Mindfulness fails in school trials

Pause and Reflect

For those of us actively motivated to make a difference for young people this is sobering news. The British Psychological Society Research Digest Article suggests that our enthusiasm for school based mindfulness programmes may be premature. A more detailed review from Behaviour Research and Therapy shows no benefit.

At the same time, Richard Davidson and Dan Coleman have just released the Science of Meditation to review the evidence for and against. A short interview with Richard Gere is available. No doubt the hype and promise is not backed by science yet.

This is early days. We should not read too much into it and continue to support well-intentioned interventions. However, as we have published before, our young people need help. The trends for attention disorders, withdrawal, autism, anxiety and depression are unsettling.

The problem with mindfulness

Frankly, expecting the average teen to sit down and take seriously sometimes trivial attention exercises is naive. Despite years of press and published benefits, most educated and successful adults point blank fail at establishing a meaningful practice.

There is no doubt that we can build physiological, emotional, and cognitive power through the careful and sustained daily practice of defined meditation techniques.

If adults cannot do this, how can we expect teens to succeed? It is even harder when most teens are not staying fit, sleeping poorly and eating too much junk food.

We have to be much more practical.

The challenge ahead

The challenge of the next decade will be to test and define what does work. We must sustain our vision and optimism but temper this with practical wisdom and vigorous testing.

Measurement

We know a lot about the dark side of teen life but we don't know very much about the full spectrum. We must measure this carefully. We propose a student resilience assessment. We need to understand both the assets and the liabilities.

Foundations

Long before we tackle mindfulness, we have to keep teens fit and get them to sleep properly. Daylight savings should go, we have to impose limits on technology before sleep, and get our young people up earlier with exercise being the first class of the day. A generation ago, the walk to school secured this. Then we are going to have to tackle the food industry and get the processed carbohydrates out of our children.

Calming

The levels of anxiety, worry and distraction are overwhelming effective growth and learning. Long before mindfulness, we have to teach young people how to breathe diaphragmatically and how to apply tactical calm in tricky social, test or performance situation. No student should be allowed to leave school with out confident and effective calming techniques.

Emotional skill

Psychology has clearly demonstrated the learnability and benefit of developing impulse control and positivity. Rather than mindfulness, we prefer the team insight (self-awareness). This is the learned ability to experience, name and be present to our emotions. Once aware, we can choose more useful choices as in this example of anger. This takes practice and repetition. Classroom training through skilled teachers who can detect and train real-time situations to practice emotional skill is a better investment.

Brain Training

Maybe mindfulness has had its day? Perhaps we are better to focus on a modern neurobiological framework. If we can train attention, situation awareness and situation mastery and the benefits can be shown, that is what we should do. I think many teens would prefer to play an interactive digital game that focuses attention rather than pursue esoteric self absorption. Again, here is a classroom skill that teachers can facilitate. Just as a good sports coach analyses the play, defines the skills and drills the skills.

Let's move forward with wisdom and optimism. We can make a difference. We must continue to test, measure and refine. There is no more important goal for education.