In our education system, we need to include lessons, like those concerning physical hygiene, that focus on mental and emotional hygiene, that teach how to develop a healthy mind. This is the core of what I call secular ethics.
— Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) May 20, 2019
Or do you think they already do it indirectly, and to do it directly would make it easier to keep track of how badly they do it?
Posts
52 comments:
You mean, like China did to Tibet? I know that's not how he means it, but it sounds creepy.
The 14th Dalai Lama needs to get a real job.
We could send our kids to Sunday school.
Why search to find something to replace an already proven practice?
Cease being secular and go to church or synagogue.
secular ethics
Religion is a poeticization of ethics.
Hey, Lama. St. Ignatius Loyola already beat you to it.
And, btw, where's your worldwide network of schools and colleges?
Who is this "we", kemosabe?
Big hitter, the Llama. Long.
Twitter, home of the healthy mind.
Can you say indoctrination? I knew you could.
In California you can no longer suspend students for misbehavior, let alone expel them. Instead you have to explain to them the error of their ways, and convince them to repent and begin acting better.
I knew of a llama named Dolly.
Oh, yes. It is done indirectly. Two of the most common school words are "appropriate" and "inappropriate". What you should do, what you should say, implicitly what you should think.
The Dalai Lama is a nice man, but he is not a careful thinker.
All you have to do is prioritize activities concerning the rearing of children.
It is vital to understand the difference between having children and rearing them.
Our grandkids, 4-9 years of age, lead a blessing before meals, and say prayers before bed.
The simple answer is Boy Scouts. Read the Boy Scout Oath, and Law. The Oath is short, Duty to God and Country, Duty to others, Duty to self.
I agree with earlier poster up thread. Why reinvent the wheel. There are probably other organizations that are faith based but not Church run, I just don't know about them. In short the kids need some activity outside of home, and school, and church, that are not athletic competition.
http://www.usscouts.org/advance/boyscout/bsoathlaw.asp
People have such insane expectations for what the school system can accomplish in the lives of children. If a child has the terrible misfortune of being raised in a pathological family environment, his best chance for long-term success is likely resiliency. Never mind the misfortune of bad genes.
Don't they do this already in places like Japan? Lessons like, Don't write on the walls and the trains.
It's a great sounding idea until you realize who would be implementing it. We used to teach things like proper manners, how to treat others, golden rule, do unto others...etc. It helped young people figure out a bit of how to react to this life. We taught them at home, and they were backed up by similar standards in the schools. And much of it was based in religious teachings, which was not illegal a generation ago. Somehow we lost that along the way. The schools started teaching that what was learned at home was wrong and that they would teach kids the new 'proper' way to think, act, and behave. Things got entirely out of hand when parents at home started deferring to the schools to set the standards for thinking and behavior. There are now no lines drawn at all about how to behave in a civilized world, how to think, how to act.
Though it is a great sounding idea, they'd fuck it up these days because those teaching don't know how to think themselves. So they could not do this without messing things up further. For example, a 'feminist' slant on this approach would be a given. Whatever that would be. Then you'd have to include an LGBTQFI version. And a POC version. And a (fill in the blank) version. In the end there would be arguments about what is personal hygiene.
So, Dalai, what are the axioms of your "secular ethics"?
And how are you gonna deal with those among us who have deplorably dirty thoughts?
Things got entirely out of hand when parents at home started deferring to the schools to set the standards for thinking and behavior.
Yes, we have willingly abdicated our rights to rear our children, to the government. The government is, demonstrably terrible at rearing children. Anything that is a value determination, they will get wrong.
The band T'Pau had a song back in the 80s called "Monkey House" that was all about teaching mental hygiene - by name:
Now we can make or break your mind
With Mental Hygiene
And you will see things in the way we think you should...
Not a good role for government, IMHO.
My hypothesis is that teen suicides and school shootings are like an anaphylactic allergic reaction to peanuts.
The more we try to insulate kids from teasing and bullying, the less prepared they are when it inevitably happens. Then, when it does happen,they have no coping mechanism, so they overreact.
Some of the most worthwhile time I have ever spent has come from practicing forms of Mindfulness, & am priviliged to have worked with teens (back in the '90s) to practice it.
It is a tender and delicate thing, discipline of the highest order, easily crowded out, hard to do in groups, but oh! if in those minutes one can truly "float" in soft attention, InSight burps out, sweet relief and refreshed order within. Sometimes they are a big surprise. Sometimes they help you perceive the opposite of what you have been shaped to believe.
It is hard for me to imagine our schools would be encouraging such reflection, but yeah! if done as body/mind-science calisthenic, the kind our OHSU brain science folks teach for instance, our beloved Tibetan Boddhisattva is right & it would be cool.
To Individual Freedom, salud!
on an earlier thread about ... Forcing CompSci majors to take an improv class is just another example of Progs shitting out nonsense...
I remarked - I'd call this positive. If they would require it of snowflakes even better.
Now Do it for all kids - they can write the scripts for their life about how well they grasp cause and effect - which essentially is secular philosophy and ethics of responsibility.
I'd just settle for kids being taught - and learning - the 3R's....
Better than nothing is almost always too high a standard for unionized public schools.
The problem is the goal of a healthy mind in public education may become ala 1984 “GoodThink”.
Mindfulness is a great tool for mental hygiene.
