“The mindful, ‘happy’ person emanating from the school system is grist to the cognitive capitalist mill,” warns the skeptical scholar James Reveley.9 Neoliberal logic requires self-promoting and self-disciplined subjects, in charge of their own wellbeing and success, whatever disadvantages they might have to overcome. From a neoliberal perspective, society doesn’t exist — everything comes down to individual choices and responsibilities. As Reveley observes: “It is a tall order to ask young people to reject these ideals at the same time as they are being taught to embrace them through a self-technology that stresses self-responsibility.”10
However, none of the providers of mindfulness in schools discusses this problem, or the need to address it. Focusing instead on achievement-oriented passivity, their programs indoctrinate students to see themselves as vulnerable. In order to be successful in school and life, they learn to “manage” their emotions with therapeutic mindfulness. Feelings should be accepted non-judgmentally, without distinguishing between “good” and “bad” ones, or what they tell us. What happens if a vulnerable student experiences a strong and difficult feeling due to prior trauma? Teachers rarely have the psychological training for such situations, and research on the adverse effects of mindfulness is often ignored. Indiscriminately teaching it to all children could be irresponsible, given the paucity of rigorous studies that show clear benefits beyond pacification.
By pathologizing strong feelings, and teaching children “emotional literacy,” the curricula of mindfulness in schools instill a strong sense of “correct” behavior, along with the implication that anything else is “incompetent” or “illiterate.” In The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes warn that this mentality “erodes the idea of humans as conscious agents who realize their potential for individual and social change through projects to transform themselves and their world and replaces it with a narrow, introspective view of what it means to be human.”11
Some programs have tweaked their curricula to add other messages. In the US, Mindful Schools now talks about “The Development of Heartfulness,” which it describes as “intentional nurturing of positive mind states such as kindness and compassion.”12 Yet the general emphasis is on awareness of the present moment, which means tuning out of feelings and thoughts. “At its most basic level,” says the UK’s Mindfulness in Schools Project, “mindfulness helps train your attention to be more aware of what is actually happening, rather than worrying about what has happened or might happen.”13
Although this sounds like engagement with “now,” it teaches quietism. Especially in the early years of education, much of the focus is on “school readiness,” conditioning students to comply with rules, norms and behavioral demands. Mindfulness is part of this package when taught to young children — this has worrying implications. “The emphasis on sublimating strong emotions such as anger could send unintended messages about not speaking up in the face of injustice,” says Natalie Flores, “dissuading children’s later participation in social activism.”14 Others say programs should explicitly focus on social justice, especially when offered in low-income areas. Rather than using mindfulness “to make calm test takers,” explains Funie Hsu, a progressive approach would include critical analysis of systems of power, “to enliven our students’ hearts so that they are stirred to creating the world that they deserve.”15
Hsu cites one of the pioneers of socially engaged Buddhism, Thich Nhat Hanh, who describes the need to combine mindfulness with action. “When bombs begin to fall on people, you cannot stay in the meditation hall all of the time,” Hanh says. “You have to learn how to help a wounded child while still practicing mindful breathing.”16
This is rarely the message of mindfulness in schools, which encourages passivity instead of engagement. Students are told to focus on themselves, while schools promote high-stakes standardized tests, micromanagement, and surveillance, all adding to stress and serving the needs of neoliberalism. This is often unconscious, but if acknowledged could be counteracted. Instead, Hsu says, mindfulness curricula “discipline students both through neoliberal self-regulation and through a racial conditioning of white superiority as common, and calm, sense.”17 Such power imbalances are not often considered, which only perpet- uates colonialist attitudes among white mindfulness trainers assigned to teach students of color. If they are unaware of the racist implications of failing to acknowledge structural racism, it is hardly surprising that mindfulness is so rarely taught as part of a framework of critical thinking and social justice.
