Educating Angels: Teaching for the Pursuit of Happiness (Volume 9)

by Tony Armstrong

            What sort of education would be worthy of angels? Tony Armstrong argues it would be an education focused on helping them achieve their deepest happiness. Contemporary education ignores the question of children's happiness. Schools aren't in the happiness business. For the most part, they're in the preparing-workers business. Children are treated more as means to economic ends than as ends in themselves in today's schools.
            Armstrong doesn't think this moral lapse is due to not caring enough about our children. He says it has more to do with people being unaware that schools could do far more than they do to improve kids' chances for realizing happiness. If parents understood schools could do more for the happiness of their children, he believes they would insist on it.  
           Armstrong offers a practical understanding of happiness as a feeling you want to keep feeling and sees the pursuit of happiness as the steps you take to feel better than you do at present. Seen in this light, empowering students' lifelong pursuit of happiness involves helping them gain the insights and skills that allow them to feel as they choose from moment to moment as well as in the long-term. He points to classroom-tested methods that have proven quite effective in helping kids feel better. And also behave better, learn better, relate better, and treat others more kindly.  
            Dr. Armstrong presents a kindergarten-through-college pedagogy that would result in happier people and better societies. He paints an inspiring picture of an education worthy of angels and a future worthy of humanity.

288 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2013

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up from the library without knowing anything about it other than it looked interesting to me. It is a fairly good book. I like the concept and some of the ideas are really worthwhile. However, the problem is that the author attempts to write so academically in the beginning that it is very hard to get into the book; the kind of writing that you have to re-read just to understand what is being said. I ended up just skimming through the first few chapters. But, eventually he seems to calm down a bit and just write, and the ideas become very clear and understandable. And they are good ideas. It is just too bad that many people might be turned off by the writing style in the beginning of the book.

[Ted Parkhurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parents and educators will find this eye-opening. Every PTO board should read it and discuss.