Happiness as an Educational Goal

A couple of months ago, I took out Happiness and Education by Nel Noddings from the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.  I have been meaning to write about it for a while now, but with the difficulty concentrating that I have due to fibro fog, reading takes me a very long time.  Anyway, I really enjoyed the book and its arguments.  I liked the discussion of happiness as a reasonable goal for education.  There really is quite a bit of support for it when looked at through the eyes of philosophy.

One of the best parts, however, was that it really illuminated how lopsided the conventional education system is towards hard academics and career preparation.  While intuitively, it seems unnecessarily to coop kids up on a nearly full-time basis for academics, I am not sure I thought about how many things that conventional school doesn't cover or cover enough that take up a significant part of life such as home making and interpersonal relationships.  I suppose that most people expect students to learn those things at home, but, of course, with all the time spent in school and on homework, they are not covered well at home either.

The book also touches on the inherent materialism that is the goal in education since everyone expects that if they work hard at school they'll get a good job and be able to buy everything they need.  Education is often cited as a way to promote equality and diminish poverty.  However, someone will always have to do the work that society values with low wages so it illuminates that poverty is a social problem and not an educational one.

These are just some of the things that I gleaned from reading this book.  I recommend it to everyone with kids, but especially homeschool parents.  While I haven't made dramatic changes to our routine because of it, it has helped me put our activities into good perspective.