The curriculum at schools can be quite intimidating for students, except perhaps for the brightest. The Delhi government hopes to change that by introducing happiness as a subject to be taught at its schools from Nursery to class VIII.

The curriculum hopes to instil self-awareness, reduce stress and help manage depression. It will encourage creative and critical thinking. All of which is quite laudatory, but it does not explain how a new subject will be squeezed into the existing time table and which subject/subjects will be squeezed out.

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Children deserve to be happy, a state of mind which will enable long-term learning. Not sure whether having a subject will lead to that.

Also, it does not answer the key question – what happens to exams. Clearly, exams are a major pain point during schooling. It has been done away with in lower classes and retained in middle and upper classes.

So, would there exams for happiness. And if you fail in the happiness subject, naturally you would be unhappy, defeating the very purpose for which the subject was introduced in the first place.

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The school students, whether in government schools or private schools, need a good learning ecosystem, dedicated teachers, good infrastructure and a stress-free environment. Saddling students with happiness as a subject will just be a rudimentary step that may not have the desired result.

However, one need not be dismissive of a new initiative and it would perhaps be prudent to wait for the experts to do a brain storming session to find out the exact contours of happiness. Till then, the students will have to patiently wait even as they hope that they will be happy in school.

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