There is the danger of navel gazing, which is why Buddhism has a philosophy of how you should act.
Changing the system of measurement of the success/failure of schools every few years prevents longer term tracking of their continued failure.
So long as the federal Department of Education is closed and this is all locally accomplished works for me.
What could go wrong?
Some of my best friends (and family) were PS teachers, but not the most impressive ones.
In recent decades, the emphasis has been on "creativity" and "critical thinking." And I can think of fewer people more fit to demonstrate those to others than schoolteachers.
The same would go for whatever the DL defines as secular values. I have mine, I'm sure others have theirs.
Narr
The ladies that slapped my fanny would have spoken of a lack of home learning. And they'd be right.
There can never be such a thing as secular ethics.
Because such a thing can never be founded on, justified by, anything stable.
As for education, especially a moral education, it has to be based on ritual, formulas, repetition and religion.
Too early! "Fewer people LESS fit! LESS."
Narr
Not a morning person
It is metaphysically impossible for public schools to properly teach "...mental and emotional hygiene...". That is the duty of a child's parents.
As ST says, sending your kids to church is a good, time-honored idea.
like our bodies, make sure your brain is washed also
The proper operational model would not be Ignatius Loyola but Jean Baptiste De La Salle, the inventor of public education.
Most problems with public education, other than excessive expectations, come from departures from his system.
If he's referring to techniques of meditation and breathing, for example, that would make a lot of sense. Given his background, I suspect that is what he's suggesting. Seems like a good idea.
Education is brainwashing, it can't be anything but.
No matter the content of the indoctrination, thats what it is.
The romantic notion of the independent mind is a fantasy.
My wife is new to teaching (fourth grade at an accelerated school). She focuses on more than the curriculum. She also sees to their emotional hygiene, depositor my warningsl.
Some parents are grateful because (IMO) that is their job. Others could care less.
Re: Ignorance is Bliss:
The more we try to insulate kids from teasing and bullying, the less prepared they are when it inevitably happens. Then, when it does happen,they have no coping mechanism, so they overreact.
Eh, you can swing too far in the other direction too, though, like Korea and Japan, where the official reaction to bullying is (or was until recently) basically to blame the victim for being unable to get along with his/her peers. I think there's a happy medium between complete laissez-faire and teaching children to tot up and dwell obsessively on every little "micro-aggression."
But the kind of people in the US who would be responsible for teaching "mental and emotional hygiene" today are precisely the kind of monsters who encourage children to tot up and dwell obsessively on every little "micro-aggression," so this seems like a recipe for total societal collapse.
But the kind of people in the US who would be responsible for teaching "mental and emotional hygiene" today are precisely the kind of monsters...
We know exactly the kind of people who would seek to colonize such a project.
like our bodies, make sure your brain is washed also
That comment covers it.
Forcing CompSci majors to take an improv class is just another example of Progs shitting out nonsense...
That’s a common therapy for autistic kids, forcing it on CompSci majors sounds a lot like prejudice bordering on hate. It used to be that there were a few humanities electives to round out an education, but I guess that can’t be directly enough targeted at the desired indoctrination.
I managed to avoid the Dali Lama’s tender ministrations when I went to school, so I’ve got that going for me.
For the classic take on this idea, refer to the Gods of the Copybook Headings (Kipling). Then try to imagine schools today teaching TRVTH as truth, rather than teaching every fact, event, relationship, and decision as if it were purely some oppressor's ruination of various victims.
I think some comments here are too soft even on the perhaps well-intended "mindfulness" aspect. There's some science in the benefits of getting the negative horrors out of your mind by conscientiously focusing differently, but there's a lot of weirdness in common practices and approaches, too. The unfortunate twist, as I see it, is that the mindfulness folks strongly tend to be in the groupthink vs wrongthink camp, and that grid seriously bleeds into definitions of peace (don't disrupt the group, never harsh a mellow) and success (you're okay, he's okay, xir's okay, everyone is good) which defy anyone's experience over time in the real world. Sometimes correcting problems requires actually correcting problems, not just singing kumbaya in a circle or believing in Tinkerbell. Keeping that in mind is good mental and emotional hygiene. Those indoctrinated into alternative nonsense have unhappy, unstable, mental-health-challenged lives, because their cognitive functions can't reconcile the happy horseshiat with reality. Who ya gonna believe, the voices in your head or your lyin' eyes?
One person's contemplation of the sublime is another person's slaking of perverted lusts.
Narr
I got yer mindfulness rahtcheer
I put two sons through K-12 back in the 1990s and shortly thereafter. That's 18 different teachers through eighth grade, plus about 40 teachers between the two sons in high school. The number of teachers that I would regard as having " mental and emotional hygiene" and who were consequently able to "teach how to develop a healthy mind" numbered roughly a dozen.
Blogger stlcdr said...
I'd just settle for kids being taught - and learning - the 3R's....
Thank you. This is what I was thinking.
Just another example of my favorite aphorism, amended by me: Those that can't do, teach. Those that can't teach, administrate. Those that can't administrate, become politicians.
Religion in a universal frame, ethics in a selective frame, or politically congruent in an opportunistic frame. Behavioral protocols in their many manifestations. #PrinciplesMatter
If schools taught Tibetan Buddhism and its ethical precepts, that would be pretty cool, but would probably violate the constitutional prohibition against establishment of religion.
Post a Comment