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Nonsectarian Spiritual Values: Jewels of Human Existence

This article is excerpted from For Goodness’ Sake: Helping Children and Teens Discover Life’s Higher Values, by Nitai Deranja, founder of the first Living Wisdom School, Nevada City, CA.

Nitai Deranja, founder of the first Living Wisdom School
Nitai Deranja, founder of the first Living Wisdom School

It is easy to embrace the idea of nonsectarian spiritual values when we focus on a few key ones: kindness, courage, willingness, self-control, honesty. Who could disagree with the importance of these values or attribute them exclusively to any one religion?

In the joy we feel in helping others, the sense of satisfaction that comes from doing our best, and the peace of mind that results from telling the truth, we experience how much these values improve the quality of life.

As our world grows closer together, we can readily see that these values are part of everyone’s heritage, regardless of religious background, and offer a basis for emphasizing the oneness of the human race. On an individual level, they contribute mightily to a sense of self-worth.

A transforming experience

During my eighth-grade year, I had a chance to experience the transforming effects of one such value: compassion. The end of the school year was approaching but, due to heavy rains, my friends and I couldn’t use the playground. So we began to meet in the boys’ bathroom, a place of relative freedom in a Catholic school run by women.

In our advanced state of boredom, we started matching pennies, a game in which two people flip coins, with the winner keeping both pennies. Soon we were smuggling dice, cards, and poker chips into school. Inevitably, we were discovered and marched to the principal’s office.

After being chastised, we were punished with the loss of two weeks’ lunch recess. Our classroom teacher, Sister St. John, was assigned to supervise our punishment. Since this meant giving up her precious midday break, we expected the worst: sitting in silence for two weeks; writing, “I will not gamble” five thousand times.

Compassion and good will

To our astonishment, Sister said we had the choice of going through some unspecified eighth grade equivalent of “hell,” or something “better.” She then handed out copies of Pitch Black and the Seven Giants, a play with a “reforming” message. We readily chose the play, and thus began two highly enjoyable weeks of rehearsals, capped by a performance for our class.

My friends and I were stunned. What had happened to the punishment? The sense of guilt and shame? The end result was that Sister’s compassion and goodwill succeeded beautifully in lifting us out of a rather dark and negative state of mind.

The experience affected me deeply, and I absorbed the seed-thought that there might be other motivations for being good than fear of punishment.

A Master is not sectarian

This seed began to sprout with my involvement in the first Ananda Living Wisdom School in 1972, which was envisioned as spiritual, non-sectarian, and open to all. But I wondered: “What did ‘non-sectarian’ mean?” My own parochial school experience had left me so distrustful of spiritual indoctrination that I hesitated to share even the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda with the children.

When I took this dilemma to Swami Kriyananda, his answer was brief and to the point: “Nitai, what could be more nonsectarian than a master?” Soon after, I came across an important article by Yogananda:

Educational authorities deem it impossible to teach spiritual principles in public schools because they confuse them with the variety of conflicting forms of religious faiths. But if they concentrate on the universal principles of peace, love, service, tolerance and faith that govern the spiritual life, and devise methods of practically growing such seeds in the fertile soil of the child’s mind, then the imaginary difficulty is dissolved.

Encouraged, I began having classroom discussions on such values as honesty, kindness, and cooperation. We also read books about people who demonstrated these qualities in their lives. The students were developing a good intellectual understanding of the concepts, but, unfortunately, their behavior remained unaffected.

Then a remarkable thing happened. One morning it snowed.

Snow is unusual at Ananda, and I’d have been a complete ogre not to go along with the children’s pleas for a special recess. I stayed inside watching from the window, enjoying the exuberance of their play. However, in a few minutes there was an inadvertent shove, then a wayward snowball, and the whole class was angry with one another. I rang the bell and called the students in.

An impromptu swearing-in ceremony

After a calming-down period, we sat on the carpet for a discussion circle. We had previously been discussing the quality of cooperation, so I said: “Anyone who wants to go back out will have to take a pledge to practice cooperation. If you behave otherwise, you’ll have to come back in.”

