Meditation and Tranquility in School

Meditation in school
Viruses are unpleasant things but viral posts on the internet sometimes have an interest. That goes for this post from an American school which used simple meditation techniques to give pupils calmness and emotional control. They report fewer discipline problems, detentions and exclusions. This is reported at http://www.womansday.com/life/a56446/school-replaces-detention-with-meditation/.


Tranquility
We did something very similar in England a decade ago. We called it Tranquility to avoid the religious connotations of meditation. Like all projects, it took some thinking through in the early states. Its purpose partly was to encourage calm minds which could come to terms positively with emotions like anger, temper, jealousy and envy. It did this through story, listened to in an ambient tranquil setting, with flowers, gentle lights and quiet music. The story encouraged thinking, reflection. Discussion afterwards surrounded topics of hurtful behaviour, selfishness, helping others, cooperation and such like. Vivian Bartlett, one of the designers, wrote it up here where you can read a sample - Nurturing a Healthy Spirit in the Young. I interviewed all of the early cohort, all troubled youngsters turned off from learning who said it had drawn them back from suicide, put them on the route to training and careers, and even moved them into a university course, All had once been written off as no hopers. One ten year old had been very disruptive, liable to savage outbursts, but the story she got something from offered her a mentor in the head, a wise aunty as it were. When trouble brewed, she took herself off to a quiet corner to talk things through and calm down. She received a best behaviour prize the following year. The mindset encouraged was to be contributors not consumers - to contribute to the community around rather than just hoarding stuff. The project took youngsters into care homes and set up a drop in cafe for those who wanted to chat. Funded with almost nothing, it succeeded with these disturbed youngsters where highly funded institutions had failed.

For a list of my writings, see further  https://stephenbigger.blogspot.com.