12 ms·

What adolescents think of mindfulness in schools

104 points by DanBC 6y ago

DanBC 6y ago
I think mindfulness and meditation are useful for some people. It's important to remember it doesn't work for everyone, and there's a small risk of harm for a few people.
- warent 6y ago
  I'm interested to know if you can cite specific evidence for that? I've heard that some certain yoga practices (i.e. traditional yoga. Not the westernized kind where you do stretches and talk about positive energy) can be harmful especially to beginners (e.g. kundalini), but that's not what's being discussed here. Mindfulness just means being aware and non-reactive. All humans experiences mindfulness. Any time we choose to go against our initial impulses is a moment of expressing mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation simply strengthens and expands on that so it holds up under greater pressure and for greater periods of time. It's nothing mystical or psychedelic.
  - spockz 6y ago
    I would not classify “mindfulnes” as going against “initial impulses” but rather as being aware of the impulsive reactions and the effect on mind and body to situations and then making a conscious decision on what to do next. This next action can then be in line with the initial impulse or not, it will be mindful either way.
    - warent 6y ago
      Great point! That's a much more accurate example, thank you
  - a-nikolaev 6y ago
    In your description, it sounds like building a fence around a hungry tiger. I think, understanding those impulses and directing them into a useful way is a healthier approach.
    - jon_elbrook 6y ago
      Except in this analogy doesn't account for the fact that a mindful person can simply wait for the tiger to disappear.
      - a-nikolaev 6y ago
        If a mindful person can wait, then they don't need a fence to begin with.
      - TheNorthman 6y ago
        If psychoanalysis has taught us anything, it's that if you're the tiger, it doesn't disappear until confronted. Recent years has also seen an increase in studies surrounding the sociological concept of `Mobbing'. This has taught us that the tiger only goes away if there is outside help, often in the form of fellow students, teachers, and so on.
  - chienandalou 6y ago
    Willoughby Britton is a meditation teacher and researcher who studies adverse effects of meditation and mindfulness. There is a risk of diverse mental problems, especially - but not only - for people with a history of trauma. As a meditator myself I think it would be helpful if this were more well-known. If you search for her name, you'll find more information and studies. Here's an interview and article: https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/trauma-meditation/ https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/trauma-meditation/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-...
    - sukilot 6y ago
      Is anything not a risk of mental problems for people with a history of trauma? Risk of mental problems is half the definition of trauma.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    It seems reasonable to assume there are outliers. Perhaps if $historical_bad_actor meditated / exercised / ate better we wouldn’t be here having this conversation. I’m not trying to be flippant here.
  - whereistimbo 6y ago
    What do you mean of traditional yoga? Yoga sutra of patanjali, which consist of 8 limbs? In USA most yoga studio only touches Asana, which is one limb of Yoga Sutra.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    Research into mindfulness emphasises the benefits, but tends to minimise the harm. Some research fails to mention any risk at all. This makes it hard to devise a mindfulness program that doesn't cause harm. Mindfulness in schools is applied to the entire school population. Mindfulness in schools is usually delivered by teachers, and not trained therapists or psychologists. The combination of taking the entire population, including children at higher risk of harm, and not understanding how that harm can be caused, and using people with minimal training to provide the programme, means that some people get harmed. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141076816644113 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01410768166441... https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/sites/britton-lab/files/images/Britton_2019_Can%20mindfulness%20be%20too%20much%20of%20a%20good%20thing.pdf https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/sites/britton-la... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735818301272 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027273581... > Mindfulness just means being aware and non-reactive Mary is a 10 year old girl. She is raped once a week by her step-father. You can see how being "aware" and "non-reactive" might cause extra harm.
    - anon9001 6y ago
      Mindfulness is supposed to be a practice, and it's not necessarily an easy thing you can do with all benefits and minimal work. It's also deeply personal and not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. I think schools should treat meditation like prayer, because it's essentially the same function, and we should just avoid it in the classroom. Perhaps the real tragedy here is that many students will learn about mindfulness in schools and dismiss it as useless nonsense, when there actually may be something of value in there somewhere.
      - warent 6y ago
        Prayer and meditation are completely different. There are studies which demonstrate a causal connection between meditation and mental health benefits, and even structural changes in the brain. It demonstrably helps with anxiety and depression. The same cannot be said for prayer. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-resea...
  - mbeex 6y ago
    For example, meditation can lead to addiction (to do meditation). This is a certain contradiction, very often to find in the teachings/techers themselves. Meditation lets things pass. This is also true for meditation sessions itself, this is what is sometimes forgotten - it has to end.
- codegladiator 6y ago
  > risk of harm for a few people What harm from meditation ?
  - abjKT26nO8 6y ago
    I've practised meditation in the past and it made my depression worse. Specifically, my thoughts would flow too freely between associations made in the past and made me think about things that I would prefer to have never experienced in my life. Thinking about those things only worsens my condition. I stopped meditating and now I'm much better at compartmentalizing, I have "fences" in my mind which stop me from wandering into dangerous territories by accident. I'd have to make an effort to go past them. I won't do that. Had enough of it already. I know what's good or bad for me. I recommend the book "Altered Traits". It looks at some benefits of meditation documented using scientific methods. But it also says that it may not be good for everyone. Specifically, it may be dangerous for people struggling with depression.
    - anon9001 6y ago
      I think your view is extremely under appreciated, especially as it applies to group settings. The trendy idea is about "being present" in physical form and acknowledge (but not engage) with any random thoughts that might come your way. I don't want that feeling unless I'm very specifically seeking it out. Whenever I've had to participate in the "group" versions of these things, I try to think of literally anything else to keep myself distracted until it's over, for fear of wandering into unpleasant territory and causing a mood change when I'm actually supposed to be at work. I wish there was a word for "sitting in silence with others, frantically searching for anything to think about to avoid letting your mind wander into terrifying places". If this mindfulness thing takes off, maybe someone can come up with a clever way to sum that up. It's a very uneasy feeling. Also, why my employer would want me to take a mid-day break to meditate is beyond me. It's like they're trying to make me rethink my life decisions and quit.
    - codegladiator 6y ago
      Sorry I might be wrong here but I feel you are not doing it right. I am told to "not think" during meditation, while you mention "Thinking about those things" which seems not "not think". Obviously I am no expert or actually even any good at meditating, but maybe try learning from a different teacher who might be able to help you out in this. Just to reiterate, I might be wrong here and if that's the case just ignore my comment :)
- noobaccount 6y ago
  This post seems controversial to the community based on voting. I’m wondering how it does not contribute to the discussion. It seems like an obvious statement? Am I wrong in thinking that no behavioral technique is going to be ubiquitously beneficial?
  - CJefferson 6y ago
    It doesnt contribute because it is making a claim with no evidence, no discussion of what the harm is, and how common it is. You can basically make that reply to every post on hacker news, ever.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      Sometimes, for whatever reason, people post terse comments. When that happens, it’ll often spark a thread that then fills in the gaps. Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - DanBC 6y ago
      I submitted the article. My comment explains why I submitted the article. The article talks about some of the harms. "‘Mindfulness doesn’t help me,’ says Tyler, a 13-year-old student in a deprived area of southwest England. ‘Some people it helps, some it can make ’em feel worse.’ Gathered around a table in a large, cluttered classroom, five other students nod. Kayleigh cuts in: ‘Sometimes other things help me more. But they don’t listen to us, they just tell us to do mindfulness.’ "
Barrin92 6y ago
