Sunday, 26 June 2011

Accentuate The Positive

'Accentuate The Positive' featured on Compass (ABC) tonight. A documentary on Year 9 students from Geelong Grammar School's Timbertop campus in the Victorian Alps undergoing the first year of a world-first experiment in education.

The "Positive Education" program is the brainchild of renowned U.S. psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman. It's designed to help children develop ways of becoming happier, more resilient people. Its introduction at Geelong Grammar is the school's response to the epidemic of depression and alienation affecting teenagers around the world. But can children learn optimism in the same way they learn reading, writing and arithmetic? Over the course of a year this film follows five students through the program. It's a challenging and tumultuous journey and not everyone will make it through.

During the documentary a young Indigenous girl stated that "Hope is different to wishes... hope is something you have lost in the future and are trying to get to."

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