Students and Happiness
Based on Scott Huebner’s article Students and Their Schooling: Does Happiness Matter? children on average spend seven hours a day at school, which is a significant amount of time in their day. Huebner’s studies show that very few teachers report caring about their students’ happiness while they are at school. With the increased emphasis on measuring school success primarily through academic outcomes, many argue that school professionals cannot afford to pay much attention to students’ well-being, especially something as cliché as happiness.
Happiness has many definitions, but in Huebner’s article defines happiness as a person’s evaluation of the quality of her life as a whole while positive affect refers to the occurrence of frequent positive emotions over time, such as joy, interest, and enthusiasm. This means that a happy student is not one who is necessarily giddy with joy every moment of every day, but this does mean that a happy student is someone who has frequent positive emotions that outweigh negative emotions, and has a strong sense of well-being in their overall life.
Happiness plays a huge role in a person’s life, therefore developing a solid base for a child to be able to create their own happiness is key to a positive life. Research with adults has found that happier individuals live longer, earn more money, and were more productive at work. Research with adolescents has revealed the importance of happiness in school as well within their home and community. For example, students reporting greater happiness show more appropriate classroom behavior, higher school grades, better peer and teacher relationships, better physical health, and greater participation in classroom and extracurricular activities. Students who report low levels of happiness are more likely to report mental health problems, peer victimization, poor relationships with parents and teachers, and a variety of risk behaviors such as alcohol and drug use, risky behavior, eating disorders, and suicide. Similar studies also show that unhappiness is an important risk factor for depression and loss of social support from peers and parents as well as disengagement from school. Many factors play into what makes a child happy, but it has been found that demographic variables such as age, ethnicity, and gender play a very little role. Rather factors such as self-esteem, optimism, gratefulness, and hopeful thinking are stronger determinants in student happiness.
Happiness is very important for students to be able to create, and the amount of stress and expectations that is being put on students nowadays is causing an exponential decrease in the amount of happiness a student has. Many students pursue happiness through praise from both teachers and parents, and students have been almost trained so that they work only to please others and not do what makes them happy. The amount of pressure that is being put on students relating to both academic and physical characteristics is what is leading to the 11 percent of high schoolers who have a diagnosed eating disorder and the 32.6 percent of high schoolers who are depressed. In the face of stressful life events, unhappy students are more likely to develop future behavior problems and these outcomes are all related to school success underscoring the importance of the happiness of students in school. It is important for teachers to not only teach academic lessons, but also lifelong lessons such as the ability to create happiness rather than pursuing happiness by doing what others want.
Happiness has many definitions, but in Huebner’s article defines happiness as a person’s evaluation of the quality of her life as a whole while positive affect refers to the occurrence of frequent positive emotions over time, such as joy, interest, and enthusiasm. This means that a happy student is not one who is necessarily giddy with joy every moment of every day, but this does mean that a happy student is someone who has frequent positive emotions that outweigh negative emotions, and has a strong sense of well-being in their overall life.
Happiness plays a huge role in a person’s life, therefore developing a solid base for a child to be able to create their own happiness is key to a positive life. Research with adults has found that happier individuals live longer, earn more money, and were more productive at work. Research with adolescents has revealed the importance of happiness in school as well within their home and community. For example, students reporting greater happiness show more appropriate classroom behavior, higher school grades, better peer and teacher relationships, better physical health, and greater participation in classroom and extracurricular activities. Students who report low levels of happiness are more likely to report mental health problems, peer victimization, poor relationships with parents and teachers, and a variety of risk behaviors such as alcohol and drug use, risky behavior, eating disorders, and suicide. Similar studies also show that unhappiness is an important risk factor for depression and loss of social support from peers and parents as well as disengagement from school. Many factors play into what makes a child happy, but it has been found that demographic variables such as age, ethnicity, and gender play a very little role. Rather factors such as self-esteem, optimism, gratefulness, and hopeful thinking are stronger determinants in student happiness.
Happiness is very important for students to be able to create, and the amount of stress and expectations that is being put on students nowadays is causing an exponential decrease in the amount of happiness a student has. Many students pursue happiness through praise from both teachers and parents, and students have been almost trained so that they work only to please others and not do what makes them happy. The amount of pressure that is being put on students relating to both academic and physical characteristics is what is leading to the 11 percent of high schoolers who have a diagnosed eating disorder and the 32.6 percent of high schoolers who are depressed. In the face of stressful life events, unhappy students are more likely to develop future behavior problems and these outcomes are all related to school success underscoring the importance of the happiness of students in school. It is important for teachers to not only teach academic lessons, but also lifelong lessons such as the ability to create happiness rather than pursuing happiness by doing what others want.