mindfulness and meditation seems to be all the rage in recent years but looking at the physical state of many students these days and the stated goal: >"The goal is to help them develop resilience, improve their attention and self-regulation, and prevent everyday stress spiralling into major psychological problems. " I'd maybe recommend greatly expanding physical exercise and team sports because not only does it address many of the points above it also will reduce obesity and balance out general inactivity. Physical education seems to be severely neglected. Both quality and quantity.
- kingkongjaffa 6y ago
  Having to take part in team sports were a negative part of schooling for me. Activities that can be done together but with the goal of self improvement / competing with yourself being the main goal always felt better. Like track and field / some kind of cardio / anything in the gym.
  - huffmsa 6y ago
    I'm going to argue that it wasn't team sports, it was the infrequency with which you played them that caused the negativity. Working as a team is part of the human experience. Some people are more inclined to it than others, but given enough time and frequency working with the same unit, almost everyone becomes a comrade, a brother-in-arms, bonded through shared experiences. Team sports help develop social bonds and trust between peers, and those relationships help quite a few people deal with personal issues they would otherwise get stuck in their own heads trying to fight. Teamwork and working towards goals bigger than oneself are important to the psyche.
    - fiblye 6y ago
      I’ve always hated sports. No matter how much I tried, I was horrible. All my school stress stemmed from PE and sports, and with how much of a focus “coolness” in school stems from sports performance, pressure simply grew and grew until I finally graduated. After graduating, I actively rejected sports and fitness because I associated it with the people who were good and I hated to be around, and it was nothing but negative connections in my mind. It wasn’t until a friend introduced me to weightlifting that I learned that I can not only enjoy exercise, but I can do it completely alone without anybody looking at me. A weight set and a bench to sit on are as close to meditation as exercise can get for me. I’m stronger than the average person. Visibly fit to the point that people comment on it. But every time someone has expected me to catch something or throw something to them, it’s a disaster. People can’t believe it because there’s the association of fitness level == sports ability, but there’s as connected as math and programming. It’s definitely good to be good at both and they definitely benefit each other, but you can also be incompetent at one and good at the other. I’ve definitely known some people who’ve never cared about basketball and don’t really exercise but almost never miss a shot if someone asks them to try.
noodlesUK 6y ago
This feels very much like mindfulness is trying to be used as a bandaid to cover the (metaphorical) sucking chest wound of student mental health. Schools can be absolutely miserable places for many students. Bullying is rampant, both from students and staff, students are forced to be there, and have very little choice in how to spend their days. If we want to improve mental health in young people, look closely at how we run schools. Reduce class sizes, give students self determination. These aren’t easy steps though.
- TaupeRanger 6y ago
  Impossible in fact, without huge increases in funding for more teachers, larger buildings, and better pay.
- njb311 6y ago
  While I agree with your points, I’d reframe them slightly: it’s a sucking chest wound of teenage mental health. Schools are having to deal with young people who come to them with problems from outside. Schools can make them better or worse, but that’s loading a responsibility onto schools way beyond education. The fact that we are even having to consider non-traditional subjects/activities like mindfulness as a treatment to help kids get through the day, rather than to help prepare them for adult life, is a huge red flag. We can look closely at how we run schools, but where is the scrutiny on parenting? There is a ton of assessment of teachers and metrics on school performance (whether they are a good thing or not in improving outcomes is a different matter). Serious problems in the home are generally picked up by social services – and you could say that they function as a bandaid to cover the sucking chest wound of adult mental health - but straightforward poor parenting is far more widespread, how do we fix that? If we want to improve mental health in young people we need to look closely at how we run society. Schools could help, but only if they were adequately funded for everything they are being expected to deliver.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Schools are in loco parentis. Schools are parents. That's what day care is -- part time parenting. They should do their part, with appropriate staff and resources. Parents at home should be supported as well. But this all costs money that is being diverted to the military industrial complex and other graft.
itronitron 6y ago
As my grandmother used to say, you can't fool dogs and children. >> As Jack, a 13-year-old student at a school in a post-industrial town in the UK, explained: ‘They’re trying to teach us to choose what we want but then not letting us choose anything at all.’ Students are very quick to see through their teachers' bullshit as they have years of practice by the time they are adolescents. The current convention seems to be that if students can't life-hack their school then there must be something wrong with them. That lack of self-reflection on the part of teachers and schools is telling, and probably a big reason for student anxiety in the first place.
- Asooka 6y ago
  Yep. Mindfulness helps to lower your self-inflicted stress and worries, but it is not a solution when you have a concrete issue, like being where you don't want to be, with people you don't want to be with, doing what you don't want to do. Put another way, mindfulness doesn't mend bone, nor put food on the table.
- op03 6y ago
  Well you need to cut them some slack. Schools, teachers and parents are in a very difficult position these days because of how fast things are changing. They are constantly overloaded with info about what's good for the kid. Even developmental psychologists,pedagogy experts and edu depts get overloaded and feel pressure to pass opinions on everything under the sun without serious evaluation. Learning takes Time. So evaluation of any method takes time. But the pressure to try X Y or Z builds up so quickly that anyone pushing back can easily be labeled a dinosaur and kicked out the room. And its all happening in the useless attention arms race type environment the tech sector has created where what and who gets propped up depends on whose TED talk got more views, how much time they self promote, and 'what can scale faster'. Such an environment will keep producing a whole lot of failed experiments.
  - twodave 6y ago
    All this bearing in mind we haven’t really seen any sustainable improvement in test scores in the last ~50 years. What is even the point of having an education arms race while the same people groups average pretty much the same aptitude for the tests? SAT scores for language have worsened while math has remained fairly consistent since the 70s, which suggests to me that those scores are loosely (if at all) related to educational strategy. I may not have a popular opinion, but I think our focus should be more on supporting families to raise their children instead of what amounts in my mind to free day care, especially for children 10 and under.
tomhoward 6y ago
I've seen it suggested in other articles here before that mindfulness programs for employees are often a way for employers to try and get their staff to be more accepting of crappy conditions, or unpleasant, meaningless or unethical work. It sounds to me like the same kind of thing might also apply in schools. I'm sure the school teachers and administrators mean well. I'm sure they don't consciously realise what a nightmare their institutions have become for many of the students in their care. Even if they do realise, they didn't choose for it to be that way. The sad fact is that modern life has become a horrible nightmare for many people, grownups and kids alike. Mindfulness has become a popular attempt to paper over the problems, but in truth, many people who are having coping problems or exhibiting "mental illness" are really having understandable reactions to the dysfunction they're sensing in the world. To be clear: I'm in no way averse to emotional wellbeing techniques that are effective and that increase the agency of participants. I've gone very deep on this kind of work in my own life, and have benefited greatly. But I think the outcomes, and indeed the intentions, of mainstream mindfulness programs are quite different to this, and are sadly far more focused on maintaining the status quo for institutions and modern mainstream society.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >mindfulness programs for employees are often a way for employers to try and get their staff to be more accepting of crappy conditions ^This. I don't need mindfulness, gyms, free junky snacks, team building events, parking spaces as perks, I need work conditions that don't grind my mind and body so much for me to require therapy afterwards (realistic deadlines, no open office, no rush hour commutes, remote work, comfy monitors, chairs and desks, time off to spend with my family). Unfortunately due to ever increasing wealth inequality, most of the workforce, even in the west, is stuck in a meatgrinder where the only escape being dangled in front of you is climbing the ladder high enough until you become the one one to turn the handle.
  - rubyfan 6y ago