We had an impromptu swearing-in ceremony as the students solemnly pledged to cooperate with one another. Back in the playground, there were a few nervous glances in my direction and some overly polite interactions, but gradually everyone settled into wholesome, cooperative play.

Later, when I asked the children which recess they had enjoyed more, every hand quickly went up in favor of the second one. Everyone agreed that the practice of cooperation had made all the difference. If I had any doubts about the power of this incident, they evaporated as I watched the children maintain their cooperation over the ensuing months.

Feeling the effects of behavior

Here was the alternative I had been searching for. First with Sister St. John I had witnessed the transforming effects of her compassion. Now my students had discovered how the quality of cooperation could make their recesses more enjoyable. Clearly, it was direct, personal experience that made it possible for children to appreciate why they should incorporate positive values into daily life.

I began using games, role-playing, and other activities to help them gain their own experience of the different values-to enable them to feel the effects of positive and negative types of behavior. This was the beginning of a non-sectarian, spiritual foundation for the school.

A “service adventure” to Mexico

The humorist P. G. Wodehouse wrote, “There is always a fly in the ointment, a caterpillar in the salad.” In our school the “caterpillar” was puberty.

As the children reached the teenage years, a different approach was needed as restlessness and boredom began to threaten the foundation of good character developed in their younger years. No longer was it enough to learn about values within the confines of the school campus; teens needed more challenging scenarios.

The solution was “service-adventures,” the first of which took us to a Mexican orphanage where the students spent two weeks immersed in a lifestyle completely foreign to them. This new context provided many opportunities for them to renew their appreciation for such qualities as calmness, kindness, and truthfulness. As the trip progressed, their better qualities again began to shine forth.

When we returned, the students had changed in lasting ways. They were more accepting of younger children, more open to adults, and less competitive with one another. With the haze of discontent lifted, here again were the young people I had watched grow up as cheerful, exuberant children. (And who later matured into thoughtful, responsible young adults).

The turbulence of restlessness

For most children, the greatest obstacle to the discovery of values is restlessness. Restlessness can be caused by emotional trauma or an unhealthy diet. But the most common problem is over-stimulation from too much exposure to videos, computer games, music, and TV.

Helping children calm the turbulence of their bodies and minds enables them to develop the sensitivity necessary for an appreciation of values. With children (and adults) the best tools for achieving this are yoga, meditation, and introspection.

One experience stands out in my mind. I was leading a group of teens through a series of calming yoga exercises. One girl, however (the most restless person in the class), seemed untouched by the practices. To help her, I came up with a little experiment.

At the end of the next session, I asked everyone to remain on the floor while I came around to test each one by gently moving an arm or leg. I explained that the flexibility or limpness of a limb would be a good indicator of the student’s level of relaxation.

As I made my way around the room, all the students were relaxed until I came to the girl. When I lifted her leg slightly and then released it, it remained suspended in the air! Somehow she’d never connected the concept of relaxation with a physical sensation. With a little extra help, she finally got the idea.

The words “fairly shine”

Non-sectarian spiritual values are the jewels of human existence-Cheerfulness. Forgiveness. Courage. Even-mindedness. Concentration. Patience. Integrity. Sensitivity. Trust. Cooperation. Sincerity. Will Power. Peace. Compassion. Self-Control. Enthusiasm. Honesty. Love. Joy. The words fairly shine on the printed page.

Working with children has enhanced my appreciation of how these values improve the quality of life for both adults and children. How can anyone overcome difficulties on the job without perseverance? How can parents respond effectively to the needs of their children without empathy? How can a person stay out of debt without self-discipline?

Just as it is crucial to understand the laws of gravity and acceleration before one can become an engineer, so also is it essential to develop qualities like cooperation, cheerfulness, and concentration before one can hope to find success and fulfillment in life. Indeed, these are the qualities that enable one to meet life’s countless challenges.

