How the AAP’s Manish Sisodia came to start a happiness class in Delhi’s government schools

The happiness class has had such a spectacular impact in Delhi that it has created a nationwide curiosity. People want to know what this model is that is being run for almost 8 lakh students for one period every day.

How is happiness being taught like maths and science? Is it possible to make children happy by teaching them happiness like a regular subject? Can it create a mindset in students to make them more positive and creative? What have the results been?

It is too early to answer these questions as this curriculum is merely a year old. Only time will tell. However, initial results were as interesting as these questions. When I go to schools and talk to principals or teachers of classes – from nursery to class 8 – they always comment on how this programme has changed the behaviour of students in just one year. This is true especially of students of classes 6 to 8, as it has been noted that their aggression has gone down and they are calmer. Some teachers even say that the level of concentration has increased in students of this age group. Here are some of the most interesting anecdotes:

• The mother of one of our students told a teacher that her child has become very understanding at home. Before eating food, he asks his mother if there’s any for her. Sometimes he even checks in the kitchen to see if there really is food left for the mother or if she is lying to feed her children.
• A grandmother told us that she has seen a tremendous change in her grandchild in the last one year. According to her, the child, who used to fight with the other children in the neighbourhood, has changed and he shows them a lot of love and respect.
• Recently, a reporter from a well-known newspaper went to a school for a story. He asked the students whether they talk about the programme at home. A student told him that one evening when his father came home dejected, he conducted a session of the happiness class at home as he thought that it would calm his father.
• One incident I can’t forget is when a girl told me about how the happiness classes had given her peace of mind from the strife at home because of her being a girl. She told us that her brother, being a boy, was sent to a private school while she was sent to a government one. Not just that, in school, she would often stew with resentment because of the favouritism shown to her brother at the breakfast table. Since the happiness class started, she has been able to leave her resentment behind in the very first period. It helps her focus on her studies. It is saddening that this discrimination is happening even in the capital of the country but it brings me joy that the happiness class is bringing some respite.

The seeds of the happiness class were sown in a conversation between Arvind Kejriwal and me.

I still remember that we were in his drawing room, discussing a few things related to the education department. He interrupted me and said, “Buildings have become better, teachers are being trained and their self-confidence is also increasing. As a result, exam results have also been improving but before getting into politics, we always used to talk about making children better human beings, why is nothing is being done on that front?”

What he said was true. All our focus had been on repairing buildings, reinvigorating teachers and improving results. We were doing nothing to make our students better human beings. This thought stayed with me and probably, subconsciously, I decided to work in this area.

We conducted many Jeevan Vidya workshops for our teachers and even sent them for Vipassana courses but students were not involved in these initiatives. All our focus was on teachers and we were all ganging up to turn the children into bookworms. We didn’t have any Vipassana or Jeevan Vidya workshops for the children.

The CM’s question had got me thinking. I mulled over his words even while performing my daily duties. I thought up the framework for the happiness class during a ten-day Vipassana course that I had attended. I would like to mention here that there was no access to pen and paper, and talking over the phone, in fact, talking in these ten days was also prohibited. This is why I could make notes only in my mind.

The biggest inspiration for the happiness class came from the coexistence-based Jeevan Vidya workshop, which looks at all the aspects of education and life very critically and discusses it very scientifically.

Let me state outright what the happiness class is not. There are no moral science lessons in this curriculum. It doesn’t involve any activities that would get children excited for some time. There’s no chanting or praying.

A joint team of twenty Delhi government teachers, District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) lecturers and principals, some reputed individuals and organisations working in the area of child psychology created the content for the happiness class. It’s based on the principle of the self- confidence building mode of education based on the coexistence model.

What was also studied during its conception was why the adoption of the leadership-oriented system of education was not making people happy. Where had we failed in our efforts? After considering and deliberating on these points, this curriculum was prepared. We took the help of scholars and researchers working on different aspects of an education that builds a positive culture in the country. The curriculum is based on Indian thought and education in which we have merged science.

The three main aspects of the happiness class are:

1. Mindfulness meditation.
2. Inspirational stories to make children responsible and mature.
3. Activity-oriented discussions where children study their own thoughts and reactions scientifically.

Excerpted with permission from Shiksha: My Experiments as an Education Minister, Manish Sisodia, Penguin Books.