    i wish i could upvote more than once. the company i work for recently started surveying people about “return to office”. the company has been really good about work from home during COVID but they really haven’t taken into consideration a permanent distributed workforce. the survey results will speak for themselves. People are less stressed without a daily commute, see their families more and have more balance - oh and get the same amount of work or more. i think any company that’s not seriously evaluating distributed teams permanently is going to lose talent.
fzeroracer 6y ago
It's the exact same reason why businesses have been pushing mindfulness at work as well. They don't want to actually reduce stress or solve the problems workers are facing; they'd rather try and teach them to not break as fast while under stress. This isn't to discount the benefits of being mindful or meditating for people. But you should be very wary when someone's trying to sell you on it because usually there's a greater reason for it.
- nefitty 6y ago
  Whatever the intent, or the side effects, mindfulness is still beneficial for individuals. Skepticism is healthy, but sometimes we need to place more weight on first-order effects, otherwise we’re paralyzed obsessing over which and how bad guys will benefit from the things that benefit us.
nabla9 6y ago
I strongly agree with this. Any mindfulness for children or adults must be just offering. You should't make it regular thing that everyone must attend. You can't motivate mindfulness from the outside. Some people just have very bad reactions to mindfulness even if they try it voluntarily. It may be ongoing psychological issue or something else. People seem more or less similar on the outside, but they have very different experiences when they turn their mind inwards.
- fnenrjfkdke 6y ago
  > Some people just have very bad reactions to mindfulness even if they try it voluntarily. This is interesting. Can you share any particular examples?
  - onei 6y ago
    One example in the article was trauma, which seems reasonable. Home situations for children vary wildly and I wouldn't expect children to be mentally equipped if they're exposed to abuse, bereavement, etc. Teaching them to virtually bottle up their emotions is something I'd expect to end badly sooner or later.
    - sukilot 6y ago
      No one is talking about bottling up emotions.
  - carapace 6y ago
    I don't have any examples, but the general idea is that if you have issues that you aren't paying attention to and you start meditating, you relax and become quiet inside, and these issues you've been ignoring start to come up. For some people, especially if they're previously unaware of their issues, it can seem like meditation itself has caused some bad reaction. It's like if you're listening to the radio really loud and then turn it off and hear the smoke alarm. Turning off the radio didn't cause the smoke, but it might sound that way if you're not familiar with what's really going on.
CraigJPerry 6y ago
If it never helps in any scenarios, bin it. If it helps in some scenarios then what else can be done in addition to this? I see a gaping flaw in the “this doesn’t work in these cases therefore tear it all down” logic. Absolutely replace it if something better comes along but the answer can’t be go back to square one because its not perfect.
alecbenzer 6y ago
>In many programmes, students learn that emotions such as anger, anxiety and fear stem from reactions in a brain region called the amygdala. They are taught that mindfulness helps them identify and manage these emotions by activating the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with behavioural regulation. In doing so, students are taught that mindfulness creates space in which we can ‘choose our response’ as opposed to reacting or lashing out. In the words of one programme, mindfulness gives us ‘the freedom to choose’. > These might sound like reasonable claims, but they imply a dichotomy between emotions and reason, and the superiority of ‘rational’ responses to distress. This idea derives not from traditional mindfulness but from liberal Western ideals. Historically, these ideals have served to undermine oppressed groups, as anger and resistance is perceived as irrational. The article's commentary here seems out-of-touch with most mindfulness instruction I've experienced. It's usually emphasized to notice things in as non-judgmental a way as possible; you're definitely not encouraged to label anger or any other emotion as "irrational". Mindfulness does give you the freedom to choose. It wouldn't be freedom to choose if the choice was always to ignore anger: sometimes anger is useful, other times it isn't; mindfulness helps you notice that and act accordingly.
- wadkar 6y ago
  Couldn’t have phrased it better myself! Mindfulness should focus first on observing and not judging/labeling things as good/bad. That just leads to more misery!! The instructors should certainly realize that mindfulness and it’s experiences are very subjective and each individual has different experiences. One must be careful not to compare two students and say one is a better example of mindfulness than the other.
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  You can see the same misconceptions when people expect mindful meditation to always: - relax them - make them happy - make them less emotional But with practice I learned that some sessions are extremely emotional, full of stress or sorrow. It's not uncommon to feel pain, distress or to cry deeply during intense meditation retreats. The process improves one existence by making us live those aspects of our life better. Not by taking them away. Now of course, on the long run, it will make people more relaxed, happier, etc. Making you fitter to live with yourself. But not by removing, ignoring or suppressing suffering. It's still here. It will always be here. That's the point of meditating. Mindfulness forces us to observe it as it is. You see your contradictions, your scars and your urges. You see your masks, conditioning and reflexes. If anything, it removes dichotomy. Not add to it. In fact, from what I witnessed, meditation tends to make people remove layers in general. I rarely hear meditators talking about adding ones. And mindfulness is certainly not emotions vs reason. It has nothing to do with either. Emotions and reason are here. You observe them, and yourself using them. But the fact you use them is not part of the technique. It's just a part of you, and like all parts of you, you are invited to observe it. Like everybody, when I started years ago, I confused "be detached" with "don't feel", "label it unimportant", "try to relax". That's not it. What you feel or the label you use are just not part of the teaching. They don't matter at all (for the practice). What matters is that you observe it.
readme 6y ago
Mindfulness is pseudoscience garbage, it shouldn't be allowed in schools any more than religion should... blowing my mind here.
- bsenftner 6y ago
  Totally agree. It's a strange consultant money grab that has managed to gain stream. It appears to be useful for people with anxiety issues, but is being touted as a cure all by snake oil salesmen all over the place. It's like the astrology crowd has a new toy and revenue source.
- mbeex 6y ago
  It is not because it does not even claim to be science. The often associated religious or/and esoteric part is something, putting me off for years (it still does). But the thing itself has a quite rational essence. Helpful for me: https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Revised-Expanded/dp/0861713214 https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Revised-Exp... At the end it comes also to dukkha and other Buddhist concepts I don't care much about. But before, it served me very well in his quite accessible approach to what I would call 'mind cleansing'. On-topic: In my opinion the whole thing is nothing for very young people, in particular not for children.
- TaupeRanger 6y ago
  Learning how to observe emotions arise and react more reasonably and rationally is valuable. You seem to have a personal grudge or possibly just don't know anything about the subject.
- superkuh 6y ago
  Yup. It isn't even one defined thing. And in the sense that it barely is definable it's no different from placebo. Probably because it is placebo: have an authoritive source tell people if they think some way it'll make them feel better.
bsenftner 6y ago
As an "old guy" who has been meditating since the 70's, Mindfulness is merely a popular fad, and a money grab, and is doing a terrible job is claiming to be a cure all. It latches onto people with anxiety issues and claims to be a cure all. Be like Public Enemy and Don't Believe The Hype.
teekert 6y ago
It time to let kids be kids and kids are relaxed when playing outside, with friends, getting dirty. Adults are as well, but we force ourselves into a more structured live. Thus we need mindfullness. But maybe we also need to play outside, in nature, with others, getting dirty.
kingkawn 6y ago
They have turned what is meant to let you know yourself into something to bury yourself deeper out of sight
naringas 6y ago
education should not be made cost efficient by means of having one teacher specialized in a grade per every 30+ students. It shold be more personal with far less students per teacher; but this is too costly and for some reason it doesn't seem like anyone is willing to pay for this premium
sukilot 6y ago
Weird article. It's thesis is that kids have some problems that mindfulness doesn't solve. Like, OK, that's obvious. Those problems should be addressed. Yet another case of pitting good things against each other by denying appropriate funding.
dsabanin 6y ago
Forcing someone to sit and be mindful is incredibly offensive to the idea of mindfulness. Goes to show that whatever good thing mandatory schooling touches, it perverts or corrupts. They should just stick to sciences.
- nefitty 6y ago
  Children need guidance. Their whims are least likely of all to lead them to choose long-term beneficial behaviors.
