Meditation & Education

Meditation & Education

Introduction

Students pursuing higher education often experience stressful encounters. Course material demands utmost concentration, especially for students enrolled on a full-time basis. Social pressures, combined with academic challenges, makes pursuing higher education stressful. Resultantly, students take great efforts in trying to cope with the stressful conditions arising from schoolwork. Mastering concepts is one of the common techniques that students use in a bid to pass assessment tests. This essay argues that meditation can greatly help students to calmly handle stressful situations. Meditation brings the much-needed comprehension and concentration of concepts required while studying, resulting in more significant achievements.

Explication

Emerging research in neuroscience, psychology, and education indicates that teaching meditation in schools positively impacts students’ academic and social skills as well as their well-being. A meta-review of the effect of meditation in schools integrated the findings from 15 studies and close to 1800 students from different regions globally. The research indicates meditation bears various benefits and results in three general outcomes for students, including improved academic skills, advanced social skills as well as better well-being (Patil, 2018). Teaching meditation at schools led to students reporting improved positive emotions and higher optimism. Furthermore, learning meditation led to students experiencing less anxiety, depression, and stress in comparison to before enrolling in the meditation programs. Through meditation, students are able to improve on several learning and academic skills such as faster information processing, improved focus, enhanced creativity as well as cognitive flexibility, and a more effective functioning memory.

Universities and colleges recognize developing critical thinking skills as a key goal for their students in the classroom and beyond. A survey of over 400 institutions of higher learning shows that close to 90 percent of the chief academic officers recognize critical thinking among the essential skills for students. Critical thinking involves applying unique cognitive skills such as analyzing, evaluating, and inference skills in a meaningful, reasoned, and goal-oriented manner. New bodies of research are emerging that show the positive relationship between meditation, self-regulation, and executive functioning (Mai, 2016). Meditation enables effective critical thinking and concentration as it is linked to better self-regulation.

In addition, meditation is identified to present one with a contrasting view of the world in a more profound sense and manner, bringing to perspective all components of life, thereby enhancing learning capabilities.  Meditation is a process characterized by two core components; present-moment attentional focus integrated with the non-reactive observation of one’s current experiences (Ho-Hoi Ching, 2015). Meditation is well known to facilitate various types of higher-order cognition, such as insight problem-solving as well as ethical decision making.

Main Argument

In a tertiary educational institution such as colleges where the burden placed on students is formed on the basis of time limit and challenges in performing in examinations, students are predisposed to stress. A strong link is seen between stressful life events and diminished academic performance among college students. Stress is one of the core health factors that affect students’ academic performance as it impacts both their psychological and physical wellness (Patil, 2018).  In most cases, students are passive receptors of information. However, the practice of self-composure and critical thinking that prompts meditation acts as a guide to students in filtering through the information and not merely just accepting it.  The ability of an individual to be immersed in their thoughts means that students can think critically when developing solutions to complex academic problems. Questioning forms part of critical thinking, which is essential for students to learn to develop a critical thinking mindset. By thinking critically, students are able to advance in the fields they are learning. Students who embrace meditation can view things differently in the academic world, thus becoming better learners with the ability to innovate and create both in their academic and proficient lives (Virginia Lemay, 2019).  Students who are able to apply critical thinking can use their advanced thinking skills as a guide by which they follow their lives.

Responses to Objections

Despite meditation being an ancient practice done by different communities over the years, scientific studies into the impacts of meditation education are still a new thing. Detractors claim that meditation ought not to be introduced in learning institutions until its long-term benefits are established. These critics find meditation to be a diverse style to academics and students, which could drift their thoughts away from the academic context (Buchanan, 2017). Meditation seems to have students’ thoughts lean more to the outside world, which critics claim could affect the students’ career build-up, especially the ones accustomed to the conventional societal approach to the subject of education. Indeed, there is a limit in the research analyzing the real-world cognitive outcomes of meditation. Also, the link between dispositional meditation and critical thinking is yet to be fully examined. Also, critics express concerns as to how meditation will be fused into the current over-whelming curriculum.

The concerns surrounding meditation as a viable practice to improving students’ academic performance are not as problematic to the benefits realized from the same. Scientific research involving meditation over the last three decades exists, which shows its long-term advantages on adults’ brain functioning as well as their well-being.  The brains of young individuals are significantly more responsive to alteration through experience in comparison to an adult brain (Ho-Hoi Ching, 2015). Therefore, the long term benefits of meditation are likely to have more impacts on school students than adults. Furthermore, the positive evidence available pointing out the benefits of meditation to students’ performance academically and beyond has led to more students and instructors to find time for meditation in their teaching or learning strategy. Meditation does not draw a student’s mind away from achieving a particular career objective. Meditation instead presents the student with an entirely new perspective and view of the world in a manner likely to develop one’s professional build up.

Conclusion

College and university life is stressful for students as they face academic pressures and anxiety as they anticipate life after school. In addition, social pressures that the students experience to contribute to the students’ rising stress levels and depressive moods. With such challenges, effectively learning becomes a problem, and students are forced to memorize course material to pass exams and tests. Through meditation, students’ focus improves, which in turn enhances their concentration on any task they perform. Meditation allows the students to develop a patient and calm personality as well as critical thinking skills, which are key tools for individual growth, both academically and beyond. Meditation is most likely to present greater benefits to students in higher learning institutions by allowing them to create a holistic view of the academic world, thereby enabling them to enhance creativity, thus growing their professional careers in the long run.

Bibliography

Buchanan, T. K. (2017). Mindfulness and Meditation in education. National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), 69-74. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/90013688

Ho-Hoi Ching et al. (2015). Effects of a Mindfulness Meditation Course on Learning and Cognitive Performance among University Students in Taiwan. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Retrieved from https://dx.doi: 10.1155/2015/254358

Mai. J. W. (2016). Impact of mindfulness meditation intervention on academic performance. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 366-375. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2016.1231617

Patil, N. (2018). Benefits of Meditation for Students. The Knowledge Review: Education Innovation Success. Retrieved from https://theknowledgereview.com/benefits-meditation-for-students/

Virginia Lemay, J. H. (2019). Impact of a Yoga and Meditation Intervention on students’ Stress and Anxiety Levels. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. Retrieved from https://dx:doi: 10.5688/aipe7001