Sharing Good Practice
Wellbeing in schools:
a paradox in education (Part Two)
By Mike Lambert
E
ducation must be as much
about our students’ emotional
education as it is their academic
education. We have come a
long way since the three Viennese
schools of Psychotherapy and modern
CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
could provide all pastoral educators
and classroom teachers with a range
of simple, practical and effective tools
by which students can learn to manage
their emotions and their reactions. It is
often implicit in schools that we teach
our students to manage their emotions
through socialisation but there are
now explicit tools available which can
facilitate this. It is about time we use
them.
No less important must be a focus
on the moral and ethical wellbeing
of our students. If we, as professional
educators do not explicitly teach our
students the difference between
right and wrong and the social
contract by which we are all bound
then we are implicitly leaving our
students to discover these things
for themselves. This is a worry as the
source of their moral education is
likely to be the media, the movies
and Facebook…hardly a robust and
consistent education in how to behave.
Unfortunately for non-Muslim students
in the UAE, however, there are no
Religious Education lessons like those
we may have been used to back home.
However good or bad the lessons
were and however much students did
or did not subscribe to the religious
doctrines presented, they did provide
useful time and space for students
to consider the moral maze. It is time
that schools considered how they can
introduce secular philosophy lessons
into schools in order to make up for
this shortfall.
Beyond an earthly education in how
to behave and the difference between
right and wrong, however, is the even
more profound and spiritual question
of why we are all here. Again, except for
our Muslim students who are fortunate
enough to have Islam to provide them
with the answers, there are thousands
of non-Muslim students who simply
do not have dedicated time set aside
in school to be able to ask the most
fundamental of all questions: what is
the meaning of life? It was interesting
to ask all the delegates at GESS Dubai
2016 how many of them actually asked
that question of their students this
year. No-one in the audience raised
their hand.
Finally and perhaps more prosaically
there is a real need for us to ask whether
we are being sufficiently mindful of
our students’ future wellbeing. This
brings us almost full-circle back to the
founding principles of mass education.
Are we sufficiently preparing our
students with the requisite skills for
the contemporary workplace? We
read regularly in the press that 65%
of the jobs that our students will do,
have not even been invented yet, that
the tech revolution will continue at an
exponential rate such that cars will
build themselves and all but the most
human jobs will be automated. This is
going to make for an ultra-competitive
jobs market in which only the most
socially adept students will have the
human roles. There is therefore a
very real need for schools to invest
in the development of a broad range
of soft skills so that their students
have a competitive advantage in this
increasingly automatic world.
A focus on wellbeing in education
is therefore far from a new topic
and is far more than simply a fo cus
on happiness. Wellbeing has and
hopefully will continue to be the only
purpose of education for millennia to
come.
Michael Lambert is Headmaster of Dubai
College
Class Time
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May - Jun 2016
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