ABSTRACT
EARLY in life children learn that happiness is valued highly. Many of the first stories they hear have as their most satisfying conclusion that the main characters 'lived happily ever after'. Once children are at school, their parents may regularly enquire whether they are happy there, for to be happy is the main thing, even if academic progress is not quite all that it might be. At important choice-points in the course of formal education, happiness may again be appealed to as the ultimate criterion in making such choices. In fact, in discussing their child with the staff of a school parents often do explicitly say that all they want is that their child should be happy. For example, in a study of parental attitudes towards streaming, Brian Jackson comments on the parents of some C-stream children that 'if their child was worried and upset, this was in itself sufficient reason for not pressing a course which heightened anxiety: unlike the "A" parents, they had not the knowledge or experience in this matter to balance present pain against future pleasure, and ignoring the strategies of education, they thought in terms of their child's immediate happiness'. 1
