Mathematics of Happiness

I have always been fascinated with mathematics.  When I was young I saw a sign on my grandmother's desk which read "Monday is a lousy way to spend one seventh of your life".  That got me thinking about the numbers of my life.  Bear with me while I play with them a bit.

If I live productively to be eighty years old I will have lived 960 months or 4,160 weeks or 29,120 days.  If I dread Mondays, that will be 4,160 miserable days of my life.  If I even take off the first 20 years in which I was not working and the last 20 years after I retire, that still leaves 2,080 unhappy days.  That just seems wrong.  I can't waste that many days when there seem to be so few in total.

So why does Monday get dumped on so badly?  Obviously because it ends the weekend and our society teaches us that fun happens on the weekends.  We are surrounded by messages that tell us that weekends are the time for partying, getting together with friends, we work our weeks so that we can enjoy our weekends.  This is all based on the notion that work is not fun.  If it is fun then it is not work and somehow it is not proper.

Perhaps this all ties in with a recurring idea in history that we are meant to suffer.  Life needs to be miserable in order to be "good" or worthy.  Happy people are either mentally unbalanced, intellectually challenged, or somehow unfairly supported by other suffering souls.  Our rational brains tell us that this is silly but we are so indoctrinated into the idea of salvation through sacrifice and suffering that we subconsciously are suspicious of truly happy people. 

I must apologize because I am unashamedly happy.  I have been that way for a long time.  I love Mondays as much as I love Fridays but then I don't work - at least not in terms of suffering.  I follow my passion and teach children.  I get fulfillment and energy from my "job" and have no cravings for weekends or retirement.

So why am I going on about the math of happiness?  Because I see it in children when they first enter the school.  Many are teenagers who have had an love of learning pummeled out of them.  The first joy of going to school in kindergarten has changed through a realization that school is often boring, usually irrelevant, and sometimes painful.  By the time they come to us, school is something to be suffered through in order to start living.

This is a crime of such magnitude that it makes me want to weep.  How can children ever acquire the skills to pursue their passion if they hate learning?  How can they even know what their passion is if they are not given the opportunity to explore it?  How can they learn what they need to know to turn that passion in a means of support?  Why does our society "teach" them that both school and work are necessary evils in life? 

By the end of Grade 12 a child will have spent nearly 2,500 days in school.  That is 2,500 days where they can be exposed to the wonders of the world with enthusiastic guides helping them along their own personal journeys.  Since we only go from Grades 7 to 12, we only have them for just over a thousand days.  And yet they can learn so quickly if they are happy.  They want to learn if school is seen as a million open doors for exploration and adventure.  It is my sincere wish that none of my students ever has to hate Mondays.  And so far, we are doing just great.

The Best School Year Ever

Next week million of children once again go to school.  For some it is an exciting time.  Time to see your friends, make new ones, learn new skills.  For others it is just the same old same old.  They are marking time until they can be free!  And for some it is a dreaded nightmare.  A place of bullying, judgement, and fear.  Sometimes we, as a society, just say it is all part of growing up.  That's what they used to say about getting drunk at a party and jamming kids into a car for a wild ride.  We don't call that part of growing up anymore.  An education which instills fear, dislike, or boredom should not be part of growing up either.  Education should give our children skills, knowledge, and above all, a love of learning.  If this isn't happening for your child, there are things that you can do.

The first question that all parents, and older students, need to ask themselves is : What is the purpose of education?  This is neither easy nor obvious and there are many different answers.  Some say that education is to prepare them for life.  What does that mean?  Teaching them accounting skills, how to get a job, time management, practical skills?  Or does it mean teaching them cooperation, teamwork, problem solving, people skills?  Or critical thinking, rational deduction, communication skills?  There are a lot of options.  Perhaps education is to show them how to follow their passion.  To develop that passion into a marketable skill.  Or perhaps the end goal is to learn how to learn so that education is a lifelong experience.  My point here is that there are many different purposes and they are all right.  You have to decide which one is right for your child.

