[MUSIC] So about seven years ago, my doctoral advisor, Martin Seligman, and I sat down and we said, can we not only increase well-being, but can we increase wellbeing at a grand scale? And when we searched all the literature that had been out there, we saw that there were only isolated efforts of increasing well-being in the clinical setting, in an experimental setting and the largest was at a whole school level. So we were ambitious enough to ask can we increase well-being at a whole nation level? And after perusing all the nations in the world and their social, political and economic characteristics we found this tiny country that you can see between China and India called Bhutan. And why did we choose Bhutan to pilot our national program of enhancing well-being? Because Bhutan rather than measuring gross domestic product as most countries in the world do to measure their national progress, they measure gross national happiness and that is a compose that guides institutional architecture and public policy design in the country. So in Bhutan we found the most enabling environment to promote well-being at a whole nation skill. And not only that but when we approach the ministry of education they were tremendously excited to collaborate with us, and within a few months, we started what is now the motto of the Ministry of Education in Bhutan which is, Education for Gross National Happiness. And I'll be talking about how essential it is adopt any single initiative, any single intervention to a local context to the local culture. So just like in Bhutan gross national happiness is a part of their DNA,. Education for gross national happiness became the guiding compass for the Ministry of Education's vision in every single effort. So what do we do? Even though the Ministry of Education wanted to roll this out in all of their secondary schools we as scientist said, wait a second. First, let's identify what are the most relevant skills that have number one the most empirical grounding to work, and two, that are most culturally and contextually relevant for the local context. And number two, let's run the randomized control trial to make sure that this actually works. And we found ten life skills that you can see. That number one had the most evidence to work and number two were the most relevant for Bhutan. These are mindfulness, critical thinking, decision making, communication, creative thinking, empathy, problem solving, interpersonal relationships, resilience and self-awareness. So what do we do? We randomly chose 18 secondary schools from around the country and these schools were randomly assigned to receive the GNH curriculum, again, adapting everything including the language, the GNH curriculum, Gross National Happiness curriculum and the control schools which received a placebo curriculum. Now, as good scientists, we started with baseline measurement, measuring well-being in every single student, teacher, and staff member at each of these schools. After measurement, we introduced educating for GNH in every single one of the 18 schools, regardless of whether they were in the GNH curriculum or the control condition. This meant giving people a sense of the why we were implementing this program. And then during 15 months in the GNH Schools, we did two things. We taught the life skills co-curricularly, so literally this meant period one science, period two math, period three life skills. The life skills class was given as much seriousness and time as any other academic subject. But not only that, but we infused the existing academic subjects with life skills. As an example, we started an organic garden in every single one of these schools. So rather than learning physics, chemistry, biology, etc, and the typical siloed way in which they are taught, in biology they learn about the genetics of plants, in chemistry they learn about the fertility of soil, in physics they learn about the physiology of plants. In maths they learn about the economic value of fruits and vegetables and they literally went out and they planted these plants. And not only were disciplines and academic subjects integrated but if any of you have planted and engaged in botany in any way, you have to think critically when you're out there. You have to communicate effectively, you have to work with teams, you have to have resilience when things go wrong. So that was one of the many ways in which we integrated life skills into the curriculum. In control schools we gave a placebo curriculum in which we taught physical health, psychology and nutrition. So this was implemented as I said and you can see inside the classroom, outside the classroom but most importantly there was experiential learning of these life skills as a stand alone class and also infused in other academic subjects. Now of course, there was post-intervention measurement which is, did this actually work? And then what did we see? After 15 months of implementing the GNH curriculum in the schools that we randomly assigned to receive the GNH curriculum compare to control schools, there was a significant increase in well-being. And when I say significant, it was almost a 0.6 standard deviation increase. And for those who know some statistics and psychology that's a huge difference. Now the biggest question was, is this a honeymoon effect? Is this an effect that only last a few weeks or is this something that is sustainable? So we stopped the program completely after 15 months, did nothing for a full year, and one year after, measured the well-being in control schools compared to GNH schools. And what did we find? There was no significant decrease in well-being of students or teachers in GNH schools compared to control schools. So what did we find? Well-being number one is learnable, and not only that, but it's not your usual, I learned history, to regurgitate, pass an exam, but these life skills become habits. Life long habits that remain long after the end of the intervention. What we did not expect is to see this incredible increase in standardized test scores. So as if enhancing well-being wasn't enough students in GNH schools did significantly better on standardized scores measuring math, science and reading, than control schools. And the difference between GNH schools and control schools, as you can see, was about half a standard deviation. Now to put this into context this is a full academic year worth of enhancement of progress. What this means is schools within the control condition had their normal 15 months advancement in students. Students in receiving the GNH curriculum that was targeting non-academics skills had the usual 15 month advancement, academically, plus an extra 12 months. So concentrating on academic, on non-academic skills had tremendous academic dividends. And again, stopping the program completely and one year after the differences remain significant. So other results there was better physical health in students and teachers, decreased absenteeism, significantly higher satisfaction with the whole school experience and lower drop-out rates. And in short we were able to create what we call well-being eco-systems. And since then, since the beginning of 2015, the Ministry of Education of Bhutan has taken the program to a national scale and we're proud to say that it's been tremendously exciting since.