Mindful Camouflage
Another major issue for mindfulness in schools is the unresolved question of whether what they teach has religious dimensions. “Silence and contemplation play an important role in the world’s great faiths,” says the UK’s Mindfulness in Schools Project, “but the MiSP curricula remain strictly secular.”18 It is rarely this simple, since many of the advocates of mindful schools are either Buddhist practitioners or have attended retreats in traditional settings. Besides, notes the religious studies scholar Candy Gunther Brown, “The fact that there exist secular benefits to mindfulness does not make the practice secular,” especially not when teachers still like to imply that Buddhism’s insights are included. One of the founders of the MiSP wrote an academic article for a Buddhist journal positioning his work in “the as yet undefined middle-ground between mindfulness as clinical application and mindfulness as spiritual practice.”19
A good example of this switch between secular and spiritual is the way Goldie Hawn’s pre-high-school MindUp curriculum is marketed. Hawn admits to having written a “script” to smuggle Buddhist meditation “into the classroom under a different name because obviously people that say ‘oh meditation’ they think oh this is ‘Buddhist’.”20
Addressing insiders at the Heart-Mind Conference of The Dalai Lama Center for Peace Education, Hawn switched to Buddhist mode: she said MindUP “all started” with “His Holiness” (who “gave me my mantra”) and the Dalai Lama Center (“it’s karma”).21 The MindUP script replaces the terms “Buddhism” with “neuroscience” and “meditation” with “Core Practice.”22 Mindful of laws separating church and state, Hawn’s aim is to spread MindUP to as many schools as possible, by getting it “absolutely mandated in every state… that’s our mission”.23
As we have seen so far, appealing to science is the standard way of presenting mindfulness. However, Professor Brown disputes that this makes the practice secular. She argues that there is also abundant scientific research on the physical and mental benefits of prayer, but it is unconstitutional to offer a program of prayer in schools. Noting this discrepancy, Brown observes: “In the end, appeals to science can’t simply speak religion away.”24
A number of school districts offering mindfulness have faced legal challenges, accusing them of providing covert religious indoctrination. The mindfulness program at Warstler Elementary School in Plain Township, Ohio was shut down after six weeks.25 Parents raised strong objections to the undisclosed fact that mindfulness is derived from Buddhism. Citing the constitution’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the imposition of religious beliefs or any form of worship in public institutions, courts have banned such practices as posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms. Even observing a moment of silence has been challenged. Why then should mindfulness trainers be free to use Tibetan Buddhist singing bowls, or tell students to sit cross-legged in a meditative posture?
Some find such things troubling. The National Center for Law and Policy has represented evangelical Christians in litigation against public schools teaching yoga and meditation. In one such case in Massachusetts, it sent a memorandum on behalf of parents to the Superintendent of the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District, objecting to a mindfulness program called Calmer Choice. The protest was forthright, arguing:
Mindfulness is without question a Buddhist religious practice. In a spirit quite frankly smacking of philosophical and spiritual “insiderism” or e
litism, promoters of mindfulness claim special “new” insights into the universal causes and the universal solutions of being human. The prescription of mindfulness as a universal, non-sectarian cure for nearly all that ails us in modern life is precisely a religious attitude!26
Calmer Choice is an adaptation of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR, marketed to schools as Mindfulness-Based Inner Reliance Training. However, the ties to MBSR are undeniable, and Kabat-Zinn even serves as an honorary member of the Calmer Choice board. What are parents to think when he openly claims that MBSR is a “place-holder for the entire dharma” and that it is co-extensive with, and an expression of, the heart of Buddhism?
The legal memorandum cites various research studies that have found a strong association between MBSR training and increased religiosity. One attributed the mental health benefits of MBSR to a deepening of “daily spiritual experiences.”27 Another found that British males took meditation courses to improve wellbeing, but became interested in Buddhism.28 In a separate randomized study, participants in an MBSR course reported statistically “higher scores in a measure of spiritual experiences.”29 This paper also noted that MBSR is rooted in Buddhist “meditation techniques which were not originally conceived as stress reduction exercises but rather as contemplative practices specifically designed to foster spiritual growth and understanding.”30 Such facts can make uncomfortable reading for people with different religious beliefs.
These concerns echo earlier challenges. In a high-profile case from the 1970s, Malnak v Yogi, a New Jersey court ruled that teaching Transcendental Meditation (TM) in public high schools violated the Establishment Clause.31
Promoters of TM now claim to offer something secular, avoiding religious vocabulary and touting scientific research. TM’s Quiet Time school program is backed by the filmmaker David Lynch’s Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, which describes its mission as “promoting widespread implementation of the evidence-based Transcendental Meditation (TM) program in order to improve their health, cognitive capabilities and performance in life.”32 Lynch himself has been an avid TM proselytizer since 1973. Like mindfulness programs, Quiet Time flies under the radar, cloaked in the garb of pseudo-science.
Six public schools in San Francisco adopted Quiet Time, but objections arose. This was despite locating the programs in low-income communities, where the majority of families are minorities and non-native English speakers, which might have limited the chances of them questioning authority. Nonetheless, one mother protested, starting a Facebook group “SF Parents Against TM in Public Schools.”33 She became suspicious when her son brought home a permission slip, which lacked the usual Spanish translation for Hispanic parents. Reading around, she found TM used secret mantras and religious ideas. There was even a form of altar at the school. As she wrote on Facebook, none of this had been mentioned on the permission slip. “Isn’t Omission a form of Deception?” she said. “Can anyone explain how this constitutes INFORMED CONSENT?34
After confronting the high school principal, she received a “cease and desist” letter from a high-powered attorney, allegedly representing the Quiet Time program. The letter insinuated that she was accusing the program of religious indoctrination, requiring her to seek her own legal representation. This does not seem atypical. John Knapp, a TM defector, runs a website called the TM-Free Blog: Skeptical Views of Transcendental Meditation and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.35
Knapp once planned an online symposium titled: “Tell TM: Hands Off Our Schools!” However, as reported by Church & State Magazine, he cancelled it after a threatening letter from William Goldstein, general counsel for the David Lynch Foundation. Goldstein’s letter states:
The listed presenters at your event appear all to have a similar negative mission […] Therefore, I wished to give you the courtesy of an advisal that we intend to review the global web presentation of the event carefully for any false, defamatory, tortious, breachful, malicious or otherwise unlawful statements or materials made or published by you or the presenters.36
Among those scheduled to speak had been Barry Markovsky, a University of South Carolina sociology professor, who casts doubt on TM’s scientific claims.