Mothering Magazine Praises Living Wisdom School

School Shooters: The Message They Bring

by George Beinhorn

(This article appeared in Mothering magazine, Nov./Dec. 2001, published as “School Shooters: The Importance of Teaching Values”)

I arrived at San Manuel High School on a spring morning in 1958 to a scene of tragedy. Girls were crying; boys were talking in small groups. A beautiful, quiet Mexican-American girl had just been shot by a student who’d been playing with a rifle in his car when the gun accidentally discharged.

The sadness of the event was beyond measure. The boyfriend’s struggle to hold back tears at the girl’s funeral was heart-rending, as was his face-to-face forgiveness of the boy who’d killed her. For weeks, our stomachs were hollow with “whys?” The girl’s quiet sweetness lingered under an uncertain heaven.

Mothering magazine article title page

As I look back 43 years later, what strikes me is that nothing in our education had even remotely prepared us to deal with the event. Our teachers not only didn’t discuss it with us, but they appeared to be entirely uninterested in the questions it posed regarding the ultimate meaning of life. But for me, these questions seemed vital. Returning to the normal routine of English, math, history, and P.E., I secretly questioned the worth of an education that proved so flimsy when life intruded violently upon our hearts.

Return to 1999. A cartoon shows two worried adults talking outside Columbine High. One says, “Why didn’t God prevent this?” The other says, “Maybe He would have, but they wouldn’t let him into high school.”

Sir Kenneth Clark, the late cultural historian and author of the book and film, Civilisation, pointed out that the source of moral values in all societies has always been religion. Yet nowadays, it seems barely acceptable to talk about values in our public schools, far less spirituality, lest we trample private sensibilities. But if mass murder committed by school children isn’t about values and questions of ultimate meaning–what is?

In the wake of Littleton, no philosopher, no clergyperson, no senator, no academic or talk-show host came even remotely close to offering credible suggestions for “dealing with teenage violence,” much less understanding it. We seem to be no further down the road than we were 40 years ago.

And yet, values play a central role in every choice we make. We choose an ice cream flavor based on our personal scale of values: chocolate is a 10; strawberry perhaps a 4. And if our values are really and truly skewed, we may attempt to resolve our frustrations by picking up a gun and sending bullets ripping through the flesh of our classmates, convinced that human life matters less than the promise of satisfying some blinding, twisted personal need.

Whose Values?

If values are this important, surely we owe it to our children to teach them to make expansive, happy choices, even as “primitive” cultures have always done.

The standard reply–frequently offered in smug, bellicose tones–is: “You’re gonna teach my kid values? First you better tell me whose values you’re gonna teach!” As if there were Black, Hawaiian, Serbian, Gay, Episcopalian, or Lower Slobovian values. There aren’t. Certainly, every culture has its teaching stories and holy scriptures, but the themes of morality are the same everywhere: honesty, love, courage, honor, fortitude, and kindness.

That’s because values are based on the way we’re wired. Whether our skins are black, brown, white or yellow, and whether our temples have crosses, stars, or purple onions on them, we’ve all been given the same five instruments through which we can interact with the world: our body, feelings, will, mind, and soul. These instruments don’t have race, gender, politics, or religion attached to them, and they’re standard equipment worldwide. Whether we experience health or sickness, love or hatred, strength or weakness, wisdom or ignorance, joy or sorrow depends entirely on whether we apply these common, ordinary human tools expansively or contractively.

We are nourished–or poisoned–by the thoughts, feelings, and volitions that we allow to flow through us. This is no longer a debatable point of religious dogma, but hard science. We now know that our feelings and thoughts positively or negatively affect every cell of our bodies, thanks to chemicals known as neuropeptides, which their discoverer, Candace Pert, Ph.D., described in her best-selling book Molecules of Emotion.

Values and Academic Success

Isn’t it a little strange that we don’t bother to teach children how they can reap the fruits of using their bodies, hearts, and wills wisely–fruits of health, love, strength, wisdom, and joy? And that we fill their time at school instead by cramming their heads with facts?

