{"id":6266,"date":"2019-06-04T10:25:43","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T10:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bcgwebdesign.co.uk\/tcm\/?p=6266"},"modified":"2025-09-24T21:10:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T21:10:15","slug":"should-meditation-be-compulsory-for-the-school-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachchildrenmeditation.com\/es\/should-meditation-be-compulsory-for-the-school-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"Making meditation part of the school curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I was browsing social media and read the headline ‘should meditation be compulsory in our schools?’<\/p>\n

Now as someone who has taught and campaigned for children and young people to learn meditation and mindfulness for the past 17 years, you think my automatic answer would be a resounding ‘YES’!<\/p>\n

But actually it isn’t…and I’ll tell you why.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You see it’s the word ‘compulsory’ that doesn’t sit comfortably with me.<\/p>\n

That very definition of that word “required by law or a rule; obligatory” takes away choice.\u00a0 And choice is very important<\/strong> when we think about learning and teaching meditation.<\/p>\n

In our Connected Kids programme (where we train up people to teach kids\/teens meditation), we often get enthusiastic people who who are keen to learn the ‘skills’ that will help them teach their children meditation.<\/p>\n

So I ask them a question “do you practice meditation?”<\/p>\n

Sometimes the response is an enthusiastic ‘yes’ and at other times there is the shuffling around, no eye-contact response of ‘I would but i don’t have time’.<\/p>\n

So it’s okay for your kids to learn to reduce anxiety and stress but you aren’t going to practice?<\/p>\n

Or we have people in class who have been meditating for years<\/strong> but their interpretation of meditation is based on their adult experiences with a specific approach or structure that doesn’t lend itself (at first) to any creativity<\/strong> – and in our experience this is a key ingredient if we want to teach kids meditation.<\/p>\n

Let’s just say that it can be a learning curve for the group.\u00a0 But what our connected kids students discover when they start teaching children meditation is how it is a very creative, intuitive process and that requires:<\/p>\n