Abstract
This study examines the social well-being of students K-12 in three distinct socio-economic schooling scenarios. Drawing upon a pilot study the authors carried out in a US Southwestern Borderlands context that led to a meta-theoretical analysis on the culture of education, this study looks at the importance of student well-being and happiness as part of holistic pedagogy and quality education. It is based on Maslow's influential classic work in support of the idea that happiness and creativity flourish when basic needs are met, with the science of well-being integral to this notion. The research highlights the importance of structures and conditions enabling happiness. It advocates for pedagogical practices that are humanizing and empowering for all students. Through innovative curriculum and transformative pedagogy, social stratification that sustains hegemonic oppression can be replaced by participatory citizenship that seeks solidarity and brings dignity to a postmodern world in need.
TopIntroduction
Disneyland—The Happiest Place on Earth?
Disneyland claims to be the happiest place on earth, and yet it is limited to only those who can afford to pay exorbitant entrance fees in order to be entertained—that imaginary promise of happiness, however, is temporary and fleeting with time and the reality of other living contexts. In juxtaposition, for this publication’s purpose, we look at how sustainable systems of happiness can have permanency within society; where people can enjoy it as part of their daily real-life experiences, which can be part of their subjectivities on an ongoing basis. Children that grow up in a place that leaves an uplifting imprint in their sense of identity grow up developing trust in the process of life and hopeful about their participation and contribution to community.
Paulo Freire, who left a very rich legacy throughout the world of democratic, transformative, and innovative pedagogies, is the inspiration for this book chapter. His critique of conservative ways of teaching, such as rote memorization, indicate the opposite result of which we are proposing to examine here. We begin by building up on a pilot study about [Un]Happiness that we did in the U.S. southwestern borderlands of the US and Mexico to research how that community feels about happiness. This study was published in a top-tier academic journal in Canada (Rossatto, Rodriguez & Rodriguez, 2020). The research participants included students and persons from a US/Mexico border region.
[Un]happiness is a byproduct of social justice, or lack thereof; hence, we expand our original ‘pilot’ study and present a critical positionality of problematic pedagogies and educational experiences that produce unhappiness found within a school-to-prison pipeline culture. As per Angela Davis (Twin Cities Public Television Inc., 2020), when children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security/safety than on knowledge and intellectual development, essentially, they are joining prep schools for prison. By the same token, we also question what educational practices produce happiness. Regarding the class we took at Yale University, the Science of Well-Being was associated with happiness that implicated personal and social development of sensitivity and solidarity with others. Ultimately, happiness is a result of collective effort and not an individualistic initiative—a Freirean posture rooted in Deweyism that seeks to empower the people. We explore curricular/pedagogical praxis combined with holistic and citizenship-based approach and learning for life to see whether they produce happiness. Thus, we use a mixed-methods research to analyze experiences of children from 3 different Field Work educational settings:
Research Field Work I
A remedial charter high school program.
Research Field Work II
Distinguished and Advanced Stem Certified charter high school; resourceful; innovative; upscale program.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Anti-Dialectical: An education that is institutionalized and static.
Praxis: A terminology to reference how learning can be based on students’ real-life experiences and how to construct meaning and knowledge out of that; verifiable and consistent knowledge that is applicable to life, which ultimately becomes sources of wisdom/knowledge when put to the test of rigor that is effective.
Holistic Pedagogy: A pedagogy that helps students to become better human beings by developing their full potential and humanistic abilities, developing their lives as a whole.
Quality Education: One that empowers students to think critically about their reality; by being creative and developing ownership of their learning experience, they learn through creativity and problem solving which helps them to develop critical consciousness about current realities they live in.
Ex-ducere: A Latin word to define education as an inside/outside experience where curriculum and pedagogy are based on student’s daily lives and personal experiences.
Dialectics: A dynamic way of thinking about education of a teacher with students applies into practice certain theories and keeping re-evaluating it; generating knowledge and epistemologies and re-inventing knowledge.
Liminal: Marginalized groups; people that are pushed to the margins of society so that they are left out or considered ‘at risk’ or dropouts.
Anti-Dialogical: An education that does not have much opportunity for students to have a say or dialogue in a classroom. Students perceive that to be a good student is to be quiet; goes along with school to prison pipeline.
Ontological: The very nature of being human.
Participatory Citizenship: Defined as an education that prepares students to be contributing citizens to society and the world by participating in decision making/voting and instruction and construction of healthy and equitable distribution of resources around the world.