Ergas 2015

Ergas, O. (2015). The deeper teachings of mindfulness-based 'interventions' as a reconstruction of 'education'. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 49(2), 203-220. doi:10.1111/1467-9752.12137

Central argument/thesis put forth by the author:

Ergas (Hebrew University) suggests in this journal article that if classrooms allocate time, curricular or otherwise, to mindfulness training, the social understanding of education will be transformed. He argues that there are two orientations toward the justification of mindfulness training in the classroom: wisdom traditions (present moment experience as worthwhile) and empirical science (health and social benefits from contemplative practice). (203) Mindfulness training “either “explicitly or implicitly tells the student where meaning is found.” (204) This very thorough and detailed article is valuable to my project because it draws out the differences in traditional educational (outcome-based) and this potentially transformed meta-pedagogical model (the importance of ‘here-ness’ and ‘now-ness’ rather than the future) that “challenges the very concept of ‘curriculum’ as a ‘course study.’” (204)

Quotes, paraphrases, summaries of the text, data/evidence, including page numbers:

·         Argument: that there are roughly two orientations undergirding the justification of contemplative practice in education (203)

o   from the perspective of the wisdom traditions

o   from the perspective of empirical science

§  seems to be more dominant rhetoric (203)

·         It could be suggested that contemplative practices introduced as curricular interventions geared toward instrumental aims (attention, enhancing executive functions, tending to teacher burnout and well-being) might be eroding a much fuller ethical educational potential inherent in the origins of contemplative practices within wisdom traditions. (204)

·         Substantial reconstruction of what we have been accustomed to refer to as ‘education’ (204)

o   Perspective of attention (present moment experience)

§  Students are instructed in the practice of mindfulness, receiving deep teachings

·         Attending the present moment inner experience

·         Our inner world is a meaningful arena

·         Meaning might exist here and now and not only in the future in which a certain educational aim might be achieved (204)

·         Meta-pedagogy = a fundamental teaching, that either explicitly or implicitly tells the student where meaning is to be found (204)

o   “the meta-pedagogy scaffold of contemplative practices, now introduced in schools, deliberately engages students in the here and now (204)

o   Thus, contemplative practices are introducing an alternative curricular deliberation; one that inevitably challenges the very concept of ‘curriculum’ as a ‘course of study’ (204)

·         Attending out there is rewarded, while dwelling in here (daydreaming, contemplation) when not concerning with thinking about out there is reprimanded (212)

o   “Demanding their attention out there moment after moment, student learn that attending to me is non-educational. Eventually they will arrive at quite a discouraging conclusion: education is not about me – in here is not the right place to be. We seem to depreciate ‘navel-gazing’ but what we are doing by constantly calling students’ attention out there is ‘society-gazing.’ We are habituating ourselves to attributing meaning to that which is out there and when one of us is found ‘navel-gazing’ (in some sense of the word) he is called back to the world of ‘normalty.’ (213)

§  Out there = learning things outside of themselves, such as how to work a math problem or history lesson; attending to the environment of the classroom (disciplinary knowledge, actual pedagogical practice) (212)

·         Yes, students may be told that contemplative practice can reduce stress, but the moment-to-moment experience of practice itself is not about dwelling on ‘stress reduction’ – it is about attending in here. (215)

·         Consider the subtle lesson – the curriculum is a ‘normative map’ that instils the following lesson: you are standing here and now, but there is a better place to be which is there and then. A student cannot assume that moving from math 1 to math 2, or grammar 5 to grammar 8 brings him or her to a better place There is a clear logic to such a claim…it is the hidden meta pedagogy of attention…” (216)

·         Do we ever get a chance to just marvel at the fact that we are here, breathing right now? That at least for a while in here and now, within my body, without needing to go anywhere, might be a right place and time to be at? If our attention is constantly called to where we ought to go, conceived socially as better, we are bound to a troubled life. The image of education as practiced this was instils in us the idea that here and now- the only dwelling place that really exists – is somehow flawed, inferior; in need of betterment. Yet as it seems, we can’t really be anywhere else. (216)

·         In this article…has opened a way for pragmatically coming to terms with the dangers and risks involved in the scientification, secularization, commercialization and commodification of contemplative-based curricular interventions. (217)

o   Appealing to a first-person perspective that grounds education primarily in attention

o   Contributes to a reconstructed education that introduces here and now into our curricular practice

o   (the author has) deep concerns with referring to contemplative practice as a curricular ‘intervention’ (217)

·         …if we start allocating curricular time to activities that ask students to note their breating, thoughts, sensations – their inner workings and the here-ness and now-ness of their existence – we are transforming the social understanding of education and the educated person. (218)