Confidence and well-being?

Back from Grassington - good weekend had by all - and Sunday night spent catching up on the news from elsewhere ...

... one (essentially English) education story from the weekend has really caught my eye - the BBC have initially reported it here; and you can read much more background detail at the website of the Centre for Confidence and Well-Being here; and some specific comment from the author of the speech at her blog here.

I'm intuitively drawn to the potential, positive benefits of promoting general well-being and have blogged on aspects of all of this before - here and here - but something about Carol Craig's critique rings very true?

But, personally, I'm left feeling slightly unsure about such a verdict - if you read her blog entry, you'll see that she mentions John Kay’s concept of 'obliquity' which argues for an indirect approach to achieving goals (as opposed to a direct approach). And what I fear in all of this is a real danger of the good being thrown out in the search for the perfect ... and, in some ways, isn't that part of what 'obliquity' tries to warn us about??

... anyhow, this is indeed a topic pertinent to Scotland/Edinburgh (as well as to the development of SEAL in England) due to the increasing attention being paid to emotional literacy both in national policy and local practice.

More reading required ;-)