When officials at Bullard Elementary School in Kennesaw, Ga., implemented a meditation mindfulness program recently, they stirred up a hornet’s nest of ignorant blather that is forcing them to severely alter or eliminate a program with nationally proven success in helping teachers deal with classroom behavior and student performance.
Ignorant parents decided that Yoga is a religious practice rather than a relaxation and exercise technique and forced the school to rethink the program. One of the uneducated (about this subject at least) parents said, “Now we can’t pray in our schools or practice Christianity but they are allowing this Far East mystical religion with crystals and chants to be practiced under the guise of stress release meditation,” he wrote. “This is very scary.”
Yup, fear is driven by ignorance. Yoga and mindfulness do not include crystals or religious chanting, and they certainly do not comprise a “mystical religion.”
It is true that in its broadest sense Yoga is a term for religious discipline and practice. But Yoga as practiced in the West has all but eliminated the religious overtones of the practice and turned it into something bland but nonetheless helpful that thousands of schools and businesses across the country are using to great effect.
But not in Kennesaw, Ga. No, sirree, Bob. Down thataway they protect their kids from ideas that are different from their own narrow viewpoints. Hopefully none of their kids will grow up to be as ignorant as they obviously are and then find themselves in positions of power.
This is just silly.