  - MispelledToyota 6y ago
    Taken literally, you're leaping from arguing kids' whims are sub-optimal to saying they're an absolute minimum in terms of long-term beneficial behavioral outcomes. Kids jumping off bridges is probably worse than them eating ice cream cones or whatever.
  - dsabanin 6y ago
    You don’t have to tell me that, I have a 12 year old. Yet often times as a father I see that guidance is best achieved by reasoning, not compulsion. Compulsion breeds long term resistance and aversion, which can damage relationships with certain topics and activities way more than whatever short term benefit was achieved by it.
joyeuse6701 6y ago
From the article, I wonder just who these mindfulness teachers are? I had to spend hundreds of hours of practice and multiple teachers to unlock a few ‘treasures’ of meditation... and that was with teachers who weren’t laying a thick amount of judge mental indoctrination. I absolutely believe the kid’s responses to the program, and I’m afraid this experience will turn them off for life, like so many do with a bad year of math. Nevertheless, I think exposing kids to mindfulness is worthwhile.
conjectures 6y ago
The correct teenage response being to recite Dead Kennedys lyrics.
- krapp 6y ago
  Dead Kennedys? OK boomer.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    boomers know the quiet desperation of alienation isn't new to this century. when mindfulness doesn't work, maybe the school system can try mixing in some disco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U13xOvDa19U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U13xOvDa19U On-topic: I agree that reducing stress is more likely to be effective than attempting to teach kids coping methods for stress.
naasking 6y ago
> students are taught that mindfulness creates space in which we can ‘choose our response’ as opposed to reacting or lashing out. [...] These might sound like reasonable claims, but they imply a dichotomy between emotions and reason, and the superiority of ‘rational’ responses to distress. [...] Historically, these ideals have served to undermine oppressed groups, as anger and resistance is perceived as irrational. Sometimes anger and resistance is rational, sometimes it's not. If mindfulness gives you the "mental space" to decide whether you are right to be angry, that's a good thing, and it absolutely is superior to purely acting emotionally. I'm frankly struggling to see how anyone could think that modulating your emotions with reason is a bad idea.
- silveroriole 6y ago
  Possibly because constantly thinking “am I right to feel this way? How should I respond?” also describes the thinking patterns of anxious/autistic people. ‘Normal’ people generally just feel and act. They aren’t constantly modulating themselves. Maybe that means they make some suboptimal choices, but they also aren’t wasting time and making themselves feel bad by internally interrogating themselves non-stop.
  - naasking 6y ago
    Anxious people can't help negative thought patterns. They happen despite their desires. That's the complete opposite of this case, so I'm not sure that's it.
gwbas1c 6y ago
Mindfulness is primarily Zen Buddhism stripped of the appearance of religion. As much as I encourage anyone to try either traditional Zen or Mindfulness, pushing it on someone who doesn't want it is absurd.
- praptak 6y ago
  Mindfulness is a tool which various schools of Buddhism emphasize to a greater or lesser degree. Second part I agree with. Mindfulness practice requires a pretty diligent application of intention. I don't think it can work as another subject at school or an ad hoc therapy.
_curious_ 6y ago
Good read, glad to hear that mindfulness is being introduced to humans at an earlier age. Apparently that's not enough for the author though? Like anything, it will never be useful for 100% of everyone regardless of age or place in time.
davesque 6y ago
> Within educational contexts, being well-behaved is seen as rational and ‘good’, while resistance to authority is seen as irrational or ‘bad’. Since mindfulness encourages young people to be calm, complacent and attentive, it can promote these moral hierarchies: of good or bad behaviour, and hence, well-behaved or naughty students. This seems to me much more like a problem with typical "educational contexts" than with mindfulness. In my experience, you try and be more mindful of your emotions so you can make better (perhaps more efficient) decisions and changes in your life in response to those emotions. And that naturally conflicts with environments where the expectations are very rigid and more or less set in stone e.g. where there's a clear "authority" (like a teacher) in control and very precise boundaries about what kind of behavior is acceptable. > As Kelly, 13, explained: I really hated it when I had to close my eyes … I felt really uncomfortable because there were people in the group that I didn’t trust … Some of the practices did help me but it would be better if you could choose to do it with people you like. Again, I think this is much more a problem with the typical school environment than with mindfulness. What does it say that a child doesn't feel comfortable simply closing their eyes momentarily in some environment? Not good things if you ask me. Frankly, I've often thought it's cruel and unusual to place large numbers of children together for large periods of time as is done in a public school setting. Children can be ruthless when they bully each other and readily succumb to their worst instincts.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  The fact that someone doesn't feel comfortable about something doesn't mean that their feelings are warranted. When dealing with anxiety disorders or phobias, the last thing experts recommend is avoidance of that which causes anxiety. In fact, exposure therapy helps drastically with it.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    Ok, how does exposure therapy actually work? Wiki sez: "Exposure therapy is based on the principle of respondent conditioning often termed Pavlovian extinction.[16] The exposure therapist identifies the cognitions, emotions and physiological arousal that accompany a fear-inducing stimulus and then tries to break the pattern of escape that maintains the fear. This is done by exposing the patient to progressively stronger fear-inducing stimuli.[17] Fear is minimized at each of a series of steadily escalating steps or challenges (a hierarchy), which can be explicit ("static") or implicit ("dynamic" — see Method of Factors) until the fear is finally gone.[18] The patient is able to terminate the procedure at any time." That is, to my interpretation, the idea is to expose the patient to the scary stimulus under conditions that are kept as nice, safe, and comfortable as possible, so that the Pavlovian part of their brain will learn to stop associating the stimulus with fear. This is entirely different from "keep throwing them into the feared situation, against their will and without any particular effort to make it more safe or pleasant".
troughway 6y ago
Hah, it was only a matter of time. See this thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656380
MarcScott 6y ago
I've been through so many educational fads, in my time as a teacher, that it's difficult not to be cynical. When I first started teaching it was all about Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic learners. Then brain gyms, then multiple intelligences, then personality typing. To be honest, I've lost track of the number of new strategies that I've had CPD for in those first few days back at school every September. Mindfulness was just starting to creep in when I quit the formal education game. I'd bet that it'll be gone within five years, replaced with some new and shiny fad.
carapace 6y ago
Placebo ritalin. It sounds like they didn't teach the parents, teachers, and school administrators first. Meditation is a very valuable thing to learn but this is not the way to learn it. To me it seems like these kids are being subjected to a fad. To the extent that it works for them (to become more mindful) it will only throw the intrinsic bullshit of the school system into stark relief, as the quotes from the kids indicate. I'm going to repeat myself, because I didn't see it mentioned in the article: if the parents, teachers, and school admin staff didn't go through a year or two of "mindfulness" themselves before pushing it on their kids then this is foolish.
iandanforth 6y ago
The people pushing this practice and teaching it in schools are clearly not qualified to do so. The terms "meditation" and "mindfulness" are too vague and tied to pop-psychology / spiritual overtones to be useful. These practices are one thing, concentration practice. That's it. It's not about feelings or anxiety or any of the crap that seems to be peddled along side this practice. You sit, focus on something that's always there (the breath) and then try to maintain that focus/awareness in the face of constant distractors. Concentration practice strengthens concentration. You may or may not employ that concentration, you may or may not use it to be aware of distractors in daily life, you may or may not be able to use that awareness to avoid fixating on stressful thoughts. That's all secondary. If you do arm curls you will strengthen your biceps which are useful in many motions, but don't pretend that arm curls are "defense practice" or "box lifting practice." Don't confuse the potential applications with the specific effect of the practice. Concentration practice builds the circuits that allow for broad inhibition of activity throughout the brain mediated by the prefrontal cortex. Concentration practice is hugely valuable IMO and, for me, can take what would be a stressful unproductive day and make it productive and stable. I fully support having concentration practice as part of a curriculum but it sounds like the way it's being taught is harmful.

