The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness (Not Money) Would Transform Our Schools

by Susan Engel

Amid the hype of Race to the Top, online experiments such as Khan Academy, and bestselling books like The Sandbox Investment, we seem to have drawn a line that leads from nursery school along a purely economic route, with money as the final stop. But what price do we all pay for the increasingly singular focus on wage as the outcome of education? Susan Engel, a leading psychologist and educator, argues that this economic framework has had a profound impact not only on the way we think about education but also on what happens inside school buildings.

The End of the Rainbow asks what would happen if we changed the implicit goal of education and imagines how different things would be if we made happiness, rather than money, the graduation prize. Drawing on psychology, education theory, and a broad range of classroom experiences across the country, Engel offers a fascinating alternative view of what education might become: teaching children to read books for pleasure and self-expansion and encouraging collaboration. All of these new skills, she argues, would not only cultivate future success in the world of work but also would make society as a whole a better, happier place.

Accessible to parents and teachers alike, The End of the Rainbow will be the beginning of a new, more vibrant public conversation about what the future of American education should look like.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching, Parenting

237 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 6, 2015

About the author

Susan Engel is a developmental psychologist in the Department of Psychology at Williams College and the founder and director of the Williams Program in Teaching. She wrote a column on teaching for "The""New York Times" called "Lessons" and is a cofounder of The Hayground School in Eastern Long Island.

