Martin Seligman - Positive Education

[Music] [Music] my name is Martin Seligman I'm professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania because you're a teacher I wanted to tell you about positive education I've asked thousands of parents two questions the first is in two words or fewer what do you most want in life for your child and the answer is things like happiness health civility life satisfaction contentment and meaning and then I asked parents in towards or fewer what the schools teach and they say literacy numeracy science discipline conformity notice how little overlap there is between what schools teach and what we most want in life for our children now I want you to imagine the notion of positive education that you as a teacher can both teach your subject matter geometry English football and you can at the same time teach well-being life satisfaction happiness and meaning thirty years ago we didn't know how to teach the happiness skills but in the last thirty years we found that positive emotion engagement good relationships and meaning are all measurable and teachable so this opens up a wonderful possibility for every classroom that you can both teach your subject matter and engage the skills and lessons for building well-being when we first put this notion forward to school principals and to ministers of Education they said well look school is a zero-sum game you want to teach well-being and happiness but school is about science and literacy and numeracy what are you going to cut out so this is the important question of whether happy children children who have learned the skills of well-being do worse better or the same in the traditional goals of Education and so Alejandra Adler has gone around the world to Bhutan to Mexico and to Peru and in huge numbers of children in Peru 694 thousand children in 700 schools half of them get school as usual the other half get school as usual plus positive psychology the skills of happiness and well-being Alejandra then comes back a year and two years later and finds first that the schools in which the kids have learned wellbeing have higher well-being but most importantly the schools in which the kids learn positive psychology their national standardized exams are higher so it turns out that happy children do better academically and as a teacher it is now within your power both to teach your subject matter in an excellent way but also to increase the well-being of your students resulting in higher well-being and most importantly in higher traditional academic goals [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The Brainwaves Video Anthology

Views: 7,945

Rating: 4.7171717 out of 5

Keywords: school leadership, education technology, global learning, global awareness, globalization, schools, teaching, learning, positive psychology, psychology, Martin Seligman, Bob Greenberg, Aaron Beck, The Brainwaves, Brainwaves, happiness, optimisim, education, University of Pennsylvania

Id: igpqyuw6GLw

Length: 4min 28sec (268 seconds)

Published: Thu May 11 2017