiness. A former vice-principal described the school as “the happiest place on earth.”

Forget making this faculty sending out a letter announcing that students have the transfer option. Send in teams of researchers to find out about their happiness index.

Why isn’t a kindergartner’s Happiness Index taken as seriously as his phonemic awareness score? Why don’t we ask high schoolers this question: “What do you really want?” Ask that—and shut up and listen to the answer—instead of issuing rules that nobody gets a high school diploma without passing high stakes math tests based on algebra, geometry, statistics, and probability and other high stakes tests requiring deconstruction of a sonnet and the use of the semi-colon.

I’d contribute to research to find out if more than three members of the U. S. Congress know how to use a semi-colon. I happen to admire semi-colons; that doesn’t mean I think leaving them in disarray has anything to do with America’s standing in the Global Economy—or its domestic tranquility

Consider Bhutan, a Himalayan country the size of Switzerland. In 1972, the king of Bhutan declared that his country would henceforth measure progress with gross national happiness instead of gross national product. It is still the only country in the world to do so. Writing in Sojourners (http:// www.sojo.net/ index.cfm?action= news.display_ article& mode= C&NewsID=4925), Richard Ingram discusses Bhutan’s position, asking, “If there were greater emphasis in America on life satisfaction as a matter of public policy, which groups of voters would benefit? One answer could be anyone who would gain from government programs that help with the work of care-taking while holding a job — such programs as childcare, adult day care and universal health care. In fact, wouldn’t all workers benefit from a broadening of the definition of the bottom line? A happier, healthier workforce might even increase America’s gross national product.”

If we really want to raise students’ standardized test scores, the easiest, most economical way to do it would be to improve their happiness index. And the place to start is by providing their families with a living wage.

Questions about children’s happiness are neither frivolous nor rhetorical. The cruelty of No Child Left Behind puts childhood at grave risk, setting schools on a destructive course that will produce very very angry children who grow up to be adults whose values are skewed and who are mad as hell to boot.

Some food retailers have introduced labels indicating that an animal was raised with care. Surely our schools can do no less. Every teacher, every year, must be able to testify that every child in her class was educated with care. What’s the education equivalent for ‘free range’ and ‘no pesticides’?

Childhood is short; it is our obligation to make sure it is also sweet. Our job is not to educate future workers for the global economy. Our job is to nurture children and to make their schools joyous places.
 
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