News
July 2003
Globe & Mail Toronto Canada
Can meditation help inner-city kids?

By CAROLINE ALPHONSO
Saturday, July 5, 2003 - Page F6

DETROIT -- The room is silent, except for the drone of a ceiling fan. The elementary-school students lie back on their blue floor cushions. Then, closing their eyes, they focus on their mantras as they've been instructed to do at Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse, a unique school in a city that's not unfamiliar with violence and poverty.
A 30-minute drive from the Canada-U.S. border, Nataki is located on 7 Mile Road in inner-city Detroit. Abandoned houses and vacant stores are telltale signs of a decaying neighbourhood. Parallel to this street is 8 Mile Road, made famous by rapper Eminem's semi-autobiographical movie, and the dividing line between suburban and urban, rich and poor.
The school year at Nataki has ended now, but some students may be continuing the ritual they practised there during the past 10 months -- for 20 minutes each day, dozens of students shut out the chaotic city and took a much-needed deep breather. The muggy school gym, with its basketball nets and wooden floors, was transformed into a tranquil paradise where they could practise transcendental meditation.
TM, a form of meditation that reduces stress and calms the mind and body, has been integrated into the daily curriculum at Nataki. Approximately 120 students, ranging in age from 10 to early teens, are herded into the school gym for their twice-daily sessions. The centuries-old method, which involves the repetition of a simple, child-like mantra, helps them cope with anxieties over homework and tests. And if they keep the practice up through the summer vacation period, they may see added benefits. Jane Pitt, a TM teacher at the school, thinks meditation could help keep these inner-city kids away from temptations of the streets.
"When we don't have this kind of a natural tool, then people tend to turn to unnatural tools like substance abuse," she says. "For kids, if they don't have another way of dealing with their stress, they may start drinking or abusing or smoking or whatever, or eating."
Getting children to sit still is tough at the best of times. But for 10 minutes early in the morning and just before they leave for the day, students at this school master the art. They focus on their own private mantra -- a calming sound audible only to each child.
They don't fidget or look over at their friends. The young meditators do not giggle. There were a few yawns, however, during one session held as the school year was winding down for the summer.
"It relaxes me. Sometimes when I come to school, I'm really tired and I really don't want to work. Then I go to the gym and it's like an energy boost," said Jasmine Moore, 11, after the June session.
TM is not a new form of meditation. It became widely known in the 1960s, when the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose followers included the Beatles, brought it to the United States.
Hundreds of studies have been done on the benefits of TM. Early findings by a University of Michigan researcher suggest TM may make a difference among schoolchildren, especially when student stress levels are running high because of standardized testing and pressure to keep marks up.
Rita Benn, of the university's Complementary and Alternative Medicine Center, found the Nataki students who meditated had higher self-esteem and were able to get along better with others compared with non-meditating students at a nearby school.
After four months, "we were able to see differences, so that's pretty remarkable," she said.
But adding TM to the daily curriculum raises the eyebrows of some, who say it is a religion and can even be mind-altering.
"It's been a very controversial thing, using imagery and meditation in schools," said Jack Miller, who teaches holistic education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. Mr. Miller does not know of any Canadian public schools that have adopted TM in their curriculum. Still, he supports the idea as long as parents give permission.
Jasmine, like many of her peers, tries to never miss a session. "It's nice to have a little time to sit down and relax," she says.
Caroline Alphonso is The Globe and Mail's education reporter.