What do you think of when you hear someone mention a “belief statement”? I think of something you would find on a church website, explaining what the church’s religious beliefs are. And indeed, here, here, and here are three examples of church “belief statements” that I found with a quick search.
Well, you probably didn’t realize this, but, like these churches, Fishers High School has a belief statement of its own. FHS presented what they call the “FHS Belief Statement” to (at least) 9th and 10th graders earlier this year during SEL time:
We, the students and staff of Fishers High School, show pride in one another and demonstrate our character through an appreciation of all people, regardless of ability, age, culture, or religious background, color, sex, or gender identity. We believe a diverse school community prepares us for life in a dynamic world, and we celebrate what unites us and what makes us unique.
This statement is irritating insofar as it talks about appreciating and celebrating “gender identity” as if that’s not an extremely controversial matter in our community, where there are significant disagreements at all levels about what gender identity is and how we should think about it. But aside from this, for a school to have a belief statement at all, as if all the thousands of students and staff at FHS all agree about almost anything of importance, is ridiculous and amounts to gaslighting.
In any case, having a belief statement, irrespective of what the statement says, makes FHS sound like a religious organization. This realization got me wondering if there are other respects in which HSE is like a religion. And it turns out that the answer is yes.
This year, HSE schools are using a program called MindUP to teach children in grades K-8 (note that they are starting in kindergarten) how to engage in a practice that they call “mindfulness meditation.” MindUP is a program that was developed by the Hawn Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that was started by actress Goldie Hawn.
Ms. Hawn, who says she is a “practicing Buddhist”, started the meditation program to help kids with emotional issues in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy twenty years ago (you can read her statement about the program here).
Here’s a MindUP video, narrated by Ms. Hawn, that will give you a sense of what the MindUP program is about:
Ms. Hawn seems like a nice person, and I think that she has a good heart and wants to help kids. I agree with a lot of what she says about her program. I think most of us can see how someone might enjoy the calming effect of a practice like this. Additionally, I want to clearly say that I personally love Buddhists and wish them well.
That said, I am not a Buddhist. Neither are my kids, and neither are most of the kids in HSE schools. Why then is the HSE school district promoting Buddhist religious practices to kids in the public schools without gaining parental permission? Certainly I do not expect the public school to require kids to engage in Christian meditation practices, which differ from Buddhist practices in various respects. Many parents of non-Christian students would obviously find that objectionable. So why should we think it is appropriate to require a bunch of kids, from all different backgrounds but mostly from either Christian or non-religious backgrounds, to engage in a specifically Buddhist approach to meditation, which was designed and promoted by Buddhists like Ms. Hawn? Why, moreover, would they do this without providing parents with clear information about the Buddhist origin of these practices and asking for parental permission?
I’m actually more open minded than some people—and I think probably more open minded than the US Supreme Court!—about incorporating religious practices into the school day. But, if you’re going to do this sort of thing, at the very least you need to proceed carefully, make sure that you clearly tell the truth to parents, and definitely get their consent. Obviously!
Ms. Hawn’s work is a part of the so-called “mindfulness-based stress reduction” (MBSR) movement, which was started in the late 1970s by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn in his book Full Catastrophe Living.
Here is a quote from the book in which Dr. Kabat-Zinn is clear about the Buddhist background of mindfulness meditation practices:
…mindfulness practice comes primarily out of the Buddhist meditative tradition, although it is found in one form or another in all spiritual traditions and practices. Interestingly enough, there is no God in Buddhism, which makes it an unusual religion. Buddhism is really based on reverence for a principle, embodied in a historical person known as the Buddha. As the story goes, someone approached the Buddha, who was considered a great sage and teacher, and asked him, “Are you a god?”, or something to that effect, to which he replied, “No, I am awake.” The essence of mindfulness practice is to work at waking up from the self-imposed half sleep of unawareness in which we are so often immersed. (pp. 364-5)
Mindfulness meditation, then, is rooted in a Buddhist way of looking at the human condition. Additionally, and more troublingly, this movement has at times been intentional about obscuring the connection to Buddhism. Here, for example, is a quote from Professor Kabat-Zinn in a later retrospective on the movement:
…from the beginning of MBSR, I bent over backward to structure it and find ways to speak about it that avoided as much as possible the risk of it being seen as Buddhist, ‘New Age,’ ‘Eastern Mysticism’ or just plain ‘flakey.’ To my mind this was a constant and serious risk that would have undermined our attempts to present it as commonsensical, evidence-based, and ordinary, and ultimately a legitimate element of mainstream medical care. (p. 282)
What he’s saying here is that he wanted to promote a practice that came “primarily out of the Buddhist meditative tradition,” but to do so in a way that “avoided as much as possible the risk of it being seen as Buddhist.” This approach was questionable when the MBSR movement was directed at adults; it is completely unacceptable now that it is being directed at minor children. Nevertheless, HSE has decided to follow the same playbook: they are promoting training in meditation practices that are rooted in Buddhist tradition, but they are doing so in a way that, following Dr. Kabat-Zinn, intentionally obscures the connection to Buddhism. And they are not informing parents or gaining parental permission. This is done in K-8 via the MindUP program, and the same practices are taught as part of the “RULER” lessons being used at the high schools. Moreoever, when I asked FHS Principal Jason Urban about this months ago, he refused to say whether he thought this was a Buddhist meditation practice, and would only refer to it as a “breathing exercise.” This is apparently one more example in which HSE does not tell the truth.
As I said above, I’m pretty open-minded about allowing religious practices on campus. If you want your kids to participate in this sort of meditation exercise, I have no problem with that. My point is about parental authority: parents should be informed and should have a choice about whether their kids are going to participate in this sort of thing, especially parents of kindergarteners! Meditation time should not be mandatory. Otherwise, the district is requiring kids to participate in religious practices which are not their own, without parental permission. That undermines parental authority, and is obviously immoral and unacceptable.