104 points by DanBC 6y ago

I think mindfulness and meditation are useful for some people. It's important to remember it doesn't work for everyone, and there's a small risk of harm for a few people.

warent 6y ago
I'm interested to know if you can cite specific evidence for that? I've heard that some certain yoga practices (i.e. traditional yoga. Not the westernized kind where you do stretches and talk about positive energy) can be harmful especially to beginners (e.g. kundalini), but that's not what's being discussed here. Mindfulness just means being aware and non-reactive. All humans experiences mindfulness. Any time we choose to go against our initial impulses is a moment of expressing mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation simply strengthens and expands on that so it holds up under greater pressure and for greater periods of time. It's nothing mystical or psychedelic.
- spockz 6y ago
  I would not classify “mindfulnes” as going against “initial impulses” but rather as being aware of the impulsive reactions and the effect on mind and body to situations and then making a conscious decision on what to do next. This next action can then be in line with the initial impulse or not, it will be mindful either way.
  - warent 6y ago
    Great point! That's a much more accurate example, thank you
- a-nikolaev 6y ago
  In your description, it sounds like building a fence around a hungry tiger. I think, understanding those impulses and directing them into a useful way is a healthier approach.
  - jon_elbrook 6y ago
    Except in this analogy doesn't account for the fact that a mindful person can simply wait for the tiger to disappear.
    - a-nikolaev 6y ago
      If a mindful person can wait, then they don't need a fence to begin with.
    - TheNorthman 6y ago
      If psychoanalysis has taught us anything, it's that if you're the tiger, it doesn't disappear until confronted. Recent years has also seen an increase in studies surrounding the sociological concept of `Mobbing'. This has taught us that the tiger only goes away if there is outside help, often in the form of fellow students, teachers, and so on.
- chienandalou 6y ago
  Willoughby Britton is a meditation teacher and researcher who studies adverse effects of meditation and mindfulness. There is a risk of diverse mental problems, especially - but not only - for people with a history of trauma. As a meditator myself I think it would be helpful if this were more well-known. If you search for her name, you'll find more information and studies. Here's an interview and article: https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/trauma-meditation/ https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/trauma-meditation/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-...
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Is anything not a risk of mental problems for people with a history of trauma? Risk of mental problems is half the definition of trauma.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  It seems reasonable to assume there are outliers. Perhaps if $historical_bad_actor meditated / exercised / ate better we wouldn’t be here having this conversation. I’m not trying to be flippant here.
- whereistimbo 6y ago
  What do you mean of traditional yoga? Yoga sutra of patanjali, which consist of 8 limbs? In USA most yoga studio only touches Asana, which is one limb of Yoga Sutra.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Research into mindfulness emphasises the benefits, but tends to minimise the harm. Some research fails to mention any risk at all. This makes it hard to devise a mindfulness program that doesn't cause harm. Mindfulness in schools is applied to the entire school population. Mindfulness in schools is usually delivered by teachers, and not trained therapists or psychologists. The combination of taking the entire population, including children at higher risk of harm, and not understanding how that harm can be caused, and using people with minimal training to provide the programme, means that some people get harmed. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141076816644113 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01410768166441... https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/sites/britton-lab/files/images/Britton_2019_Can%20mindfulness%20be%20too%20much%20of%20a%20good%20thing.pdf https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/sites/britton-la... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735818301272 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027273581... > Mindfulness just means being aware and non-reactive Mary is a 10 year old girl. She is raped once a week by her step-father. You can see how being "aware" and "non-reactive" might cause extra harm.
  - anon9001 6y ago
    Mindfulness is supposed to be a practice, and it's not necessarily an easy thing you can do with all benefits and minimal work. It's also deeply personal and not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. I think schools should treat meditation like prayer, because it's essentially the same function, and we should just avoid it in the classroom. Perhaps the real tragedy here is that many students will learn about mindfulness in schools and dismiss it as useless nonsense, when there actually may be something of value in there somewhere.
    - warent 6y ago
      Prayer and meditation are completely different. There are studies which demonstrate a causal connection between meditation and mental health benefits, and even structural changes in the brain. It demonstrably helps with anxiety and depression. The same cannot be said for prayer. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-resea...
- mbeex 6y ago
  For example, meditation can lead to addiction (to do meditation). This is a certain contradiction, very often to find in the teachings/techers themselves. Meditation lets things pass. This is also true for meditation sessions itself, this is what is sometimes forgotten - it has to end.
codegladiator 6y ago
> risk of harm for a few people What harm from meditation ?
- abjKT26nO8 6y ago
  I've practised meditation in the past and it made my depression worse. Specifically, my thoughts would flow too freely between associations made in the past and made me think about things that I would prefer to have never experienced in my life. Thinking about those things only worsens my condition. I stopped meditating and now I'm much better at compartmentalizing, I have "fences" in my mind which stop me from wandering into dangerous territories by accident. I'd have to make an effort to go past them. I won't do that. Had enough of it already. I know what's good or bad for me. I recommend the book "Altered Traits". It looks at some benefits of meditation documented using scientific methods. But it also says that it may not be good for everyone. Specifically, it may be dangerous for people struggling with depression.
  - anon9001 6y ago
    I think your view is extremely under appreciated, especially as it applies to group settings. The trendy idea is about "being present" in physical form and acknowledge (but not engage) with any random thoughts that might come your way. I don't want that feeling unless I'm very specifically seeking it out. Whenever I've had to participate in the "group" versions of these things, I try to think of literally anything else to keep myself distracted until it's over, for fear of wandering into unpleasant territory and causing a mood change when I'm actually supposed to be at work. I wish there was a word for "sitting in silence with others, frantically searching for anything to think about to avoid letting your mind wander into terrifying places". If this mindfulness thing takes off, maybe someone can come up with a clever way to sum that up. It's a very uneasy feeling. Also, why my employer would want me to take a mid-day break to meditate is beyond me. It's like they're trying to make me rethink my life decisions and quit.
  - codegladiator 6y ago
    Sorry I might be wrong here but I feel you are not doing it right. I am told to "not think" during meditation, while you mention "Thinking about those things" which seems not "not think". Obviously I am no expert or actually even any good at meditating, but maybe try learning from a different teacher who might be able to help you out in this. Just to reiterate, I might be wrong here and if that's the case just ignore my comment :)
noobaccount 6y ago
This post seems controversial to the community based on voting. I’m wondering how it does not contribute to the discussion. It seems like an obvious statement? Am I wrong in thinking that no behavioral technique is going to be ubiquitously beneficial?
- CJefferson 6y ago
  It doesnt contribute because it is making a claim with no evidence, no discussion of what the harm is, and how common it is. You can basically make that reply to every post on hacker news, ever.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    Sometimes, for whatever reason, people post terse comments. When that happens, it’ll often spark a thread that then fills in the gaps. Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - DanBC 6y ago
    I submitted the article. My comment explains why I submitted the article. The article talks about some of the harms. "‘Mindfulness doesn’t help me,’ says Tyler, a 13-year-old student in a deprived area of southwest England. ‘Some people it helps, some it can make ’em feel worse.’ Gathered around a table in a large, cluttered classroom, five other students nod. Kayleigh cuts in: ‘Sometimes other things help me more. But they don’t listen to us, they just tell us to do mindfulness.’ "

Barrin92 6y ago

mindfulness and meditation seems to be all the rage in recent years but looking at the physical state of many students these days and the stated goal: >"The goal is to help them develop resilience, improve their attention and self-regulation, and prevent everyday stress spiralling into major psychological problems. " I'd maybe recommend greatly expanding physical exercise and team sports because not only does it address many of the points above it also will reduce obesity and balance out general inactivity. Physical education seems to be severely neglected. Both quality and quantity.

