Call to Decision

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With Meditation in Schools, Take a Breath

By By Nick Street / Special to the Los Angeles Times

Aug 03, 2007 - 11:26:33 pm PDT

"At quiet time we try to be as calm as we can," says Reko, a seventh-grader at Ideal Academy, a Washington, D.C., charter school that incorporates a 20-minute transcendental meditation program into each school day. "We close our eyes and think of our mantra so we can be relaxed." In Oakland, Calif., students at Emerson Elementary School practice techniques called "mindfulness" that have been adapted from Buddhism. The children learn to follow their breath, watch their thoughts and focus their attention by listening to the tone of a

Tibetan  singing bowl until the sound is too faint to hear.

"Mindfulness makes me  feel marvelous," says Curtis, a fifth-grader at Emerson.

Few people doubt that Reko and Curtis -- and thousands  of children at charter and other public schools -- can benefit from a daily dose  of mindfulness or meditation. Scientists at the University of Massachusetts  established the effectiveness of meditation for reducing stress and anxiety in  the 1980s. And recent studies at the University of California, Los Angeles  concluded that kids with attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorders showed  clear improvement in concentration and cognitive abilities after learning  techniques similar to those used at the Oakland school.

These studies  have lent credibility to a growing movement to introduce meditation and  mindfulness programs into the nation's schools. The number of such programs has  jumped from just a handful five years ago to more than 100

at the start of the  coming school year. In Southern California, the David Lynch Foundation is  sponsoring start-up transcendental meditation programs at two publicly funded  schools -- one in Inglewood and another in Sun Valley.

As the movement to  bring mantras and Tibetan singing bowls to public schools gathers steam, some  activists who keep an eye on church-state issues are crying foul.

"It's  not the business of schools to lead kids to inner peace through a spiritual  process," says Edward Tabash, chairman of the national legal committee for  Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Tabash, a  self-described secular humanist, predicts an imminent court battle. "I can quite  frankly see a coalition between religious fundamentalists and atheists  challenging this."

Last fall, the Pacific Justice Institute, a legal  advocacy group for conservative Christian issues, launched an opening salvo. The  institute took up the cause of

parents who objected to a TM school program in  Marin County, Calif., prompting the Lynch Foundation to withdraw its support.  The common rallying point for any anti-mindfulness coalition would be opposition  to teaching practices that trace their roots to Buddhism and Hinduism in public  schools. Why should mantras and meditation be allowed to slip past the  formidable barrier of legal precedent that has largely kept prayer out of the  schools for the past 50 years?

The short answer to that question: When  they're stripped of their Eastern cultural trappings, meditation and other  mindfulness techniques are not religious practices, so there's no reason to ban  them in public schools. Choral music comes out of Christian church traditions,  but no one objects to a school choir.

"What's religious about learning to  follow your breath?" asks Wendi Caporicci, a devout Catholic and the principal  at Oakland's Emerson Elementary. George Rutherford, the principal at

Ideal  Academy, takes a similar view of transcendental mediation, which he has  practiced for more than a decade. "I'm a Baptist, and my wife has a doctorate in  Christian education," he says, adding that TM "is not a religion."

A  federal district court came to a different conclusion in 1979. The court said TM  couldn't be taught in publicly funded schools in New Jersey because the practice  -- with its ties to a specific spiritual leader -- violated the establishment  clause of the First Amendment.

But in the intervening years, the medical  study of TM and Buddhist-derived mindfulness techniques has changed both the  practices themselves and attitudes toward them. The new "medicalized" meditation  and mindfulness programs seem more likely to pass constitutional  muster.

The Supreme Court already has weighed in on what counts as a  religious practice or belief. In United States vs. Seeger (1965), the court  determined that a conscientious objector who

justified his claim of exemption  from the draft by quoting Plato, Aristotle and Spinoza couldn't be compelled to  serve in the armed forces because his beliefs occupied a place in his life  "parallel to that filled by God." It would be hard to argue that meditation has  replaced religion for people like Rutherford and Caporicci.

None of the  hallmarks of religious systems -- doctrine, cosmology, ethics, clergy, devotion  to a deity or reverence for a prophetic teacher -- figure into these mindfulness  and meditation programs that are beginning to raise the ire of church-state  activists. More to the point, these programs teach skills -- how to pay  attention and regulate the emotions -- that many parents and teachers are eager  for children to learn.

Without Buddha or Brahma or bowing or incense,  meditation and mindfulness are about as religious as -- well, breathing. Are you  breathing right now? Just for a few seconds, can you follow your breath as it

moves in and out of you? Do you feel your belly rise and fall as you inhale and  exhale? As you watch yourself have this experience, do you realize that you've  taken a step back from your thoughts and emotions?

Congratulations --  you've just aced the final exam for Mindfulness 101. That's it. Class  dismissed.

Wait -- one more question before you go. Are your dearly held  beliefs still intact? It will be the burden of any anti-mindfulness coalition to  prove that they're not.

Street, a Soto Zen priest, is a fellow with  News21, a Carnegie-Knight initiative in journalism education at the University  of Southern California.