After you have sorted out that, you need to figure out what the school's purpose is.  Do they have the same goal in mind that you do?  You need to know if you are both journeying to the same destination.  If you are not, then you need to supplement your child's education with the pieces that the local school does not offer.  One example which comes up all the time is in high school.  Parents have decided that they want their child to go to university.  They assume that somehow the school knows this.  They think that the school advisors will counsel their child into the best courses for going to university.  However the school counsellors actually have a different goal.  Their goal is to have all the students complete high school.  Therefore they may select courses which suit their goal and not yours.

First and foremost you must be an advocate for your child.  You must work with the school to achieve the end that you want.  Do not assume that they know what that is or, if they do, that they can accommodate you.  After all, they have thousands of students, each with their own goals.  It is essential that you work with the school, the administrators, and the teachers.  An antagonistic relationship will never work.  Your child will lose respect for the school and for education in general.  If you absolutely cannot work with a particular school or system then, for the sake of your child, you must change to another one.  How can you teach your child to respect teachers if you do not? 

This is one important step to helping your child have the best school year ever.  School should be a place of excitement and passion for learning.  And it can be.  If you are interested in more personal advice for your particular situation, send me a comment and I will respond privately.

Happy Schooling!



Education through Art!

Vision or insanity?

One man's vision may be another man's insanity.  Recently I finished Irving Stone's biography of Vincent Van Gogh, Lust for Life.  I also saw "Secretariat", the Disney movie starring Diane Lane
 and John Malkovich.  Each piece speaks directly to the theme of a personal intense passion.  In these two cases the passion produced a monumental masterpiece, or masterpieces.  In each case we have a person obsessed with one idea and that obsession eventually leads to greatness.  It is easy to see the value of following one's passion by looking at these great historic events.  As they say, hindsight is 20x20.

But what about when the past was still the future?  Van Gogh's family considered him a monumental failure, the son who could never hold down a job, never learn any business, kept bouncing from passion to passion.  His society considered him a madman and a danger.  And the other artists generally considered him to have no technique or skill.  Penny Chenery, the owner of Secretariat, arguably the best race horse ever, risked the financial future of her entire family, her own children, and her marriage for the sake of an unproven colt.  She was considered crazy by her brother, her husband, and most of the racing industry.  History has proven them to have been right.

But what about all those passions that never worked out?  Never had books written about them or movies made about them because they didn't work out?  What about the Vincents and Pennys of this generation?  How can you tell the difference?  The truth is that you can't.  The problem is not that we can't tell the difference between passion and obsessive madness.  We are asking the wrong question.  The question that we should be asking is - Does it matter?  Van Gogh's society judged him and found him wanting.  Only future generations appreciated what he did.  I wonder if he had been living now if he would have ever painted what he did.

We are so quick to analyze and label that which is different.  We want everyone to be happy.  On the surface, a lovely sentiment, but underneath it reeks of Brave New World.  Just give everyone a happiness pill and humanity is dead.  Humans need to feel passion.  They need to be allowed to pursue their passion no matter how crazy it may seem, no matter how little "success" they may achieve.  Because success is relative.  Success is socially determined and is not the same for all or for all times.  Van Gogh and Chenery succeeded because they didn't care what others thought.  They followed their own inner voice and they risked greatly in order to achieve greatness.  They did not strive for greatness.  They merely went where their passion took them.  The rest followed.

(Just an aside, I, of course, am not condoning any obsessions which lead to the damage or destruction of others.  That should go without saying.)

Just think carefully about the world that you want.  A world of "happiness" for all or a world full of passion.  And then think about our children.  Do we want them to be happy or do we want them to be all they can be?  Passion is not about happiness or success.  Passion is about strong feelings, immense energy, and a roller coaster ride of a life.  With pain, failure, stress, anger, but what a high!  We would no longer need drugs or extreme adventures to feel truly alive.  When you follow your passion you are complete.  That is a world of which I would like to be a part.