Educating for Gross National Happiness
Date
2018-08-15
Authors
Dema, Sonam
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Abstract
This project was pursued to study happiness as the goal of Education by looking at Bhutan and its education philosophy of Educating for Gross National Happiness (EGNH). First, I provide context to the topic by establishing the story of education that led to Bhutan’s policy of EGNH. Then I look at the features of western capitalist societies and their education systems and review the social and psychosocial costs of a capitalist-based education system. Next I review historical Bhutanese government policies and documents to better understand the practices and current policies the government has adopted to achieve the goal of happiness in education. Recognizing that the integration of happiness into the western education system would require widespread reforms across the entire education system and all levels of government public policy, I look at how happiness could be integrated into western classrooms to complement the existing education system. Finally, recognizing the benefits of travel and exchange programs in education, I outline how educational tours to Bhutan (supplemented with a Moodle-based learning resource) could be used as a way to create and develop an awareness of happiness and bring the aims of happiness into the minds and actions of educators in the West.
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Keywords
Happiness, Educational tours