Reviews

[Caren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't have children at home anymore, nor do I have the distinct pleasure of reading aloud to them these days since my grandchildren live way across the continent from me. Still, I have an interest in education since it certainly molds the future of our country. Susan Engel is a developmental psychologist teaching at Williams College and is the director of the Williams Program in Teaching. I am not an educator, so I have no idea how well her theories would work in the real world, especially since our huge public school system can't abide rapid change, but I do like her ideas. If you wanted to boil down her ideas to their most basic, I think you could say she bemoans, as have others, the fact that education has really become job training, preparing future employees, rather than mind-building, forming thinking people who enjoy learning for its own sake. Further, she would say that education that leads to the second result makes for happier people. She questions, also as have others, the relentless testing to which our children are subjected. The best thing about Ms. Engel's book is that she offers alternatives, solutions that would make school a happier place for the children in this country. I knew I really liked Ms. Engel when I read her memory of being taught long division:
"When I was seven, I had a teacher named Mr. Harry....The school was progressive, inspired by ideas from John Holt and Herb Kohl, so the teachers were encouraged to teach different things to different children. We were often asked to work independently. One day Mr. Harry decided that my best friend, Gwen, and I should learn long division. He kneeled down between our seats at the table and worked through a problem, explaining each step. I nodded at each demonstration, confident that I was following along. Then he handed us worksheets with twelve long-division problems and left us to it. My friend set to it almost instantly, working her way through the problems. I, however, just sat there dumbly, looking at the page, without understanding anything. I was completely mystified about how to proceed. What had seemed clear to me when Mr. Harry was talking was shrouded in fog the minute I was on my own. After thirty minutes or so, Mr. Harry returned to us, saying with a bright sunny smile, "How are you two doing?" He glanced over Gwen's work with a pleased expression on his face. Then he saw my sheet, completely blank. His face darkened, his mouth curved down, and he said with fury, "What have you been doing all this time? What's wrong with you? You have to learn long division!" I had never struggled with a school task before. But I had no idea how to do long division. I felt miserable at my own incomprehension, terrified by his anger, and humiliated. I asked if I could go to the bathroom, where I promptly locked myself in and cried until I threw up into the toilet." (pages 60-61)
While I didn't run to the restroom and throw up, my memory of learning math (not only long division, but the whole miserable procession through geometry and algebra, after which I refused to go on, even though I was told it would be necessary if I intended to go to college) is one of, just as she said, miserable incomprehension. I , too, was otherwise a good student, so I found it humiliating that I just couldn't get it. Alas, I watched my daughters struggle with math too.
Ms. Engel goes on:
"Ideas about why and how we teach math in this country could give you whiplash. Sometimes the prevailing view is that the majority of children should learn to use math for practical purposes---to balance a checkbook, to read a graph, and to understand their taxes. But of course, this doesn't explain why we require most children to take algebra and geometry in high school. Sit in any high school counselor's office and listen to the reasons given. A sulky fourteen-year-old, hair hanging down over her face as she slouches in the counselor's office, says plaintively, "Whyyy do I have to take algebra? I haate math. What's the point of it?" The counselor says with authority, "You need two years of math to get into college. And besides, algebra will help you on the SATs." Teachers and counselors across the country are certain that spending two years on something you hate is fine if it might lead to a good score on a test that itself is only a conduit to something else......The two reasons that children (and their parents) are given for learning math (that it's practical or that it will get you into college) are both bad ones. Neither inspires an interest in learning, and neither encourages a student to think like a mathematician.....When children are taught that math is worthwhile only because of the dollars it will bring them later on, they are also taught that there is no real satisfaction to be had in understanding the world through numbers or logical relationships. They are encouraged to think of math as a mere tool, a means to an end, rather than as a way of thinking that brings its own pleasures and rewards." (pages 62-66)
In similar fashion she explores the way reading is taught, with its worksheets leading to tests and no time for pleasure reading. She said she often asks people to tell her about a book that has changed or influenced them. She says, "...the vast majority of people I've asked have no clue what I'm even talking about. They think one reads to take one's mind off the day or to get practical information. The idea that books would be a central part of your life, shaping the way you think, feel, and act, is completely strange to them." (pages 146-7)
Ms. Engel has some specific ways she thinks education could be altered to promote the joy of learning rather than making school just a long slog to a pot of money at the end of the rainbow. Her components which may make schools happier and in the end more productive places for children are: 1) Have conversations 2) Read (and here she means letting children choose what they want to read and having blocks of time during the day to allow for just pleasure reading) 3) Lean on one another (in order to promote community rather than always competition) 4) Investigate (that is, encourage the innate curiosity of children) 5) Be useful (because every human wants to feel purposeful) 6) Get immersed, become an expert 7) Know and be known by an adult. Ms. Engel then lists conditions for meeting those goals: Community; Reasonable amounts of time; Simplicity; Autonomy; Teachers who like what they do. She also addresses the relentless testing that has, regrettably, permeated our education system. She gives alternative ways to measure skills. For measuring reading, for example, she says:
"When children can read and do read, their language and thinking are different. One way to measure reading, then, is to take a close look at their language and thinking. For example, using recordings of children's everyday speech, developmental psychologists can calculate two important indicators of intellectual functioning: the grammatical complexity of their sentences and the size of their working vocabularies (not the words they circle on a test, but the ones they use in their real lives). Why not do the same in school?" (pages 186-7)
She also advises measuring how children use inquiry, saying "Researchers have found that the way a student critiques a simple science experiment shows whether he or she understands the idea of controlling variables, which is a key component in all science work." page 188) Other skills to measure are flexible thinking and the use of evidence, conversation skills, how well children can collaborate, levels of engagement with material, and finally, that children have a sense of well-being.
I am not an educator, so I don't really have a sense of how feasible her ideas are. I will say though, if I could go back and be a kid, I'd want to go to one of Ms. Engel's schools.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan Engel suggests a new approach to education that focuses on eight dispositions that can help children lead happier lives if acquired and learned well in school. She describes concrete goals that schools can implement to help students develop these dispositions. She goes on to discuss how periodic video recordings of classroom interactions can be used as a new form of assessment, though her primary focus seems to be using this footage to provide a snapshot of schools, as opposed to a measure of individual student achievement.

While I was enlightened about Engel's ideas about focusing on developing a love for reading and nurturing children's natural sense of curiosity among other goals, it is difficult for me to imagine how schools that follow Engel's model would produce students who are compatible with the current college and job application systems. Other facets of society need to change before schools can actually treat student happiness as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

[Carmen Kendal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engel expresses herself clearly and develops her thoughts logically. I had many "yes!" moments reading this book, and I'm glad I picked it up.

