Education specialists insist schools must prepare children for a meaningful future, while parents suggest that being able to afford that future would represent an encouraging start.
LONDON, ENGLAND: Britain's education establishment has discovered a revolutionary new purpose for schools: human flourishing.
The idea, discussed in a recent Financial Times examination of modern education, holds that schools should develop more than exam results and prepare students for purposeful, adaptable and fulfilling lives.
The OECD has indeed built a framework along these lines. Its Learning Compass 2030 sets out an aspirational vision of education built around individual and collective well-being, with capabilities such as ethical decision-making, adaptive problem-solving and engagement with the wider world.
British parents have taken to the idea warmly, though several have asked whether flourishing might eventually include earning enough to leave home.
One mother from Bromley said her 17-year-old son could explain the importance of global citizenship but not why his bank balance had reached minus £42.
"He's very adaptable," she said. "Every time he runs out of money, he adapts by asking me for more."
Education consultants believe the trouble lies in the public's outdated idea of success. Parents have traditionally expected schools to deliver literacy, numeracy, knowledge, discipline and preparation for work. The new vocabulary recognises that success is a good deal more complicated than that.
A child might fail maths yet show exceptional emotional resilience while failing it. Another might be unable to write a coherent paragraph but explain with great confidence why paragraphs are an outdated form of communication.
What Does Human Flourishing Mean? Parents and Consultants Disagree
The central difficulty is defining the word.
To a parent, a flourishing child is generally one who's happy, healthy, reasonably well behaved, capable of independent thought and unlikely to be living in the spare bedroom at 43.
To an education consultant, flourishing needs a multidimensional framework covering cognitive development, social inclusion, ethical awareness, transformative competencies and a diagram of several overlapping circles. The diagram is essential. Ideas that can't be shown in PowerPoint are rarely recognised by Westminster.
A proposed Year 10 lesson, Discovering My Purpose in an Interconnected World, would ask pupils to reflect on their relationship with society.
One boy reportedly discovered that his purpose was to become a professional footballer. Another wanted to design aeroplanes. A third said he'd like to be a plumber, because his father had just been handed a £380 bill for replacing a tap.
The plumber was judged insufficiently ambitious until somebody pointed out he'd probably out-earn the other two combined. His careers adviser immediately recommended university.
Schools Prepare Children for a Future Nobody Can Afford
Supporters of a broader education are right that qualifications alone guarantee nothing. A teenager can earn excellent results and still struggle with communication, decision-making or relationships.
Equally, a teenager can have wonderful interpersonal skills and still not realise that paying £1,600 a month in rent requires having £1,600 a month. The distinction matters in London, where young people increasingly need advanced financial planning just to buy a sandwich.
A proposed Personal Flourishing Module would teach children to imagine the lives they want. Pupils would design their ideal homes, careers and lifestyles, then calculate the cost. The exercise would stop the moment they reached the housing section.
One sixth-form student announced that his ambition was to own a modest two-bedroom flat in London. His teacher praised his creativity and suggested a more realistic goal, such as becoming an astronaut.
An independent careers consultant argued that students should learn how salaries, mortgages, tax, savings and interest rates actually work. The proposal was passed to the maths department, which was already running a workshop on numerical confidence.
Parents, for their part, suggested that an hour spent learning to read a payslip might be worth at least three hours discussing one's future relationship with the international community.
The National Flourishing Index: Officials Announce Happiness Must Be Measured
The most significant development came when policymakers faced an awkward question. How can schools prove their pupils are flourishing?
Academic performance is fairly easy to measure. Children either understand a calculation or they don't. Human flourishing is different. A child can feel happy on Monday, miserable on Tuesday and optimistic on Wednesday, particularly if Wednesday is the day school finishes early.
Officials therefore proposed a National Flourishing Index, assessing optimism, purpose, social confidence, resilience and willingness to take part in activities involving coloured paper.
A pupil who completes every category would earn the prestigious designation Fully Flourished. Less successful students would be classified as Emerging Blossoms. A school unable to show enough flourishing could face intervention from the newly created Office for Standards in Happiness, whose inspectors would arrive unannounced and ask children whether they were enjoying themselves.
Any pupil who said no would be given extra resilience training.
All this confidence in measurement has produced a peculiar paradox. Teachers are told to free children from excessive exam pressure while preparing them for an assessment of how well they've escaped exam pressure. The new assessment has no correct answers.
It does have performance targets.
Parents Propose an Alternative Definition of Success
Amid all the enthusiasm, several parents have suggested that the modern school might rediscover the link between knowledge and independence.
Children should learn to read well enough to understand a contract, count well enough to manage money, reason well enough to spot nonsense and communicate well enough to get along with people who disagree with them. They should also make friends, find interests, appreciate beauty and know the satisfaction of becoming properly good at something.
None of that is contradictory. The OECD's own vision covers knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, and doesn't propose dropping basic academic learning. This has caused a serious problem for consultants who were hoping flourishing would need an entirely new vocabulary.
One father offered a definition that could be understood without professional development.
"My daughter is flourishing when she knows something today that she didn't know yesterday, can do something she couldn't do last month, and becomes a little more capable of looking after herself."
His suggestion got polite applause. It was then rejected for lacking a sufficient number of stakeholder outcomes.
The final government proposal reportedly recommends preparing young people for meaningful, independent and financially sustainable lives. Parents have asked that "financially sustainable" be moved from the appendix into the main curriculum. The department has agreed to consider it once the children have finished identifying their personal flourishing colours.
Five Humorous Observations About Flourishing
- "Minus £42 and he's very adaptable." Sure. So is a cuckoo. Different nest, same plan.
- The plumber was "insufficiently ambitious" until somebody mentioned he'd earn more than the other two. Nothing sharpens ambition like a £380 tap.
- Their big exercise is designing your dream house and then pricing it. That's not a lesson. That's a horror film with a worksheet.
- Inspectors arrive unannounced and ask if the kids are enjoying themselves. Any kid who says yes gets suspicious looks. Any kid who says no gets a workshop. There's no winning this. It's like asking your wife if she's mad.
- I'm a grown man and I still can't define flourishing. My definition is "the dishwasher's empty and nobody's asked me how I feel about it."
Disclaimer: This is satirical journalism. Its purported curriculum rollout, inspections and quoted exchanges are comic commentary, not established events. This story is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer. Their own flourishing has been measured on the National Flourishing Index and found to be mostly cheese. More British satire sits alongside other news satire sites, none of which requires a curriculum.
SOURCE: https://www.ft.com/content/1ef0813e-843a-477b-bca8-457afba61ed4 https://prat.uk/?p=51972
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