Across Europe and beyond, happiness and wellbeing have become central reference points in contemporary educational policy and curriculum reform. International frameworks such as the OECD’s work on student wellbeing and initiatives like Happy Schools promote happiness, wellbeing, and resilience as key educational goals that can be fostered and embedded within schooling (OECD, 2013; OECD, 2024; UNESCO, 2016). While these developments respond to pressing societal concerns, they also raise fundamental questions about the nature of educational aims and the forms of knowledge through which these aims are articulated and governed.

This paper approaches happiness not primarily as a psychological outcome, but as an educational ideal with a long and complex history. Its immediate point of departure is the subject Glück (Fritz-Schubert, 2012) and the ongoing debate in Germany. In some schools, Glück has been introduced as an explicit subject or curricular focus, framed as an innovative response to contemporary wellbeing challenges. Rather than evaluating this subject as a curricular model, the paper uses it as an entry for a broader theoretical inquiry into the implications of institutionalising happiness as an educational aim.

Taking the German notion of Glück as an analytical starting point, the study examines how ideas of happiness have been conceptualised within pedagogical theories over time and how these conceptions are transformed when happiness is translated into curricular goals in contemporary wellbeing discourses. The objective of the paper is to clarify the epistemic and normative assumptions underlying current approaches to happiness in education and to reflect on their implications for curriculum theory in international contexts.

The paper is guided by the following overarching research question:
How has happiness functioned as an educational ideal within pedagogical thought, and what epistemic shifts occur when happiness is translated into a curricular goal in contemporary educational discourse?

This question is further specified by asking:

• How have pedagogical theories historically conceptualised happiness in relation to education, subjectivity, and society?
• Which continuities and ruptures become visible when these conceptions are systematically related?
• What implications do these transformations have for current curriculum debates on wellbeing and educational aims?

The theoretical framework of the study is grounded in educational philosophy and curriculum theory. Drawing on the tradition of German educational theory, education is understood as a normative and reflexive practice rather than as a purely instrumental process (Benner, 1989). Educational ideals such as happiness are therefore not treated as fixed concepts, but as historically situated orientations whose meanings emerge in relation to broader educational, philosophical, and socio-political contexts.
Within this framework, contemporary wellbeing discourses—such as positive education, resilience programmes, and happiness-oriented curricula—are situated within a longer educational tradition that includes classical references to Aristotelian eudaimonia as well as modern pedagogical theories of Bildung (MacIntyre, 2007). While contemporary approaches frequently invoke ideas of flourishing, the paper argues that these references often involve selective and decontextualised appropriations. Ethical, political, and educational contexts in which these concepts originally functioned are frequently omitted, resulting in a transformation of happiness from a shared normative educational orientation into an empirically measurable construct of individual optimisation.

By critically examining the curricularisation of happiness, the paper contributes to European and international debates on educational aims, wellbeing education, and curriculum reform. Using nationally situated developments as a theoretically informed point of entry, the study highlights how educational ideals circulate across policy contexts shaped by OECD and UNESCO discourses (OECD, 2013; UNESCO, 2016). Rather than proposing a specific model of wellbeing education, the paper provides conceptual resources for rethinking how happiness and wellbeing are framed and justified in contemporary educational systems.

The study adopts a historical-systematic approach as developed within German educational theory, particularly following Benner’s conception of educational research as a reflexive science (Benner, 1989). Rather than treating educational ideas as timeless concepts, this approach aims to reconstruct the historical and conceptual structures underlying pedagogical thinking and educational practice. Educational ideals are understood as historically situated orientations whose meanings emerge in relation to specific social, philosophical, and political conditions. Within this framework, the notion of Glück is approached not as a fixed or universally defined concept, but as a historically contingent and systematically structured educational orientation. The analysis seeks to reconstruct, as closely as possible, the problem horizons, anthropological assumptions, and normative expectations within which different understandings of Glück became plausible. This reconstructive step aims at contextual proximity and avoids anachronistic interpretations by situating educational ideas within their respective historical contexts. Building on this, the study follows Bellmann and Ehrenspeck’s (2006) understanding of historical-systematic analysis as a means of identifying transformations in educational meaning and self-understanding. To complement this perspective, a genealogically sensitised approach inspired by Nietzsche (1887) and Foucault (1977; 1980) is integrated. Genealogy is not employed as a method of causal explanation, but as an analytical lens that makes visible shifts, discontinuities, and reconfigurations in educational discourse. It enables the study to trace how meanings of Glück emerge, fade, and re-emerge under changing socio-historical conditions. Methodologically, historical reconstruction and systematic relation are analytically separated. While historical reconstruction aims to approximate historically specific understandings of Glück, systematic comparison serves theoretical clarification by relating these reconstructions to one another. This second step does not claim continuity of meaning, but examines how different conceptions fulfil distinct normative functions within educational thought. The analysis proceeds in three steps: first, key notions of Glück and related terms such as eudaimonia, happiness, flourishing, and wellbeing are identified; second, these notions are contextualised across educational, philosophical, and socio-political layers; third, they are systematically compared in order to trace continuities, ruptures, and metamorphoses. The analytical corpus consists of key educational texts and their interpretations, ranging from Aristotelian eudaimonia to contemporary wellbeing discourses. Starting from current approaches such as Positive Education, the study works backwards to examine how Glück has been positioned as an educational ideal across different historical constellations.

The study demonstrates that happiness has historically functioned in educational thought not as a clearly definable or directly teachable outcome, but as an open normative orientation whose meaning emerged in relation to broader conceptions of education, the human being, and society. Across different historical constellations, Glück appears as an ethical telos, an indirect educational promise, or a societal aspiration, yet never as a predefined objective that could be straightforwardly operationalised. This finding challenges contemporary assumptions that happiness and wellbeing can be translated into curricular goals without significant normative and conceptual loss. By reconstructing and systematically relating these historical configurations, the analysis reveals a fundamental epistemic shift in contemporary educational discourse. While current wellbeing frameworks frequently refer to classical notions such as Aristotelian eudaimonia, they reinterpret these ideas through an empirical and individualistic lens. Happiness is thus transformed from a shared normative educational orientation into a psychological construct of individual optimisation. Importantly, the study shows that such references are often selective and decontextualised: ethical, political, and educational contexts in which these concepts originally functioned are frequently omitted, reducing complex educational ideals to empirically tractable fragments aligned with contemporary curricular and governance logics. From a curriculum-theoretical perspective, these developments highlight the limits of curricular steering when dealing with contested educational ideals. The curricularisation of happiness risks narrowing the scope of education by prescribing desirable forms of subjectivity while marginalising relational, ethical, and societal dimensions historically associated with educational aims. This paper presents selected insights from a larger doctoral study. While the present contribution focuses on the epistemic and curricular implications of translating happiness into an educational goal, the dissertation more broadly reconstructs the plurality of normative orientations that have shaped pedagogical theories over time, thereby opening a conceptual space for differentiated engagement with happiness in contemporary educational debates.

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