A couple of teacher chums, tough, unsentimental types, have taken to starting their lessons with a bit of “mindfulness”. Their classrooms have become places where pupils negotiate inner space.
Silence. Stillness. I was sceptical. Whatever, it’s catching on. The Mindfulness in Schools Project says there are now 4,000 qualified teachers. I didn’t know you could qualify in inner space, but there you go.
Their classes used to charge into the room all antic and wired and sugar-rushed and incoherent. My chums used to spend far too long trying calm the inmates down, bellowing idle threats and saying the word “right”, pointlessly, a few million times. No more, they tell me. Now their classes enter in a Trappist silence.
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