Back in San Francisco, the Quiet Time program was discontinued after three months, costing taxpayers $110,000. Only one of the original six schools — Visitation Valley Middle School — has persisted with it — it has three full-time instructors funded by the David Lynch Foundation, and receives approving media coverage.37
Mindful Guinea Pigs
Critics of teaching mindfulness in schools often highlight the risks, pointing to a scarcity of methodologically rigorous scientific studies supporting the practice. “Right now the promised benefits far exceed the actual findings,” warns Mark Greenberg, a psychologist at Penn State University.38
There is even a skeptical tone at Mindfulness, an academic journal to which Kabat-Zinn contributes. In a special edition on “Mindfulness-Based Interventions in School Settings,” the introduction noted: “Mindfulness research has often been described as being in its infancy and if this is the case, then the study of mindfulness with youth and schools is in the prenatal stage of development.”39
Reviewing three recent meta-analytic studies of mindfulness in schools, it’s clear that the effects are very small and that general findings are inconclusive. There is still a very limited pool of studies — compared to a similar meta-analytic study of adult mindfulness, in which researchers drew from over eighteen thousand articles, the combined number for children in all three reviews was 111. Even those studies that were included were of questionable quality. In one of the reviews, eleven of the papers had not even been published in peer-reviewed journals; in another, which only looked at fifteen studies, some included TM; and in the third, only thirty-five of the seventy-two studies used randomized controls.
David Klingbeil, a school psychologist at the University of Wisconsin who led the third review, reflects: “The first thing that came to me is just the wide variety of things called mindfulness-based interventions.”40 One study researched the effects on children of coloring for fifteen minutes. Others include a grab bag of activities, says Harold Walach, a co-author on the second review — mindful breathing, listening to bell sounds, group discussions, and so on.41 With such a disparate collection of activities, it’s hard to know how mindfulness is defined and operationalized, or what the actual mechanism is that would account for any positive changes. As Walach puts it: “What is not answered is whether the true contribution is the mindfulness practice itself.”42
Positive effects could simply be attributed to having some downtime during the school day, or feeling heard in discussion. There is also the risk of “social desirability bias,” since children know they have been chosen as subjects in a study with expected improvements. Then there is the issue of publication bias, where only positive findings are published. A recent study by a group of psychologists at McGill University found that of the 124 randomized control studies they reviewed, 90% reported positive results.43 Such a number is quite high given the small sample sizes; a normal, non-biased threshold for this same sample size should be no more than 65%.
Is it irresponsible to teach mindfulness in marginalized communities when the science is so thin? What about to traumatized children? There is significant research that mindfulness-based interventions are contraindicated for trauma sufferers.44 There are also general indications that this practice is not for everyone. As noted in “Dark Night of the Soul,” a 2014 article by one of the experts in this field, Willoughby Britton, “no one has been asking if there are any potential difficulties or adverse effects, and whether there are some practices that may be better or worse-suited [for] some people over others.”45 This is starting to change. A paper in the International Journal of Psychotherapy reviewed seventy-five studies that reported negative outcomes from mindfulness meditation.46 The researchers observed such effects as relaxation-induced anxiety and panic, paradoxical increases in
tension, impaired reality testing, and mild dissociation, to name just a few. Britton is also concerned that mindful school programs do not adequately screen children for psychiatric disorders, nor are they cognizant of criteria for exclusion, which for adults include depression, social anxiety, psychosis, PTSD, and suicidal tendencies.
Given the lack of robust research, what remains as a scientific selling point for mindfulness in schools? Programs tend to fall back on neuroscience, and suggestions of neuro-plasticity: look at how mindfulness changes the brain! What more evidence do we need? Unfortunately the hype around brain imaging is even more pronounced when it comes to young people. This is ironic as there have so far been no neuroscientific studies on how mindfulness affects the brains of children or adolescents. Moreover, it is well known that brain development isn’t complete until twenty-five years of age, so the effects of mindfulness on children’s brains could be different from those on adults.47
However mindfulness programs routinely teach neurological vocabulary, asking children to conceptualize emotions in these terms. A well-trained child might say: “my amygdala hijacked me,” with the implication that being “more mindful” might have helped. The import of “folk neurology” into public and educational discourse locates all experiences inside the brain, foreclosing other ways of looking at them. There are also secular objections. A British Royal Society report on “Neuroscience: Implications for Education and Lifelong Learning” is not a ringing endorsement:
There is great public interest in neuroscience, yet accessible high quality information is scarce. We urge caution in the rush to apply so-called brain-based methods, many of which do not yet have a sound basis in science. There are inspiring developments in basic science although practical applications are still some way off.48
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