I do have the following concerns though:
- overall, her engagement with relevant issues was superficial.
- good talking points, and perhaps a great conversation starter for teachers, but it requires a deeper delve / more ground being covered
- many of the issues seem to be blamed on teachers, when in fact teachers are at the whim of government, society, parents, school governing boards, etc. These issues are necessary discourse for all sectors of society, and not just teachers. Teachers alone won't be able to act out the changes necessary in education as outlined by this book

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent points, and good ideas. NCLB and Race to the Top are addressed, as is teaching to the tests. More politicians need to go back to school before they cut programs that honestly help our most valuable resource, our children.

[Ben Hickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am all fired up about teaching now

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Happiness involves:
Engagement in meaningful activity
Connection to other people
Involvement in one’s community
Sense of purpose and accomplishment
Ability to make own choices
Capacity to feel joy (93)

Flow/intense absorption/engagement in a task increases learning in general and happiness (100)
Example of a group of students who made a film as part of a teacher’s decision to allow them to engage in a creative project. They wrote and edited, studied other films to discover what worked as narrative, how music worked, how changing film angles changed the effect, difference between funny dialogue and funny gestures.
When children have some control over material they are learning they are more engaged (103) Ann Brown, “Transforming Schools into Communities of learning and Thinking about Serious Matters” American Psychologist 52, no. 4 (997): 399-413.
Children need to find own sense of meaning & purpose/get absorbed in an activity (taking apart an old clock, building a fortress, inventing the rules of a new game). “What if . . . school was a place where children built up their sense of purpose, learned how to identify their own goals, and acquired ways to meet those goals?” Children need opportunity to make choices and their own plans.
Andrew Carnegie describes thrill of knowing his jobs in cotton factory and telegraph office helped his family survive. Child labor laws have, paradoxically, removed children from work of meaning in the now in favor of meaning in the future: they’re all potential and no present (109). “Children need to feel that what they do matters to others. If we want children to learn the satisfaction of making things that are beautiful and useful to others, why not let them begin when they are young?” (156)
Story about children being allowed to tell jokes at recess, but then she tells them it has to be a “real” joke, not one they made up (119 – even though making up jokes requires “careful and complex thinking”)

125 thinking about importance of self-esteem was misinterpreted. People do benefit from having a chance to experience mastery. But they don’t benefit from pointless/groundless self-esteem, which makes them more likely to be aggressive/lash out (123).
125: importance of teaching children how to learn: in one school each identified something s/he wanted to learn (build small furniture, repair clocks, history of Silk Road). Each sat down w/ teacher and made a plan for how to learn – what resources would be needed, who should be consulted, about how much time would be required. At end of several months, child was asked if s/he had learned enough. If so, gave presentation,
Evidence that children who learn from each other learn better (128)
Reading doesn’t require you to be a “fast reader, good at parsing sentences, or even good at identifying the motives of the main character” – you need to be able to read well enough to keep reading (131)
People who read “have larger vocabularies, are more effective communicators, and are more likely to construct persuasive arguments. True readers are more able to understand abstract concepts, capable of thinking about problems from several perspectives, and more likely to consider a range of information when considering whom to vote for or what policy to support . . . allows[s] them to enter alternate worlds, encounter the experiences of people from distant cultures and times, and learn about things far outside their immediate realm. Research suggests that people who read novels have greater empathy and emotional insight than people who do not.” (130) – so phonics and worksheets should be much less a focus than actually reading.
132 example of school that gave yellow book bags to each student, into which they put a book currently reading and one hoped to be able to read in the future, made reading something aspirational, something to be desired and longed for.
What We Should Measure:
Idea of using video data to analyze what children and teachers actually do, not “what they can do when they know they are being evaluated” (185)
“To assess scientific skills, children could read about a scientific experiment or look at a scientific poster (the kind used by researchers and by students during science fairs) and then explain how they would improve upon it. Children’s explanations of experiments have already been coded by researchers, so figuring out how to evaluate such student responses would not be hard at all” (188).
Ability to think about situation in several different ways has already been measured in college students (188)