kingkongjaffa 6y ago
Having to take part in team sports were a negative part of schooling for me. Activities that can be done together but with the goal of self improvement / competing with yourself being the main goal always felt better. Like track and field / some kind of cardio / anything in the gym.
- huffmsa 6y ago
  I'm going to argue that it wasn't team sports, it was the infrequency with which you played them that caused the negativity. Working as a team is part of the human experience. Some people are more inclined to it than others, but given enough time and frequency working with the same unit, almost everyone becomes a comrade, a brother-in-arms, bonded through shared experiences. Team sports help develop social bonds and trust between peers, and those relationships help quite a few people deal with personal issues they would otherwise get stuck in their own heads trying to fight. Teamwork and working towards goals bigger than oneself are important to the psyche.
  - fiblye 6y ago
    I’ve always hated sports. No matter how much I tried, I was horrible. All my school stress stemmed from PE and sports, and with how much of a focus “coolness” in school stems from sports performance, pressure simply grew and grew until I finally graduated. After graduating, I actively rejected sports and fitness because I associated it with the people who were good and I hated to be around, and it was nothing but negative connections in my mind. It wasn’t until a friend introduced me to weightlifting that I learned that I can not only enjoy exercise, but I can do it completely alone without anybody looking at me. A weight set and a bench to sit on are as close to meditation as exercise can get for me. I’m stronger than the average person. Visibly fit to the point that people comment on it. But every time someone has expected me to catch something or throw something to them, it’s a disaster. People can’t believe it because there’s the association of fitness level == sports ability, but there’s as connected as math and programming. It’s definitely good to be good at both and they definitely benefit each other, but you can also be incompetent at one and good at the other. I’ve definitely known some people who’ve never cared about basketball and don’t really exercise but almost never miss a shot if someone asks them to try.

noodlesUK 6y ago

This feels very much like mindfulness is trying to be used as a bandaid to cover the (metaphorical) sucking chest wound of student mental health. Schools can be absolutely miserable places for many students. Bullying is rampant, both from students and staff, students are forced to be there, and have very little choice in how to spend their days. If we want to improve mental health in young people, look closely at how we run schools. Reduce class sizes, give students self determination. These aren’t easy steps though.

TaupeRanger 6y ago
Impossible in fact, without huge increases in funding for more teachers, larger buildings, and better pay.
njb311 6y ago
While I agree with your points, I’d reframe them slightly: it’s a sucking chest wound of teenage mental health. Schools are having to deal with young people who come to them with problems from outside. Schools can make them better or worse, but that’s loading a responsibility onto schools way beyond education. The fact that we are even having to consider non-traditional subjects/activities like mindfulness as a treatment to help kids get through the day, rather than to help prepare them for adult life, is a huge red flag. We can look closely at how we run schools, but where is the scrutiny on parenting? There is a ton of assessment of teachers and metrics on school performance (whether they are a good thing or not in improving outcomes is a different matter). Serious problems in the home are generally picked up by social services – and you could say that they function as a bandaid to cover the sucking chest wound of adult mental health - but straightforward poor parenting is far more widespread, how do we fix that? If we want to improve mental health in young people we need to look closely at how we run society. Schools could help, but only if they were adequately funded for everything they are being expected to deliver.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Schools are in loco parentis. Schools are parents. That's what day care is -- part time parenting. They should do their part, with appropriate staff and resources. Parents at home should be supported as well. But this all costs money that is being diverted to the military industrial complex and other graft.

itronitron 6y ago

As my grandmother used to say, you can't fool dogs and children. >> As Jack, a 13-year-old student at a school in a post-industrial town in the UK, explained: ‘They’re trying to teach us to choose what we want but then not letting us choose anything at all.’ Students are very quick to see through their teachers' bullshit as they have years of practice by the time they are adolescents. The current convention seems to be that if students can't life-hack their school then there must be something wrong with them. That lack of self-reflection on the part of teachers and schools is telling, and probably a big reason for student anxiety in the first place.

Asooka 6y ago
Yep. Mindfulness helps to lower your self-inflicted stress and worries, but it is not a solution when you have a concrete issue, like being where you don't want to be, with people you don't want to be with, doing what you don't want to do. Put another way, mindfulness doesn't mend bone, nor put food on the table.
op03 6y ago
Well you need to cut them some slack. Schools, teachers and parents are in a very difficult position these days because of how fast things are changing. They are constantly overloaded with info about what's good for the kid. Even developmental psychologists,pedagogy experts and edu depts get overloaded and feel pressure to pass opinions on everything under the sun without serious evaluation. Learning takes Time. So evaluation of any method takes time. But the pressure to try X Y or Z builds up so quickly that anyone pushing back can easily be labeled a dinosaur and kicked out the room. And its all happening in the useless attention arms race type environment the tech sector has created where what and who gets propped up depends on whose TED talk got more views, how much time they self promote, and 'what can scale faster'. Such an environment will keep producing a whole lot of failed experiments.
- twodave 6y ago
  All this bearing in mind we haven’t really seen any sustainable improvement in test scores in the last ~50 years. What is even the point of having an education arms race while the same people groups average pretty much the same aptitude for the tests? SAT scores for language have worsened while math has remained fairly consistent since the 70s, which suggests to me that those scores are loosely (if at all) related to educational strategy. I may not have a popular opinion, but I think our focus should be more on supporting families to raise their children instead of what amounts in my mind to free day care, especially for children 10 and under.

tomhoward 6y ago

I've seen it suggested in other articles here before that mindfulness programs for employees are often a way for employers to try and get their staff to be more accepting of crappy conditions, or unpleasant, meaningless or unethical work. It sounds to me like the same kind of thing might also apply in schools. I'm sure the school teachers and administrators mean well. I'm sure they don't consciously realise what a nightmare their institutions have become for many of the students in their care. Even if they do realise, they didn't choose for it to be that way. The sad fact is that modern life has become a horrible nightmare for many people, grownups and kids alike. Mindfulness has become a popular attempt to paper over the problems, but in truth, many people who are having coping problems or exhibiting "mental illness" are really having understandable reactions to the dysfunction they're sensing in the world. To be clear: I'm in no way averse to emotional wellbeing techniques that are effective and that increase the agency of participants. I've gone very deep on this kind of work in my own life, and have benefited greatly. But I think the outcomes, and indeed the intentions, of mainstream mindfulness programs are quite different to this, and are sadly far more focused on maintaining the status quo for institutions and modern mainstream society.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>mindfulness programs for employees are often a way for employers to try and get their staff to be more accepting of crappy conditions ^This. I don't need mindfulness, gyms, free junky snacks, team building events, parking spaces as perks, I need work conditions that don't grind my mind and body so much for me to require therapy afterwards (realistic deadlines, no open office, no rush hour commutes, remote work, comfy monitors, chairs and desks, time off to spend with my family). Unfortunately due to ever increasing wealth inequality, most of the workforce, even in the west, is stuck in a meatgrinder where the only escape being dangled in front of you is climbing the ladder high enough until you become the one one to turn the handle.
- rubyfan 6y ago
  i wish i could upvote more than once. the company i work for recently started surveying people about “return to office”. the company has been really good about work from home during COVID but they really haven’t taken into consideration a permanent distributed workforce. the survey results will speak for themselves. People are less stressed without a daily commute, see their families more and have more balance - oh and get the same amount of work or more. i think any company that’s not seriously evaluating distributed teams permanently is going to lose talent.

