The Concept of Happiness in the Semantic Structure of the Educational System

The current tedious and exhausting conditions of schools make it necessary to adopt policies toward increasing happiness and esprit. Providing of a clear and common understanding of happiness is a prerequisite for the success of such policies. Given the current ambiguity and lack of such an understanding, this article concentrates on extracting “meaning/meanings of happiness in the semantic structure of the educational System”. For this purpose, we have used Laclau and Mouffe’s theoretical basis and frame the meaning structure of the education system as a “discourse” in which meaning of each signifier is only defined in relation with other signifiers and particularly master-signifiers. We gathered our information by analyzing existing organizational documents and also by utilizing semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that in the semantic system of the education system, there are one dominant and two temporary meanings for happiness. In the dominant meaning, happiness can both work toward perfection or becomes a barrier in front of it. Regarding temporary meanings, one of them is about motion and physical activities and the other is about physical characteristics of school. None of these meanings is completely consolidated. As a consequence, the ruling meaning structure could not stabilize any clear and unified meaning for happiness. These ambiguities at semantic level lead to confusion and conflicting performances at the policy-making level