Can You Imagine An Education System That Is Academically Rigorous While Emotionally And Socially Supportive?

In the early 1980s, an American businessman and a Chilean-born neuroscientist had a similar dream - to develop an ongoing conversation between Western scientists and the Dalai Lama about the relationship between our minds and our lives. A Buddhist teacher heard about these parallel initiatives and invited the two men to visit the Ojai foundation, where she served as director at the time, to discuss a collaborative effort. At that auspicious meeting three visionaries - Adam Engle, Joan Halifax, and the late Francisco Varela - put into motion what might prove to be one of the most significant collaborations between scientists and non-scientists in the history of neuroscience. The statistics speak for themselves: In the past six years there's been a 429% increase in federal funding to study mindfulness based practices (grants from the National Institute of Health) and a 258% increase in the publication of peer-reviewed research articles. To borrow from business jargon, these stats constitute proof of concept: Their vision has become a reality and has rippled out into mainstream, secular culture.

Now, a little over 25 years later the Mind and Life collaborators - including board members the Dalai Lama, Richard Davidson, Daniel Goleman, Anne Harrington, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Matthieu Ricard, Ben Shapiro, Alan Wallace and others - are putting their considerable brainpower and clout on the line again as they extend the original conversation beyond the minds and lives of adults to include the minds and lives of children.

So if you're in DC this week, don't be surprised if someone asks you whether meditation and/or mindfulness practice has a place in our schools. Or specifically: "Whether classical introspective practices can be adapted to cultivate disciplined habits of mind and heart in both young people and those who educate them." Because this is exactly the question that the Dalai Lama will be considering this week with Arnie Duncan, the US Secretary of Education, and others on the stage of Constitution Hall.

For those unfamiliar with secular mindfulness, it is derivative of classical Eastern meditation training that was developed in response to four deceptively simple insights into the nature of everyday experience.

The 1st Insight - Life has both ups and downs.

The 2nd Insight -To skillfully manage whatever life sends our way it is helpful to view inner and outer experience clearly without an emotional charge.

The 3rd Insight - The key to happiness lies in how we respond to life's ups and downs. For instance, we can mitigate the painful emotional impact of a challenging life experience by skillfully choosing how we respond and relate to it.

The 4th Insight - Happiness is within our reach. We can learn to live in a way that minimizes frustration and discontent by developing our capacity to view experience clearly and better control our response to what we see. This 4th insight refers to both a way of being in the world and a system of mental training that has been refined over millennia known as mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness practice is a largely introspective process by which people develop tools to view experience clearly, contextualize it within their own unique framework of past experience, goals for the future and ethical constructs, and integrate what they've learned into their actions and relationships. When working with children the process typically goes like this:

First, we acknowledge our experience whatever it might be; if it is a difficult one, denying or avoiding it is not going to help and is likely to make matters worse. Knowing that an emotional reaction is not as useful as a clearheaded one, we calm our bodies and minds with specific mindfulness practices developed for this purpose. Once settled, we suspend judgment long enough to look at our inner and outer experience objectively. If we become emotional or excited again, that's ok, it's part of the introspective process; we just use our calming skills to settle down and take another look. We continue in this way until we see the situation clearly, calmly and objectively. Only then do we choose where or how to respond in a way that is in our best interest, as well as kind and compassionate to all those involved.

Can you imagine how viewing their lives in this way could help children navigate challenging, real-life situations?

Our education system is in crisis. A crisis that is so severe it's tough to imagine a way out. Just ask those working in the trenches to tell you how difficult it is to picture a system of education that is academically rigorous while emotionally and socially supportive. But one thing we know for sure, if that's the education system that we dream of, we won't be able to create it unless we can envision it first.

And that's exactly what some of the strongest thinkers in education, science and contemplation will be doing on the stage at Constitutional Hall this week: They will be reflecting on how to create a better world for children and for those who love them. I look forward to this rare, public peek into their hopes and dreams for the future of education. I can only imagine what's on their minds.

 

 

Follow Susan Kaiser Greenland on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sKAISERg

Comments

[h0tr0d]

I hope what's on their minds is affirmative action for men as teachers. As long as our education system remains completely feminized, boys will continue to be seen as a problem.