fzeroracer 6y ago

It's the exact same reason why businesses have been pushing mindfulness at work as well. They don't want to actually reduce stress or solve the problems workers are facing; they'd rather try and teach them to not break as fast while under stress. This isn't to discount the benefits of being mindful or meditating for people. But you should be very wary when someone's trying to sell you on it because usually there's a greater reason for it.

nefitty 6y ago
Whatever the intent, or the side effects, mindfulness is still beneficial for individuals. Skepticism is healthy, but sometimes we need to place more weight on first-order effects, otherwise we’re paralyzed obsessing over which and how bad guys will benefit from the things that benefit us.

nabla9 6y ago

I strongly agree with this. Any mindfulness for children or adults must be just offering. You should't make it regular thing that everyone must attend. You can't motivate mindfulness from the outside. Some people just have very bad reactions to mindfulness even if they try it voluntarily. It may be ongoing psychological issue or something else. People seem more or less similar on the outside, but they have very different experiences when they turn their mind inwards.

fnenrjfkdke 6y ago
> Some people just have very bad reactions to mindfulness even if they try it voluntarily. This is interesting. Can you share any particular examples?
- onei 6y ago
  One example in the article was trauma, which seems reasonable. Home situations for children vary wildly and I wouldn't expect children to be mentally equipped if they're exposed to abuse, bereavement, etc. Teaching them to virtually bottle up their emotions is something I'd expect to end badly sooner or later.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    No one is talking about bottling up emotions.
- carapace 6y ago
  I don't have any examples, but the general idea is that if you have issues that you aren't paying attention to and you start meditating, you relax and become quiet inside, and these issues you've been ignoring start to come up. For some people, especially if they're previously unaware of their issues, it can seem like meditation itself has caused some bad reaction. It's like if you're listening to the radio really loud and then turn it off and hear the smoke alarm. Turning off the radio didn't cause the smoke, but it might sound that way if you're not familiar with what's really going on.

CraigJPerry 6y ago

If it never helps in any scenarios, bin it. If it helps in some scenarios then what else can be done in addition to this? I see a gaping flaw in the “this doesn’t work in these cases therefore tear it all down” logic. Absolutely replace it if something better comes along but the answer can’t be go back to square one because its not perfect.

alecbenzer 6y ago

>In many programmes, students learn that emotions such as anger, anxiety and fear stem from reactions in a brain region called the amygdala. They are taught that mindfulness helps them identify and manage these emotions by activating the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with behavioural regulation. In doing so, students are taught that mindfulness creates space in which we can ‘choose our response’ as opposed to reacting or lashing out. In the words of one programme, mindfulness gives us ‘the freedom to choose’. > These might sound like reasonable claims, but they imply a dichotomy between emotions and reason, and the superiority of ‘rational’ responses to distress. This idea derives not from traditional mindfulness but from liberal Western ideals. Historically, these ideals have served to undermine oppressed groups, as anger and resistance is perceived as irrational. The article's commentary here seems out-of-touch with most mindfulness instruction I've experienced. It's usually emphasized to notice things in as non-judgmental a way as possible; you're definitely not encouraged to label anger or any other emotion as "irrational". Mindfulness does give you the freedom to choose. It wouldn't be freedom to choose if the choice was always to ignore anger: sometimes anger is useful, other times it isn't; mindfulness helps you notice that and act accordingly.

wadkar 6y ago
Couldn’t have phrased it better myself! Mindfulness should focus first on observing and not judging/labeling things as good/bad. That just leads to more misery!! The instructors should certainly realize that mindfulness and it’s experiences are very subjective and each individual has different experiences. One must be careful not to compare two students and say one is a better example of mindfulness than the other.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
You can see the same misconceptions when people expect mindful meditation to always: - relax them - make them happy - make them less emotional But with practice I learned that some sessions are extremely emotional, full of stress or sorrow. It's not uncommon to feel pain, distress or to cry deeply during intense meditation retreats. The process improves one existence by making us live those aspects of our life better. Not by taking them away. Now of course, on the long run, it will make people more relaxed, happier, etc. Making you fitter to live with yourself. But not by removing, ignoring or suppressing suffering. It's still here. It will always be here. That's the point of meditating. Mindfulness forces us to observe it as it is. You see your contradictions, your scars and your urges. You see your masks, conditioning and reflexes. If anything, it removes dichotomy. Not add to it. In fact, from what I witnessed, meditation tends to make people remove layers in general. I rarely hear meditators talking about adding ones. And mindfulness is certainly not emotions vs reason. It has nothing to do with either. Emotions and reason are here. You observe them, and yourself using them. But the fact you use them is not part of the technique. It's just a part of you, and like all parts of you, you are invited to observe it. Like everybody, when I started years ago, I confused "be detached" with "don't feel", "label it unimportant", "try to relax". That's not it. What you feel or the label you use are just not part of the teaching. They don't matter at all (for the practice). What matters is that you observe it.

readme 6y ago

Mindfulness is pseudoscience garbage, it shouldn't be allowed in schools any more than religion should... blowing my mind here.

bsenftner 6y ago
Totally agree. It's a strange consultant money grab that has managed to gain stream. It appears to be useful for people with anxiety issues, but is being touted as a cure all by snake oil salesmen all over the place. It's like the astrology crowd has a new toy and revenue source.
mbeex 6y ago
It is not because it does not even claim to be science. The often associated religious or/and esoteric part is something, putting me off for years (it still does). But the thing itself has a quite rational essence. Helpful for me: https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Revised-Expanded/dp/0861713214 https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Revised-Exp... At the end it comes also to dukkha and other Buddhist concepts I don't care much about. But before, it served me very well in his quite accessible approach to what I would call 'mind cleansing'. On-topic: In my opinion the whole thing is nothing for very young people, in particular not for children.
TaupeRanger 6y ago
Learning how to observe emotions arise and react more reasonably and rationally is valuable. You seem to have a personal grudge or possibly just don't know anything about the subject.
superkuh 6y ago
Yup. It isn't even one defined thing. And in the sense that it barely is definable it's no different from placebo. Probably because it is placebo: have an authoritive source tell people if they think some way it'll make them feel better.

bsenftner 6y ago

As an "old guy" who has been meditating since the 70's, Mindfulness is merely a popular fad, and a money grab, and is doing a terrible job is claiming to be a cure all. It latches onto people with anxiety issues and claims to be a cure all. Be like Public Enemy and Don't Believe The Hype.

teekert 6y ago

It time to let kids be kids and kids are relaxed when playing outside, with friends, getting dirty. Adults are as well, but we force ourselves into a more structured live. Thus we need mindfullness. But maybe we also need to play outside, in nature, with others, getting dirty.

kingkawn 6y ago

They have turned what is meant to let you know yourself into something to bury yourself deeper out of sight

naringas 6y ago

education should not be made cost efficient by means of having one teacher specialized in a grade per every 30+ students. It shold be more personal with far less students per teacher; but this is too costly and for some reason it doesn't seem like anyone is willing to pay for this premium

sukilot 6y ago

Weird article. It's thesis is that kids have some problems that mindfulness doesn't solve. Like, OK, that's obvious. Those problems should be addressed. Yet another case of pitting good things against each other by denying appropriate funding.

dsabanin 6y ago

Forcing someone to sit and be mindful is incredibly offensive to the idea of mindfulness. Goes to show that whatever good thing mandatory schooling touches, it perverts or corrupts. They should just stick to sciences.

