Why meditation should be taught in school

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Serrao

Are you guys, Gem and TaoSandwich, cautious that meditation as part of compulsory education might lead to brainwashing little children's minds with "spiritual nonsense" that has nothing to do with 'the core of meditation'?
And all of this by law.

This is basically about producing enough literature to form a 'body of knowledge' in order to influence what is included in education curricula, and since there is growing body of published research on meditation in academia, it has become an acceptable facet of psychology and infiltrated a range of social systems, including education. Meditation will increasingly infiltrate education systems because of the scientifically verified discourse on it. Since it will happen, I don't have opinion like It 'should or should not'. I just face the fact that it is and it will. Since it's going to happen, there is only the approach, and that's why I take the ethical approach rather that take a point of view. Considering that normalcy is the product of social discourses and particular institutions have the resources produce a large quantity of literature, these wealthier institutions are well positioned to create the norms of the latter 21st century.

[Gem]

Originally Posted by TaoSandwich

Gem,

I am still concerned that general ignorance of meditation could prevent this approach.

I think it's inevitable that powerful well funded institutions will be influential and perpetuate their own agendas, and use underhand sales techniques like 'quiet time' to disguise their primary motive.

In my experience, many of the scientists and psychologists who study meditation have themselves taken a meditative journey of some sort. On one hand, this can lead to bias toward a method, but often, especially for those who have studied various forms, it leads to an understanding that there are many practices, likely with varying effects and no one "way".

Yes there is bias in method, and all research is biased, buy lay people don't really know how to analyse research or understand the motives and influences behind it.

I wonder if the same would hold when you generalize to a group of people (such as a school board) instead of a single individual with knowledge and those who work for them/collaborate while making use of their qualitative knowledge to form a study.

-TaoSandwich

In the case of a board, one basically presents literature that influences their decisions, but the group dynamics have a lot of influence as well.