Why have we failed so utterly to pass along the gathered wisdom of our common human heritage, in a manner that inspires children with the joyful possibilities of life and a sense of their intrinsic worth? Why? Because we’d just as soon avoid stepping on each other’s toes. Welcome to the culture of 10,000 special interests. But how does it conceivably contradict the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud, or the Bhagavad Gita to teach kids “Thou shalt not kill” in ways that permit the lesson to enter deeply into their hearts, and not merely their minds?

During the 1980s, I interviewed the teachers at a small private school near Nevada City, California, where values were strongly emphasized. Values were particularly stressed at Living Wisdom School during the “feeling years” from age 6 to 12. The teachers told me this was because values are more a question of the heart than of the mind. Even as presumably rational adults, we tend to decide whether something is right or wrong, not by actually thinking through the issues, but by feeling their rightness or wrongness.

Several years ago, PBS aired a series of documentary films on public schools where values were stressed. At one school, the teachers involved the children in model civic government. At another, the kids created their own small businesses, learning that honesty, perseverance, and kindness pay off with financial rewards. The successes were inspiring, but the approaches seemed one-sided. For one thing, no mention was made of the children who weren’t motivated by civic participation or monetary gain. What about the kids whose primary leaning was artistic, athletic, scientific, or mechanical? Surely, they could be taught values, too. (Possibly, a small fraction of them are even now wearing trench coats.)

At Living Wisdom School, the staff taught values without resorting to sectarian dogma or secular gimmickry. Moral lessons were drawn very simply from daily life. For example, a spring storm dropped a foot of snow in the schoolyard, and during recess, the children started a snowball fight in which some of the younger children were hurt and began crying. Later, they got together and built a snowman. On returning to the classroom, the teachers asked them: “How did you enjoy the snowball fight?”

“I didn’t like it. I got hit by a snowball, and I cried.”

“Yeah, and I felt bad watching the little kids cry.”

The teachers then asked how the children had enjoyed building a snowman together.

“Oh, that was fun!”

“Yeah, we worked together and nobody got hurt. We all laughed and had a good time!”

I ask you. How does it contradict Christian, Black, Islamic, or Eskimo values to help children become more acutely aware of the contrast between the way kind and hurtful actions feel? When children harm others, their hearts feel constricted, even as our adult hearts do. And when they perform loving or creative actions, they feel empowered, and their hearts expand with happiness.

I find it effortless to imagine the same lessons being taught in Christian, Black, Buddhist, or Jewish schools. And if the teacher wants to emphasize that Jesus, Buddha, Moses, or the Prophet expressed those same lessons using inspiringly beautiful words a long time ago, so much the better for the child. How much more alive and loving would Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed become to the children, and how much would it strengthen those lessons–and their faith–to have their own experiences validated in such memorable and uplifting terms.

Is it such a great leap from kindness learned in a snowball fight, to kindness learned through the scriptures?

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 22:37-39)

How beautiful, because how true. The scriptures are a priceless catalog of values that work. Which is to say, they simply remind us of what our hearts tell us about the path to true fulfillment.

Why do we labor so hard to fill children’s brains, but seldom bother to educate their hearts? Because, among our other concerns, we fear that if we take time to teach values, we’ll jeopardize their chances of earning a good living later on in life. But surely it’s time we got real. Surely we’ve received a loud and clear wake-up call from Paducah, Jonesboro, Springfield, Littleton, Conyers, Santee, and El Cajon. Shouldn’t we instead consider the risks involved in not teaching values? Will children who are deprived of all sense of life’s joyous possibilities be more likely to want to earn a good living, or will they feel profoundly betrayed and lash out in rebellious anger? The answer, surely, is no longer in doubt.

For 30 years, the children at Living Wisdom Schoolhave scored consistently above the national average on standardized tests of academic achievement. The teachers say this is because of, and not despite, their values-weighted education. “Children who learn to love,” they told me, “love learning.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the school calls its method “Education for Life,” after the title of a book by J. Donald Walters.