[Anne Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just a quick note, more a reaction to the book than a "review of" the book: while I certainly agree with Engel's overall arguments — yes, our K-12 schools need to do more to produce happy, productive, curious, and engaged members of society —Engel lets the majority of teachers get away with professional murder. Granted there are some wonderful teachers, but these are the exception to the rule. Read Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer and Reading in the Wild, David Bouchard's The Gift of Reading, Jim Trelease's The Read -Aloud Handbook, and you'll learn of the oh-so-terrible-truth that a vast number of teachers actually do not really enjoy reading at all. What I mean by this is that teachers are often no different from the majority of the adult populace; when given a choice whether to read or watch TV, the majority opt for the latter activity. It is imperative that the adult role models our kids see on a daily basis outside of the home inspire our kids to think of reading as pleasurable. Gone are the days when educators can assume that kids' reading will be addressed at home, by parents reading aloud, by books in the home, and by regular visits to bookstores and libraries. Instead we need to make time for independent reading during school, including a rich array of titles in the classroom and at least weekly trips to the school library. We know that reading well is essential in our literary-laden world, thus it is imperative that our kids read well. To do so, they need to choose what they read; so, to pick up the reading bug, we need to saturate kids with books that call out to them to be read! We can't get in the way of kids who want to read a favourite genre or series, merely because we think it's not literary enough or because it doesn't fall into our teaching mandates. Teachers need to make room for reading by following Finland's path; toss out all activities that "teach to the test" and focus all our attention on the kinds of activities that turn kids into readers. For how to set this all into practice, refer especially to Donalyn Miller's books. Truly they are godsends, gifts to teachers, parents, and librarians alike.

[Scott Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book for educators to reflect upon how the purpose of schooling has been defined over the years and how this purpose, perhaps, contrasts with what our students need to enhance their learning. Engel does a thorough job of tracing the development of education from the time it was designed for the few until education developed as a right of everyone. While this happened, the purpose of education became focused on the economic benefits in the future. As a result, we have accepted the system as a means to an end rather than considering education an end. Engel presents, with sufficient evidence, the traits which schools should seek to develop in students and considers what schools would need to do in order to support this type of development in students. The book is well-written, well-supported, and provocative!

[Joanne Kelleher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because it combined two of my favorite topics - Happiness and Education. The premise was interesting to me, and I thought the contents might provide some insight for a course I am teaching about the politics of education. Unfortunately, this book did not deliver what I had hoped for. the author shares research about the benefits of focusing on happiness, as opposed to "success" as defined by mastery of the assessments we use to measure achievement. The the book became very anecdotal with examples of schools here and there that shifted their culture to focus on happiness. There were general tips about how to make this shift. How would you measure happiness in the classroom, you might ask? Her suggestion was to put videotapes in all classrooms, and the videos would be reviewed periodically, without notice. She lost me right there. In the end, not that helpful.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I've read about what education should be. Every page was a big YES for me. Finally, I could face the foundational reasons for my unhappiness, frustration and anger in the last few years of my teaching career. This book looks beyond the political into the deepest meaning of education. Suddenly it's so clear what the matter is. And that it can be addressed!!! This is a transformative book for me personally. Now I can move on with my happy new retired life with a greater sense of meaning and purpose.

[Marisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a pretty good read and at least she was good about outlining her thoughts, providing concrete examples and basic ideas for implementation of those ideas, but she is clearly from white suburbia and she said some things about students at an alternative school that I really did not like-- and in that same section also said some things that seemed to conflict with her main message. Despite this, the book was pretty interesting and provided insight into what schools should really be focusing on and how the current system is not addressing core issues.

[Tyler Chalfin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that makes you remember what is at the heart of teaching. An enlightening and refreshing read.

Susan clearly shows how educating for happiness is what all children deserve. She optimistically lays out a way that schools and teachers can reframe student success that is inspiring and possible. This book has made me reflect on my own practice and reminds me what is most important.

[Starr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrible title, but great book otherwise.

My only other beef is with the concept of "happiness". I can't think of a better word, but happiness does not quite encompass the concept Engel's trying to push.

[Toby Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book to open a discussion as to what's important in schools. I agreed with much of what Engel raised as to what the focus of schools should be. While it is a quick read, it seems she only skimmed the surface. This is a book that needs to be read with others.

[Sam-Omar Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thorough and thought-provoking.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important read for superintendents, principals, department heads, as well as teachers--I hope to incorporate some of its concepts into my teaching.