This is the third part of this series. For Part I, click here and for Part II, click here.

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Yet, we all know that cognitive factors don’t alone affect, for better or worse, the outcomes of a student’s development.

In short, the siege of being that is to be a young person (especially in adolescence) can produce a disorganised, viscous cocktail of powerful and hard to navigate emotions.

Even the brightest, most determined and steady-headed may from time to time be knocked about by the fragile emotionalities that are nearly unavoidable at this stage of maturation.

Even putting aside external factors, this side of growing up can be a wild, disorienting adventure.

So isn’t it quite fortunate that meditation can be very helpful on this front as well?

It isn’t that it would produce students in such a deep, complete state of zen that anything short of being pursued by platoons of lions could disturb or throw them.

But it very much can create an internal centredness, a measure of inner stability, that can give them greater agency over themselves – greater self control.

And thus, if integrated into each student’s daily engagements, meditation would likely dramatically enhance a school’s ability to develop each of their charges into the kind people we hope they can become.

As with cognitive application, meditation helps a person develop a relationship with themselves in which they are less the object of their internal life and more the co-author of it.

And again, at this point you are likely asking: why?

Meditation helps mitigate anxiety, stress and depression

How many mistakes and bad situations arise at school due to students being animated by the agitation of these kinds of emotions?

Because of them a student can make bizarre social misjudgements, successfully befuddle their teachers (as well as themselves) and underperform academically, having sat in the exam hall anxiously ruminating about their fate as sewage cleaner should they fail them (nothing against sewage workers, merely if you are one and happy with your job I can’t imagine you dreamed of it with excitement as you undertook your maths exam – though obviously I may perhaps be wrong).

Regarding depressive states there are an uncountable number of sometimes indecipherable reasons why a student may descend into a lethargy of heavy hearted, empty feeling, static despondency and unhappiness.

Disregarding their development in education, we simply don’t want them, or anyone, to suffer like this – not even the most belligerent of offspring.

Not at all.

It has repeatedly been shown that students (and people generally) function more effectively when in positive as opposed to negative states.

The cultivation of fear or pain as an engine for a student’s inner drive – even if it works – it doesn’t fade away as they mature.

Deeply internalised, that remains within them and is decisive in who they become.

Not only is it a very dangerous and unkind methodology but also, in my opinion, life is not meant to be essentially painful.

Meditation augments mental resilience

Pertinent to the preceding point, the strengthening of such inner resolve both sustains the student in school and remains within them in adulthood.

School throws all kinds of challenges our way; small ones that accumulate to become weighty ones, and big ones that knock us over.

Meditation can help provide that sturdiness that means a heavy load doesn’t cause a student to collapse, nor a shocking impact stop them from getting back up.

Meditation lowers emotional reactivity

Not only may more extreme emotions be felt less hotly or with blinding intensity but when they are evoked a young person may not so swiftly jump to action.

When frustrated with work they may be slower to throw it out the window, or if practicing a musical piece less likely to slam their tuba against the wall or inflict a sonic assault upon the ears of unfortunate nearby persons.

It is not that if hurt, either with words or fists, a student would not feel it less deeply but rather that likely they would be less likely to escalate the situation through retaliation.

It is also important to note that these events may detriment the extent to which a student is trusted by others, not only by their peers but their teachers too.

While teachers often consciously try to avoid being so affected they are humans too, and cannot help the non-instinctual spontaneous changes in how they perceive the young people they work with.

The biases that may result can both subtly and bluntly result in the student in question being disadvantaged, receiving less support, getting fewer opportunities, being judged more harshly, penalised more easily, and even being ostracised by their peers.

It’s not hard to end up lonely and isolated at school.

Likely we can all remember an instance when we wish we had been slower to react and not let the heat of the moment govern of choices.

Such moments are an unavoidable part of growing up, and particularly so in an educational setting.

They are important for a young person’s growth, their learning about themselves, others and the consequences of their actions.

But with meditation such events may be fewer, less consequential or even, depending on the student’s disposition, may never take place.

With that greater emotional calmness all the small and big frustrations and upsets that take place throughout their school years may instead little, perhaps valuable, moments rather than big, overwhelming, perhaps even destructive, events.

Happily combining with reduced emotional reactivity, meditation helps decrease rumination

A dependable feature of the young mind, a student lingering upon everything that has, is, or might go wrong often has them looking back or anxiously down the road, and shut out their attention to everything else.

It is important for a student’s development that they learn to reflect, tune in and consider the past and what the future could look like.

But it cannot be emphasised enough how important it is that they can put such things aside, be in the present and focus on what is in front of them.

It’s cliche how easily and often people get lost fixating as such.

The past is meant to be used to help us going forward; we are not meant to live there.

And neither are we meant to live in the future but to use the present, with the advice of the past, to create it.

 

Written by: Aaron Levvy, Social Worker, Cherwell School Oxford.