Happy talk

Huh?

Education secretary Ed Balls has announced that lessons on happiness, wellbeing and good manners are to be introduced to all state secondary schools. Is he having a laugh? No, he's deadly serious.

But what exactly is going to happen in these classes of cheer, these sessions in sensitivity?

Will the Chuckle Brothers burst into the classroom and start waving rubber chickens about as piles of Prozac are be politely handed round like sweeties? Maybe aromatherapy candles could be placed about the room while pupils study books on good manners and etiquette (How To Boil a Flamingo is a particularly useful tome).

But no, it's all one-to-one sessions to discuss things like "personal conflict", wellbeing assemblies and the introduction of buzz phrases such as: "people like me succeed".

This has all come about as the result of an extensive primary school pilot programme called Seal (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning), which demonstrated that pupils became calmer, better focused and more effective academically after being taught how to chill a bit.

Lessons included anger management, handling emotions, expressing inner feelings and talking about why pupils were feeling happy - or not.

Oh, purleeease!

Try telling the demented parent of your average truculent teenager that all their little darling needs is help getting even more in touch with their emotions or encouragement to talk more about themselves and they'll laugh their head off.

Those involved in the study say children learned to express their feelings, manage anger and empathise , leading to better behaviour and improved results. Which is great, but talk to most parents of older children and you'll soon realise teenager-from-hell-syndrome is worryingly commonplace and many distraught mums and dads actually cite all this emotional introspection and kid-glovery as a major contributor to unreasonable behaviour.

In fact one exasperated mum I spoke to (who wished to remain nameless for fear of reprisals from her over-emotive teen!) laughed out loud at the idea of happiness classes and said that what's needed are extra lessons on how to knuckle down and get on with the task of learning!

Face it, how many adolescents do you know who have a problem telling anyone who'll listen what is making them unhappy - too few lifts from dad, too many rules at home, too little money, too few hours for sleeping, blah, blah, blah?

And when it comes to talking about themselves, the subject of me, me, me is the one in which they would get an A+.

But don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger. My children are still babies so I have all this to come, but teaching assistant Jeanette Andrew, from Ferndown, said of her daughter: "Sometimes I think her head will explode, she knows so much - or at least she thinks she does."

As for good manners, if your child is now at "big" school and is still having to be taught to say "please" and "thank you" then go and stand in the corner, right now... please.