Rethink Classroom as Happiness Labs!

March 20 was celebrated as International Day of Happiness

The world is fast changing, and the education system also needs to change and update to face the challenges and take care of emerging opportunities. Also, though happiness is a goal for many, it still remains far away for many people in the world. The problems of education and the unhappiness pandemic can be solved by thinking creatively about the education system.

There is an urgent need to rethink and relook at our education. Among many other things in the comprehensive rethinking of education, this article focuses on the classroom. We need to redesign our classroom. It is not about redesigning as a design concept. It is about rethinking and relooking at the very idea of the classroom.

A classroom must not only be a place to impart some subject knowledge, but also, many times, that too in a passive , boring way. Instead, a classroom should be a happiness laboratory meeting these seven criteria as given below :

1.     A place to increase participants' gain and reduce pain in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experiences

2.     A place to not only learn and experience subject knowledge, but also how to apply it in life

3.     A place to experiment and enjoy the process of learning

4.     A place to learn questioning, independent thinking and imagination

5.     A place to laugh and build bonds and relationships

6.     A place to learn to accept failures, shortcomings and keep moving

7. Such an overall happy experience that when anyone goes in or goes out or thinks about it, a smile should come naturally to the face.

The author knows that some of these criteria might look too difficult to achieve, but in reality, when done in both letter and spirit, these are possible.

Classroom as a Happiness Labs can do wonders not only in the subject knowledge, but also in the overall development of the participants in a holistic manner by equipping them with a toolkit for experiencing happiness in life, handling failures, building relationships, developing mental faculties, and overall a great learning experience.

This idea is not only for any particular age or level of education. It should be tried across different age groups and in schools, colleges and universities. To start with, an institution , on a voluntary basis, can run a pilot project, take the learnings, improve them, and further scale them up to meet the unique requirements of its participants, location, or other requirements.

This is well established by research that happiness helps in learning, creative thinking and innovation. With the idea of the classroom as Happiness Labs, one can open the participants to a great learning experience. With this, participants get an overall happiness experience which will help them in their better health, relationships, studies and work .

So what we are waiting for ? Let us start the idea and experient of classroom as a Happiness Lab for life !

- Dr Rajesh K Pillania, Professor,

Management Development Institute, Gurgaon