There was one line that resonated with me from the documentary “Changing Minds at Concord High School.” It has nothing to do with meditation.
An adult was explaining the fight-or-flight response to the camera. She noted that the stress hormones indicative of this response were especially high among Concord High School students. The demeaning notion that the students in underperforming schools care too much for mundane things rather than for their academic performance and careers is false. The frequently high stress levels reflect traumatic experiences of many students, which isn’t too surprising considering the school’s largely low-income and minority student body (*in SY 2010-11, 57% of students were eligible for school lunch, 35% were black/African American, and 38% were Hispanic/Latino*).
Of course, it’s nothing new that poorer backgrounds tend to cause less academic success, but it’s nice that even the littlest (and probably unconventional) tactics are used to try to help at-risk students. Still, we know that meditation won’t bring the bacon home. How many times has it been said that it’s a vicious cycle of poverty wherein the poor do badly in school, grow up to be poor adults, and raise kids who will live as their parents lived? Economic mobility begins at the schools – if not earlier – so we should focus on expecting more from teachers, paying teachers higher salaries, and building more schools to lower class sizes. (Universal pre-K? Meh.)
*https://reportcards.nysed.gov/files/2010-11/AOR-2011-353100011470.pdf
