Happiness Class

During my recent vacation to India, i saw tons of negativity around. Negativities with media, religion, caste, education, language, relationships, destroying nature and so on. In fact, India ranks 16th in the unhappy index (from a list of 156 countries).

There was one thing though that I was very happy about , the Happiness Class in Delhi. Even better, the rightful recognition it got from the visit of Melania Trump to one of those classes. This should have been something we should have kept in media for weeks and discussed on how this should be widely implemented.

Happiness class is a 45 minute class everyday where students undergo a happy curriculum without restrictions and the infinite no statements. Education system is fundamentally broken where these institutions have become business centric with scoring marks as the underlying principle instead of creativity. The schools have become places to kill the creativity within children. Happiness class is something that i see as a light at the end of the tunnel, thanks to AAP.

Last day, I saw my nephew being criticized by everyone at home but i knew he was a sensible kid. I decided to dig in what is going on and apply my ironical fundamental principle i follow nowadays, “if i see someone being said wrong by everyone, that may be the only right one left”. I saw that he was understanding the concepts and writing answers on how he understood it. The school wanted answers with the exact print as in the textbook, very similar to the older machines that used on run on the if-then-else logic. I couldn’t control my laughter thinking even machines have come out of that jargon.

My son when he went to pre-k had a very unhappy teacher. I clearly remember how he changed from a very active kid to a reserved kid that year. Next year only thing i was searching for was a happy teacher who let the kids be what they are and that made a big difference.

We are who we are taught to be.

On my way back from one side of the world to other, I noticed my 3 month old smile to everyone around the world. It didn’t matter the color, the dress, the religion, the language or the country.

Soon his smile will become selective, soon it will become part of this weird world, i mused.

As i was writing this, he was sitting next to me looking at the light from my laptop. I smiled at him with my whole heart and he gave me back the most beautiful unconditional smile in the world, the true smile which the humanity lacks.