A child whose heart has been guided into sensitive awareness of how much better it feels to love than to hate is less likely to mow down his classmates in a doomed attempt to alleviate feelings of alienation, hopelessness, and terminal boredom. Values have the power to change hearts and save lives.

What children don’t need in this fact-mongering age of materialistic heartlessness is our hand-wringing, our political dithering, our finger-pointing, and our talk-show blathering, far less our special pleading based on religion and ethnicity. Children need our love, our wisdom, and our energetic, committed care. It might take generations to swing the weight of the educational establishment around. But with creativity, energy, and cooperation, we can begin to save our children right now–town by town,block by block, home by home.

George Beinhorn is a writer and editor in Mountain View, California. He is the author of the book Fitness Intuition. The complete book, Education for Life, is now available for reading or printing online.

Read the sidebar that accompanied this article as published in Mothering: “The Human Brain: Wired for Values?”


A Teacher’s Suggestions for Choosing the Right School

by Robert Freeman, public school teacher and private school parent

Robert Freeman, history and economics teacher, Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, California
Robert Freeman, history and economics teacher, Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, California

Robert Freeman, history and economics teacher, Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District, California

 

Choosing the right school for your child may be one of the most important choices you will ever make for his or her future. It is surprising, therefore, that so few tools are available to help.

Many parents simply cede the decision to convenience or cost: they send their child to the local public school. And, in most cases, this is more than adequate. Ritualized hysteria notwithstanding, most of our public schools are very good.

However, for parents who choose not to go with their local public school, deciding on a private school can be confusing or even overwhelming.

As a public school teacher with two children in private school, I believe there is a fairly simple method for determining which school is right for your child.

I call it “The Embodiment Test.”

The Embodiment Test directs that you should choose the school that best “embodies” those character traits you want your children to develop.

Its efficacy rests on three foundations.

First, character is more important than knowledge in determining the ultimate success of your child.

Second, character cannot be conveyed by teaching, only by modeling.

And third, once character is set, it is very difficult to change.

Let’s look at these foundations and how they play out in choosing a school.

Most parents will readily understand the idea that character is more important than knowledge. It is character that parents are inculcating when they remind their child, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But while multiplication tables always fall to mechanical repetition, developing character is not nearly so easy or routine. This is why nobility of character is so much more rare – and prized – than is mere mathematical dexterity.

A child with strong character – embracing honesty, discipline, compassion, perseverance, and self respect – will find the way to whatever knowledge he or she desires or needs. The reverse, unfortunately, is not necessarily true: knowledge without character is at best impotent, and at worst, malevolent.

The second foundation is equally important: character cannot be conveyed by teaching alone (though it can be reinforced). It can only be conveyed by “modeling.” It is not what I say that speaks to the child, it is what I do.

This is the same as in parenting, isn’t it? If I am an engaged teacher, interested in each student’s welfare, curious about the world, passionate about my subject, and embodying integrity and dignity in all of my actions, the children will see it. They will know it, they will esteem it, and they will do all they can to emulate it. It is not so much what I teach that they learn, it is what I am.

Once set, character is difficult to change. This increases the urgency of the other two rules. Weak or conflicted character becomes its own worst enemy. Rather than searching within him- or herself for the solution to difficulties, the child with weak character will blame the world.

With these foundations, how should parents apply them to evaluating a school for their children? At this point, the process is fairly simple, though not necessarily easy. First, decide on what kind of character traits you want your children to develop. Then, look to see how different schools actually “embody” these traits–how they manifest in the behavior of teachers, administrators, students, and parents.

Observe the teachers for more than just a few minutes. Spend a few hours.

Look beneath credentials and degrees. Do they embody the kind of character you want your child to be tutored in? Do they honor the individuality of each child? Are they truly passionate about teaching – holding it as a calling? And is their passion reinforced in the larger context of a guiding philosophy, administration, and community?

Talk with parents who have children at the school. Why did they choose this school? What is working for them and their children? What is not? What is it like to work with the administration? Are they the kind of people you want to work with on a PTA committee? That is, as parents, do they embody values and aspirations for their children that are similar to yours? This is important.

