Progress-focused

In this post I expressed my skepticism about something which is called Positive education , an approach advocated by Martin Seligman (photo). What that is, is explained in this video which I also mentioned. My two reasons for being skeptical were 1) that I found the definitions of positive education as mentioned in the video confusing rather than clarifying, and 2) that it is not clear to me to what extent well-being should be an outcome measure in education ( read the post for more details on that point).

We generally think of stereotypes as generalizing negative judgments about a category of people. In a stereotype the behavior of individuals is attributed to the group to which they (appear to) belong. Also, supposed negative characteristics of groups may be projected on individuals which belong to the group. It is not surprising that many people view stereotypes as undesirable. There are some quite dangerous sides to it. They can create tensions between groups and even undermine the integrity of society. Moreover they deny the unique character of individuals. But what about positive stereotypes, in other words, positive generalizations about social groups? Will these be viewed positively because they are really just complimentary?

Some time ago, I heard about a situation in which a student behaved disruptively in class. I will repeat here, from memory, what happened. The teacher asked the student if he would calmly join the lesson and pay attention. The student did not directly reply and went on with his disruptive behavior. Then some other students started making comments like: "Just send him to the hall, miss." The teacher replied: "No, I will not send him to the hall", to which the students said: "Why not? He is behaving very badly." The teacher replied: "If I send students to the hall, they will not learn how to behave appropriately in the classroom. That is why I won't do that." Then she repeated here question to the student to calmly pay attention to the lesson which he then started to do without complaining. This approach seems counter-intuitive. Shouldn't you just be tough to students behaving badly? Maybe not. A new paper provides some insight into what ...

Research has shown a correlation exists between how satisfied people are with their job and how satisfied they are with their life. But there are two uncertainties about the relationship between job satisfaction and life satisfaction. First, it is unknown whether this effect primarily happens in the Western world; this is where most of this research has taken place. Second, it is unknown whether there is a causal relationship between job satisfaction and life satisfaction because most research is correlational. Third, there is no clear explanation for the relationship between job satisfaction and life satisfaction. A new paper provides more clarity in all these questions.

In earlier times the question of how to lead meaningful life was simply answered by referring to the bible (or another religious text, depending on when and where you were born). But for an increasing number of people religious dogma is no longer a satisfying answer to the question what a meaningful life means. Nowadays it has become a common wisdom that we should discover or create meaning in life ourselves. This raises two questions: how important is a sense of having meaning in life anyway, and -if it is important - how can we find or create it?