The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness—Not Money—Would Transform Our Schools

By Susan Engel, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, The Class of 1959 Director of Program in Teaching. The New Press, February 2015. This book asks what would happen if we changed the implicit goal of education and imagines how different things would be if we made happiness, rather than money, the graduation prize. Drawing on psychology, education theory, and a broad range of classroom experiences, Engel offers an alternative view of what education might become: teaching children to read books for pleasure and self-expansion and encouraging collaboration. The End of the Rainbow argues that these new skills would cultivate future success in the world of work and make society as a whole a better, happier place.