SSCARF Education Model and Happiness Index Modelling

Abstract

SCARF model has been proposed and widely adopted in most traditional classroom teaching for decades. SCARF essentially focus on Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness, in neuroscience, which constitute to developing the character of a child in city living. However, this paper studies about the alternative education model in Heibe, China. It is found that those children lack of family supports, especially siblings (due to the one-child policy in China in the past years); and the neigbours live far apart. Hence, most of those children grow up in isolated environment. By tracing these the brought-up of those children, who attended a voluntary school where the author has taught for some years, it is noticed that those children appear to be happier in general, compared to those who did not go to such school. Hence it is pondering on the importance of social life which can be provided by attending the lessons in the voluntary school. In this paper, the authors propose extending the SCARF model to SSCARF where the prefix S symbolizing the social life that is in provision in the voluntary school. It is believed that the social aspect is a very important part of a child’s brought up. The hypothesis of SSCARF especially the social “S” is backed and verified by happiness index modelling via data mining. The results show that happiness is more related to the social aspects of the children’s childhood than material wealth.