Tranquility.

Meditation in school
This post from an American school describes simple meditation techniques used in school to give pupils calmness and emotional control. They report fewer discipline problems, detentions and exclusions. This is reported at http://www.womansday.com/life/a56446/school-replaces-detention-with-meditation/.


Tranquility
We did something very similar in England a decade ago. We called it Tranquility to avoid the religious connotations of meditation.

I was very pleased to be invited to write a foreword to Vivian Bartlett’s book. ...Motivated teachers and motivated pupils tend to go together, but authoritarian teachers are more likely to produce either timid or rebellious charges. ... For two years we worked closely with disturbed and disengaged young people on ‘Tranquility Zone’ and ‘Discovery Zone’ activities. The first group of 11-13 year olds was chosen by secondary schools as needing particular support. I interviewed several after the project as part of my work as project evaluator. CONTINUE HERE. 

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

Our book Living Contradiction comes out in late summer.

The Book.

Our book Living Contradiction comes out in late summer. In this blog we will introduce some of the ideas and discuss related issues and themes. For Sean Warren, it represents a decade of reading, thought and classroom developmental work. Throughout, Stephen Bigger was his mentor and PhD supervisor.

More positive schools?

This post below was written in 2008. I am leaving it in as it represents the content of our first discussion of Sean's PhD proposal, and helped to establish the direction which it took.

Emotional well-being is one of the most important factors in school success. In other words, happy children learn best in the proper sense of this word. Of course, pressure-cooked pupils may get better results as “right answers” are instilled into them, but long term learning is something quite different. Therefore, the emotional health of people in school needs to be a top priority.I say ‘people’ because the tone is set by the staff. In a school whose (implicit) purpose is to traumatise pupils emotionally (with thanks to John Holt [How Children Fail] and Ivan Illich [Deschooling Society]) the following might be true:

• Staff achieve control by punishment
• Threaten frequently
• Communicate by sarcasm
• Insult and belittle pupils
• Shout at pupils
• Test what they don’t know as often as possible
• Fail to deter bullies
• Avoid physical contact when the pupil needs comfort
• Encourage competition to show who is weakest
• Encourage assertiveness and criticise shyness
• Tell children to pull themselves together and grow up
• Do not check that children understand
• Regard failure as stupidity.

This well describes part of my own school education.
Today, pupils bring emotional traumas from home and from the playground. Sometimes from a young age that makes learning difficult for them. Parents may be part of the problem, but they are also part of the solution. Pupils may be fine at home but be traumatised by school and become school phobic – this might be the result of bullying, or simply an inability to cope socially.
A successful school is one which adults and children are happy and fulfilled. Pupils in this context are likely to succeed and achieve. Emotional well-being leads to self-worth; being provides the foundation for caring for others. Praise leads to a can do attitude; however, especially when unjustified causes a can’t do complex. The latter is more common than the former. The aim of education is to develop habits of enthusiastic and independent learning, which involves a hunger to pass on knowledge and points of view to others. The educated person wants to help others to be educated too. The emphasis, as far as behaviour goes, is to develop self-control, and self-discipline. Education thus is about emotional understanding, self determination and motivation to learn.