Tal Ben Shahar is very concerned about the state of education in our country: he explains why a “happiness curriculum” starting in childhood is a key to fixing what’s wrong with our school system.

Question: What keeps you up at night?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Education, that's our future. This is where I'm putting most of my time into thinking about how we can introduce, whether it's in the public school system or in the private schools, better teaching; how we can cultivate more wellbeing, more of a sense of purpose, because many students are experiencing what Victor Frankl called an existential vacuum, meaninglessness. So how to introduce a sense of purpose, how to introduce more happiness. And these things are of course related. And how to introduce more ambition and more flourishing in the general sense of the word into schools.

Question: Should classes like your Harvard course on happiness be taught to kids?

Tal Ben-Shahar: I think we should introduce a happiness curriculum from kindergarten all the way up to the age of 120. Why? Because happiness is a journey. The earlier we start, the better; however, also if we start at a late stage, we can still teach a lot, we can still learn a lot.

Recorded on:  September 23, 2009