[MUSIC] Now the big question after that is, how replicable is this? We chose Bhutan because Bhutan had the most enabling conditions in every way. So, the next country we went to, at the other side of the world, is Mexico. And within Mexico we chose the state of Jalisco, because Jalisco, the governor of Jalisco had declared that he wanted to make Jalisco the first well-being state in Mexico. So somewhat similar to Bhutan but very different. 20 million people as opposed to 1 million people in Bhutan, much more heterogeneous, much more chaotic, and this was very much a new philosophy. So it was a similar methodology except we incorporated 70 schools instead of 18 to the initial randomized controlled trial. So we had to train trainers, who then train teachers. What did we find? We found that 15 months after the intervention in 70 schools, 68,000 students in total, there was a significant increase in schools that received the well-being curriculum, compared to controlled schools, but it was a lower impact compared to Bhutan. The impact was .41 standard deviations, and we're waiting for data to see whether these effects last one year after the end of the intervention, but our preliminary data says that it does. Again, these life skills become habits. And in terms of academic performance, similar to Bhutan, there was a significant increase of .36 standard deviations. Again, lower than Bhutan, but significant. This is more than half an academic school year of an advancement by learning non-academic skills. And again, our preliminary data say that even after the end of this program, these differences, these advancements in academic performance and last. So finally we said what if we went somewhere, that doesn't have well-being as an explicit mission. That is much larger, heterogeneous, noisy canvas work, and we went to Peru in South America. And, because of the size of the intervention, we worked with not only with the ministry of education in Peru, but we partnered with the world bank as well to be able to roll this out to about 700 schools, almost a million students, and different. So we took it one step further than in Mexico. We trained trainers, who then trained more trainers and these trainers eventually trained teachers on the well-being curriculum. Now what did we find? We found exactly the same thing. 15 months after the intervention, there was a significant increase in PERMA in both students and teachers, a smaller increase of .24 standard deviations. And again, our preliminary results tell us that these effects, these increases in well-being last. And when it comes to standardized test scores, academic performance, again, there was a significant increase of 0.19 standard deviations. Again, a slightly lower increase, but of almost a million students, 700,000 plus students. And again, after the end of the intervention, our preliminary results say these effects last. So what can we say? We can say with absolute certainty number one well-being is learnable. Learning the skills for well being gives you sustainable well-being, not a honeymoon effect. And number three, increasing well-being has positive and very significant downstream effects on things like academic performance. Now there does seem to be a trade off between the impact, the effect size, and the number of, in this case, students. So, in Bhutan for example, we had more than half a standard deviation of an increase in well-being after 15 months, but it was only about 8,000 students. In Peru where we had almost a million students, we had an increase of 0.2 standard deviations. So it's almost like you have to choose, do we move a huge amount of students a little bit, or do we move a relatively smaller amount, 8,000 is still a lot. Or do we move a small amount of students a lot? And this makes sense. And of course, the most reasonable explanation is this increased layer of trainers dilutes the fidelity of the program. So what can we say? Luckily, more and more people are realizing that rather than being a threat to the traditional education system that only promotes academic performance, passing exams, passing standardized exams, this new educational paradigm that promotes academics together with character well-being, is not only not a threat but it actually amplifies the goals of traditional education. It enhances academic performance and it gives people the skills to truly master the art of living and living well. And there's a growing international positive education network. I invite all of you to join us. There are people from over, there are schools and principals, teachers, practitioners, researchers from over 70 countries that are part of IPEN, this is International Positive Education Network. I invite all of you to join. (http://www.ipen-network.com/) But, in short, why well-being and why well-being in schools? Number one, well-being is desirable. Well-being has intrinsic value, we all universally desire well-being, and luckily it also has instrumental value. It leads to other positive life effects, such as increased academic performance, better health, and the list goes on. Number two, we can define well-being, PERMA. PERMA is very much definable and universally applicable. We can measure well-being. We can see what is working, what is not working. And most importantly, well-being is changeable. We can teach and learn well-being. So this new educational model is not only feasible, but it's absolutely desirable. Thank you.
