Why Universities Should Seek Happiness and Contentment

Description

The totalising effect of consumerism, well-being and satisfaction is a discourse which may negate the value of struggle and mastery of complex subjects and a realization of personal potentiality. Why Universities Should Seek Happiness and Contentment considers the consequences of a hedonistic and well-being centred model of student education as one of the goals of higher education and proposes an alternative goal for higher education. In a globalised consumer society where the anxiety for an identity leads to the fear of not reaching the standard, Paul Gibbs shows how anxiety can be harnessed to secure contentment with one’s own future without the fear of consumer-induced emptiness. He conceptualises higher education in a counter-valued way to the current dominant discourse of higher education institutions and educational policy while placing students at the centre of their own educational activity. In doing so, Gibbs proposes contentment as a guiding principle of higher education. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Tables Preface Acknowledgements Part 1: What Are We Talking About? 1. Happiness and Education: Recognizing Their Importance 2. Finding a Pursuit: Is Higher Education for Students or Is It Its Students? 3. A Short Epochal Contextualization of Happiness as Self-Fulfilment 4. Contemporary Literature on Happiness 5. The Language of Happiness and UK Higher Education Part 2: Voices of Happiness, Satisfaction or Contentment 6. What Has Been Written on Happiness and Higher Education? 7. Happiness and the Student Experience Part 3: Happiness and the Disposition of Contentment 8. Contentment Explored 9. Contentment, Despair and Resilience 10. The Time and Space of the University: A Fit with Contentment? 11. Self-Cultivation and Contentment: Thinking East and West 12. Grounding: A Pedagogy of Contentment for Higher Education 13. Coda Notes Bibliography Index