And, of course, observe the students. Are they happy (not just playful) on the playground? Do they appear to be able to resolve problems on their own? Do they show confidence in expressing their individuality? Do they exhibit competence in the classroom – no matter what grade they’re in? Do they show patience in their studies – the certainty, borne first of faith and only later of experience, that the world will yield rewards for their diligent explorations?

These are the true tests of a school: does it help you deliver the kind of “whole” child you’ve intended to raise? For, make no mistake, it really does “take a village” – an entire school – to educate a child well. And it is only a “whole” child that is happy, successful, and fulfilled.

Information? Knowledge? Intellect? These are, of course, critical in today’s competitive world. No sane parent or teacher would overlook them. But they are actually the easiest things to teach and measure. It is the deeper elements of character that are more elusive, harder to cultivate: How do you discern good Information from bad? What knowledge is it you aspire to? How do you use intellect wisely?

It is these components of a good education that will stand the test of time. These will enable your child to adapt to the tumultuous, frenetically changing world that we live in. These are the foundations of true happiness, of true attainment, of true meaning for a life lived well.

Private schools are private businesses. They all want your patronage. Most have genuinely good intentions for your children, and most are genuinely able to impart the basics of a good education. But all of them embody the elements of character in different measures and proportions. This is precisely their virtue, their strength, and their appeal to demanding parents and deserving children.

Know what is really important to you. Know how to find it. Maintain your own high standards. And your children will do well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why educating children’s hearts improves their academic results

Does working with children’s feelings improve their academic performance?

Research supports a core tenet of Living Wisdom School – that “children who learn to love, love learning.”

Scientists at the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) in Boulder Creek, California are studying the effects of positive feelings such as love, compassion, and kindness on our bodies and brains. Their findings suggest that mental performance improves in the presence of positive feelings.

Here are some of the IHM findings:

  • Deliberately focusing attention in the heart while cultivating feelings of love, compassion, etc., leads to clearer thinking, calmer emotions, and improved physical performance and health.
  • Positive feelings quiet the mind, generate a sense of “self-security, peace and love,” and increase the frequency of reported feelings of “connectedness to God.”
  • Negative emotions such as anger, fear, and hatred make the heart change speeds erratically. The heartbeat literally speeds up and slows down chaotically between beats, like the random, jerky motion of a car that’s running out of gas. In the figure below, the charts on the left show graphs of heart rate variability during positive, negative, and neutral emotions. The figures on the right show the heart’s electrical power output (PSD: power spectral density). Note that the heart’s power output is approximately 380 percent higher during feelings of appreciation than during simple relaxation.

Chart showing heart rate variability in positive and negative emotions (courtesy of Heartmath Institute)

  • The heart and brain communicate continually through the nervous system; thus, the heart’s powerful positive or negative, harmonizing or disruptive messages are carried instantly to the brain, where they enhance or interfere with our ability to focus and remain cool. (The heart is the body’s most powerful oscillator, emitting electrical signals roughly 60 times stronger than those generated by the brain.)

To summarize: positive, harmonious feelings enhance mental focus, calmness, health, performance, and the frequency of spiritual feelings. They increase relaxation, alpha-wave output in the brain (associated with a calm, meditative state), and synchronize heart-rhythm patterns, respiratory rhythms, and blood pressure oscillations.

Whether our goal is peak performance in the classroom, in sports, or at work, it’s clear that cultivating positive feelings facilitates success.

Feeling and Reason: Opposites No Longer

Additional evidence suggests that feeling and reason work together, and that one without the other isn’t trustworthy.

Roughly 70 years ago, researchers first became aware that the prefrontal cortex of the brain is the area where important human qualities are localized, such as concentration positive attitudes, optimism, and the ability to form goals and persevere in attaining them.

The prefrontal cortex is also the “control center” where raw emotions are restrained and modulated. In a number of spiritual paths, the primary meditative practices include holding attention gently in the prefrontal cortex, at the point between the eyebrows, a technique these traditions claim has a harmonizing effect on the emotions, and calms and focuses the mind.