nefitty 6y ago
Children need guidance. Their whims are least likely of all to lead them to choose long-term beneficial behaviors.
- MispelledToyota 6y ago
  Taken literally, you're leaping from arguing kids' whims are sub-optimal to saying they're an absolute minimum in terms of long-term beneficial behavioral outcomes. Kids jumping off bridges is probably worse than them eating ice cream cones or whatever.
- dsabanin 6y ago
  You don’t have to tell me that, I have a 12 year old. Yet often times as a father I see that guidance is best achieved by reasoning, not compulsion. Compulsion breeds long term resistance and aversion, which can damage relationships with certain topics and activities way more than whatever short term benefit was achieved by it.

joyeuse6701 6y ago

From the article, I wonder just who these mindfulness teachers are? I had to spend hundreds of hours of practice and multiple teachers to unlock a few ‘treasures’ of meditation... and that was with teachers who weren’t laying a thick amount of judge mental indoctrination. I absolutely believe the kid’s responses to the program, and I’m afraid this experience will turn them off for life, like so many do with a bad year of math. Nevertheless, I think exposing kids to mindfulness is worthwhile.

conjectures 6y ago

The correct teenage response being to recite Dead Kennedys lyrics.

krapp 6y ago
Dead Kennedys? OK boomer.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  boomers know the quiet desperation of alienation isn't new to this century. when mindfulness doesn't work, maybe the school system can try mixing in some disco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U13xOvDa19U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U13xOvDa19U On-topic: I agree that reducing stress is more likely to be effective than attempting to teach kids coping methods for stress.

naasking 6y ago

> students are taught that mindfulness creates space in which we can ‘choose our response’ as opposed to reacting or lashing out. [...] These might sound like reasonable claims, but they imply a dichotomy between emotions and reason, and the superiority of ‘rational’ responses to distress. [...] Historically, these ideals have served to undermine oppressed groups, as anger and resistance is perceived as irrational. Sometimes anger and resistance is rational, sometimes it's not. If mindfulness gives you the "mental space" to decide whether you are right to be angry, that's a good thing, and it absolutely is superior to purely acting emotionally. I'm frankly struggling to see how anyone could think that modulating your emotions with reason is a bad idea.

silveroriole 6y ago
Possibly because constantly thinking “am I right to feel this way? How should I respond?” also describes the thinking patterns of anxious/autistic people. ‘Normal’ people generally just feel and act. They aren’t constantly modulating themselves. Maybe that means they make some suboptimal choices, but they also aren’t wasting time and making themselves feel bad by internally interrogating themselves non-stop.
- naasking 6y ago
  Anxious people can't help negative thought patterns. They happen despite their desires. That's the complete opposite of this case, so I'm not sure that's it.

gwbas1c 6y ago

Mindfulness is primarily Zen Buddhism stripped of the appearance of religion. As much as I encourage anyone to try either traditional Zen or Mindfulness, pushing it on someone who doesn't want it is absurd.

praptak 6y ago
Mindfulness is a tool which various schools of Buddhism emphasize to a greater or lesser degree. Second part I agree with. Mindfulness practice requires a pretty diligent application of intention. I don't think it can work as another subject at school or an ad hoc therapy.

_curious_ 6y ago

Good read, glad to hear that mindfulness is being introduced to humans at an earlier age. Apparently that's not enough for the author though? Like anything, it will never be useful for 100% of everyone regardless of age or place in time.

davesque 6y ago

> Within educational contexts, being well-behaved is seen as rational and ‘good’, while resistance to authority is seen as irrational or ‘bad’. Since mindfulness encourages young people to be calm, complacent and attentive, it can promote these moral hierarchies: of good or bad behaviour, and hence, well-behaved or naughty students. This seems to me much more like a problem with typical "educational contexts" than with mindfulness. In my experience, you try and be more mindful of your emotions so you can make better (perhaps more efficient) decisions and changes in your life in response to those emotions. And that naturally conflicts with environments where the expectations are very rigid and more or less set in stone e.g. where there's a clear "authority" (like a teacher) in control and very precise boundaries about what kind of behavior is acceptable. > As Kelly, 13, explained: I really hated it when I had to close my eyes … I felt really uncomfortable because there were people in the group that I didn’t trust … Some of the practices did help me but it would be better if you could choose to do it with people you like. Again, I think this is much more a problem with the typical school environment than with mindfulness. What does it say that a child doesn't feel comfortable simply closing their eyes momentarily in some environment? Not good things if you ask me. Frankly, I've often thought it's cruel and unusual to place large numbers of children together for large periods of time as is done in a public school setting. Children can be ruthless when they bully each other and readily succumb to their worst instincts.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
The fact that someone doesn't feel comfortable about something doesn't mean that their feelings are warranted. When dealing with anxiety disorders or phobias, the last thing experts recommend is avoidance of that which causes anxiety. In fact, exposure therapy helps drastically with it.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  Ok, how does exposure therapy actually work? Wiki sez: "Exposure therapy is based on the principle of respondent conditioning often termed Pavlovian extinction.[16] The exposure therapist identifies the cognitions, emotions and physiological arousal that accompany a fear-inducing stimulus and then tries to break the pattern of escape that maintains the fear. This is done by exposing the patient to progressively stronger fear-inducing stimuli.[17] Fear is minimized at each of a series of steadily escalating steps or challenges (a hierarchy), which can be explicit ("static") or implicit ("dynamic" — see Method of Factors) until the fear is finally gone.[18] The patient is able to terminate the procedure at any time." That is, to my interpretation, the idea is to expose the patient to the scary stimulus under conditions that are kept as nice, safe, and comfortable as possible, so that the Pavlovian part of their brain will learn to stop associating the stimulus with fear. This is entirely different from "keep throwing them into the feared situation, against their will and without any particular effort to make it more safe or pleasant".

troughway 6y ago

Hah, it was only a matter of time. See this thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21656380

MarcScott 6y ago

I've been through so many educational fads, in my time as a teacher, that it's difficult not to be cynical. When I first started teaching it was all about Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic learners. Then brain gyms, then multiple intelligences, then personality typing. To be honest, I've lost track of the number of new strategies that I've had CPD for in those first few days back at school every September. Mindfulness was just starting to creep in when I quit the formal education game. I'd bet that it'll be gone within five years, replaced with some new and shiny fad.

carapace 6y ago

Placebo ritalin. It sounds like they didn't teach the parents, teachers, and school administrators first. Meditation is a very valuable thing to learn but this is not the way to learn it. To me it seems like these kids are being subjected to a fad. To the extent that it works for them (to become more mindful) it will only throw the intrinsic bullshit of the school system into stark relief, as the quotes from the kids indicate. I'm going to repeat myself, because I didn't see it mentioned in the article: if the parents, teachers, and school admin staff didn't go through a year or two of "mindfulness" themselves before pushing it on their kids then this is foolish.

iandanforth 6y ago

The people pushing this practice and teaching it in schools are clearly not qualified to do so. The terms "meditation" and "mindfulness" are too vague and tied to pop-psychology / spiritual overtones to be useful. These practices are one thing, concentration practice. That's it. It's not about feelings or anxiety or any of the crap that seems to be peddled along side this practice. You sit, focus on something that's always there (the breath) and then try to maintain that focus/awareness in the face of constant distractors. Concentration practice strengthens concentration. You may or may not employ that concentration, you may or may not use it to be aware of distractors in daily life, you may or may not be able to use that awareness to avoid fixating on stressful thoughts. That's all secondary. If you do arm curls you will strengthen your biceps which are useful in many motions, but don't pretend that arm curls are "defense practice" or "box lifting practice." Don't confuse the potential applications with the specific effect of the practice. Concentration practice builds the circuits that allow for broad inhibition of activity throughout the brain mediated by the prefrontal cortex. Concentration practice is hugely valuable IMO and, for me, can take what would be a stressful unproductive day and make it productive and stable. I fully support having concentration practice as part of a curriculum but it sounds like the way it's being taught is harmful.