Meditation: Could meditation be a cost-effective alternative to detention/solution to stressed

students, classroom disruption, and school drop-out rates?

Ive personally benefitted from meditation in the past several months. Dealing with a

frustrating head injury that affected my ability to read, write, and concentrate on any given

task, I needed a way to regain a sense of peace within my own head and body. I can see marked

progress in my ability to focus, relax, and relate to others just from listening to and following

short, recorded meditations, and its led me to wonder why meditation not more widely

practiced. Complaints about short attention spans, difficulty sleeping and reconciling with

emotions are frequent among my friends and peers, particularly those in school. Though

meditation does not directly treat any of these issues, it can help people achieve a state of

mind in which they will no longer fight physical or emotion distress and can therefore move

towards solving these problems for themselves. My only complaint is that I didnt learn about

meditation earlier. Since beginning my practice of meditation, I started noticing when it popped

in magazines and journals and was particularly interested by one article that explained how

meditation was used in place of detention for students at one elementary school with great

results. I think it could be an extremely beneficial addition to the education systemand the

earlier, the better, because the sooner you learn to be at peace in your own mind, the more

likely you are to avoid major derailment later in life, when bigger challenges and decisions come

your way.

Meditation is gaining respect among neuroscientists as a method of increasing mental

agility and managing turbulent emotions like anxiety and stress. Traditionally practiced by
Buddhist monks, meditation is making its way to the masses through companies like

Headspace, which incorporate those techniques of training the mind and increasing inner

awareness and collective consciousness, with the ultimate goal being peace and unity among all

beings. Multiples studies were performed on public school students, many of whom were from

impoverished backgrounds and at statistically higher risk of succumbing to peer pressure and

dropping out of school, who had meditation introduced as part of their daily curriculum. Most

of those students practiced guided meditations in the classroom and a considerable number of

students demonstrated increased academic success and decreased overall stress levels. Given

that it is relatively simple and easy to learn (albeit difficult to apply), I would strongly argue in

favor of the widespread implementation of meditation in public school curriculum to help

students learn effective methods of managing stress which can, in turn, improve their overall

chances of academic success and upward socioeconomic mobility.