In his bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence, New York Times science reporter Daniel Goleman writes:

R. Luria, the brilliant Russian neuropsychologist, proposed as long ago as the 1930s that the prefrontal cortex was key for self-control and constraining emotional outbursts; patients who had damage to this area, he noted, were impulsive and prone to flare-ups of fear and anger. And a study of two dozen men and women who had been convicted of impulsive, heat-of-passion murders found, using PET scans for brain imaging, that they had a much lower than usual level of activity in these same sections of the prefrontal cortex. (Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1995. p. 314)

Richard J. Davidson, PhD, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, found that university students who had higher levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex had better grades, a better ability to create and attain goals, and less trouble with depression, drugs, and alcohol.

In 2002, scientists at Duke University used brain scans to verify that raw emotions interfere with concentration. A surprising finding was that mental focus and unrefined emotions exist in a mutually exclusive relationship. That is, not only does raw emotion distort our ability to focus, but deliberately focusing attention is an effective way to calm and “neutralize” disruptive emotions. As the Duke news release stated, “Surprisingly, an increase in one type of function is accompanied by a noticeable decrease in the other.” Athletes know that an effective way to calm the “pre-event jitters” is to focus deliberately on the details of preparation: tying shoelaces, mentally reviewing the race plan, etc.

“We’ve known for a long time that some people are more easily distracted and that emotions can play a big part in this,” said Kevin S. LaBarr, assistant professor at Duke’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and an author of the [above-mentioned] study. “Our study shows that two streams of processing take place in the brain, with attentional tasks and emotions moving in parallel before finally coming together.” The two streams are integrated in a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate, which is located between the right and left halves of the brain’s frontal portion and is involved in a wide range of thought processes and emotional responses.1

People who meditate find that holding attention persistently but with relaxation in the area of the anterior cingulate (at the point between the eyebrows) more or less automatically soothes any troubling emotions they might be feeling, and helps them become more calm, positive, and concentrated.

Raw, reactive emotions have a very different mental and physiological impact than calm, positive feelings. At Living Wisdom School, the children are encouraged to be honest about their feelings, but they are also taught ways to transmute negative feelings into positive ones.

For example, one technique involves deliberately focusing attention as a way to calm upset emotions, which can lead to painful disharmony and poor academic performance. As an aid to concentration, the children learn a simple meditation technique borrowed from yoga, which involves holding attention gently in the prefrontal cortex, as a way to help the mind become relaxed and one-pointed – an asset for children who want to be happy and do well in school.

Reason is Crippled Without Feeling

As noted above, researchers now know that feeling and reason work hand in hand. Contrary to a longstanding prejudice of western culture, which assumes that reason is the superior faculty, researchers have found that reason is deeply compromised unless it is balanced by the feelings of the heart.

Consider…the role of emotions in even the most “rational” decision-making. In work with far-reaching implications for understanding mental life, Dr. Antonio Damasio, a neurologist at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, has made careful studies of just what is impaired in patients with damage to the prefrontal/amygdala circuit [the link between the two most important reasoning and emotional centers in the brain]. Their decision making is terribly flawed – and yet they show no deterioration at all in IQ or any cognitive ability. Despite their intact intelligence, they make disastrous choices in business and their personal lives, and can even obsess endlessly over a decision so simple as when to make an appointment. Dr. Damasio believes their decisions are so bad because they have lost access to their emotional learning…. Cut off from emotional memory in the amygdala, whatever the neocortex mulls over no longer triggers the emotional reactions that have been associated with it in the past – everything takes on a gray neutrality…. Evidence like this leads Dr. Damasio to the counter-intuitive position that feelings are typically indispensable for rational decisions; they point us in the proper direction, where dry logic can then be of best use.2

Positive Feelings and Classroom Success

How closely do positive feelings correlate with academic performance? Public school students who were taught HeartMath methods for harmonizing the heart’s feelings experienced uniform improvement in their academic performance. (These studies are summarized on the HeartMath website [www.heartmath.org], in an article by Rollin McCraty, PhD, The Scientific Role of the Heart in Learning and Performance.At the conclusion of a study of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in Miami, Florida, the researchers reported:

