ABSTRACT
Nowadays, increasingly we hear about the discourse that advocates in favor of doing as much as we can so that students will be happy at schools. This approach has caused many reactions within the academic field, since in certain contexts happiness has started to be misunderstood. As for schools, in good, though wrong, faith, they foster the segregation of pupils according to their levels of academic performance, disabilities, race … and justifying this separation based on, what they consider, a pupil needs to be happy.
Currently, research supports that the development of these discriminatory practices, as well as this way of understanding education and organizing the education system, entails serious consequences in the strengths of the human being recognized by Peterson and Seligman (2004). That is why the alternative agreed upon by the scientific community is school inclusion as an instrument which encourages all the students’ development.
Throughout this chapter we show the close link between the inclusive school principles and the development of the human strengths. We will defend, on the basis of scientific evidence, an inclusive classroom which enhances such strengths and achieves improvements in all the students’ academic performance, opting for a school curriculum based on inclusive principles, which help students achieve true happiness through the evolution of their own potential (Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich, & Linkins, 2009).
