Happiness in Schools: From Idea to Implementation

In this article, we investigate policies to enhance happiness in Iranian schools. Conducting organizational documents analysis and semi-structured interviews, we addressed measures, and perceptions of happiness in education system. We contend that happiness, a neutral emotional state of human being, is deemed to satisfy some ideological functions for education system. Accordingly, authorities tend to distinguish between two different definitions of happiness, shadi (corporal joy) and neshat (spiritual happiness) in schools, which requires different process and structure of meaning for policy making. In order to restrain students’ attentions to corporal pleasure, some mechanisms have been implemented, i.e. exclusion, oppression and reprimand, while no executive plan has been defined for encouraging students to spiritual happiness. Lack of positive policies for strengthening neshat on the one hand, and emphasis on negative and punitive reactions against students way of life, on the other, make the atmosphere of schools extremely unpleasant.