Results showed that students who learned and practiced the [heart-harmonizing methods] exhibited significant improvements in nearly all areas of psychosocial functioning assessed, including stress and anger management, self-reliance, risky behavior, work management and focus, and relationships with teachers, family and peers …. Further, a follow-up analysis indicated that many of these improvements were sustained over the following six months.4

In summary, the Heartmath research suggests that teaching students how to cultivate positive feelings increases their nervous system harmony, thereby improving emotional stability, cognitive functioning, and academic performance.

In a New York Times op-ed article, columnist David Brooks remarks:

It’s crazy to have educational policies that, in effect, chop up children’s brains into the rational cortex, which the government ministers to in schools, and the emotional limbic system, which the government ignores. In nature there is no neat division. Emotional engagement is the essence of information processing and learning.5

The results of these studies come as no surprise to the teachers at Living Wisdom School, where students have learned techniques for harmonizing the heart for more than 30 years. Asked whether the emphasis on developing children’s feelings detracts from their academic performance, school director emeritus Helen Purcell points to the results: the students score consistently above average on standardized tests of academic achievement. (Helen Purcell served as director of Living Wisdom School for more than 30 years. She retired in 2024.)

“Some parents say, ‘I’m going to let my child attend this magical school, and after three years I’ll pull him out and put him in a real school,’” Helen says. “But I tell them, ‘The children who’ve gone all the way through Living Wisdom School have done very well – not just in public high schools but in highly rated college prep schools. And they thrive not only academically, but personally as well.’”

1 Duke University press release, August 19, 2002

2 Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1997. pp. 27-28.

3 http://www.heartmath.org/education/scientific-role-of-heart-in-learning-performance.html

4 McCraty R, Atkinson M, Tomasino D, Goelitz J, Mayrovitz HN. The impact of an emotional self-management skills course on psychosocial functioning and autonomic recovery to stress in middle school children. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science 1999;34(4):246-268.

5 http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per

 


Ten Questions: 10. Are You Truly Nonsectarian?

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What about the spiritual aspects of Living Wisdom School? Is the instruction truly nonsectarian?

Helen: Parents generally accept that we are nonsectarian, but what they often wonder is how we do it. How do we infuse the school culture with spirituality, without being sectarian?

Children meditating at Living Wisdom School in Palo Alto, California
Students at Living Wisdom School learn non-sectarian, scientific breathing and concentration techniques for calming their bodies and minds and focusing attention. (Click to enlarge.)

We’re sharing principles and direct experience, rather than rules, and suspending the kind of judgments that come with dogma. It doesn’t leave room for the punitive to come in, which is so much a part of a dogmatic structure — you did it or you didn’t, and if you did or didn’t, you’ll go to hell.

Here at Living Wisdom, it’s “Oh, look at my direction. Look at how far I’ve come, and look at the successes I’ve had along the way. And I can do even better, so let’s keep going.” It’s a deeply spiritual attitude that most parents would want for their child, because they would want the child to “choose happiness.”

If an adult tries to “practice kindness” and “choose happiness,” they discover that it isn’t easy. But those rules are the basis for our school: “Practice Kindness,” and “Choose Happiness.”

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Ten Questions: 8. What About Math?

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Parents are concerned that their child get a good education in math and science. Does math strike more directly toward the intellect, and require different teaching methods?

Math team teacher Gary McSweeney helps a student understand a concept at Living Wisdom School in Palo Alto, California
Individual instruction means every LWS student graduates with a strong grasp of math concepts. At LWS, we don’t merely “teach to the test.” (Click to enlarge.)

Helen: It’s a great strength of the school that we can individualize instruction. It would be much harder with a class of 25-35 students. It’s a question parents often ask — how do you meet the needs of children who are academically different? In math especially, if a child has a talent, they can go as far and fast as they want in our school, as long as they show mastery. But we can still keep them with their social group.

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