Yoga and Critical thinking a K-12 curriculum (final essay)

School has not changed much then they did 20 years ago. The only difference is students have so much distraction now a day.  But what is still true is that students lack attention and concentration. I am not proposing a silver bullet to help education; Mike Rose will be highly upset about that.  But what can we do in school to help our students concentrate and focus. The single most important change to the K-12 program curriculum to better help students and teachers would be adding Yoga to our school system. This could be seen in the movie Chalk, as Ms. Webb the PE  coach was trying to get her students to participate. It’s obvious she wasn’t familiar with any of John Gattos, Paolo Freire or bell hooks work, because it was plain to see she still believes in the dialogued of the teacher of the student. I will explain more in detail how Yoga and Critical thinking go hand in hand.

Yoga helps students with social and emotional skills; it also helps kids with Mindfulness and critical thinking.  The field of prevention, Greenberg says,” not only aims to avert school failure, depression, and extreme aggression, but to promote positive qualities like empathy, citizenship, and strong friendship. Prevention focuses on building resilience and promoting well-being children, by working both with the children themselves and with their environments, the quality of the parenting they receive, the welcoming nature or their classroom, the caring of their teachers.”

The importance of Yoga is having the teachers/student relationship and critical pedagogy run hand to hand, includes the relationship between teaching and learning. This continuous process of unlearning, learning, relearning, reflection and evaluation. Ira shore defines critical pedagogy as, “Habits of thought, reading, and speaking which go beneath the surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official  pronouncement, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinion, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social contest, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media or discourse.”

Finding the root cause, the who, what, when, where of things. These are the early stages of critical thinking; these are the question an inquisitive child would utilize. Bell hooks in Critical Thinking says, “children are organically predisposed to be critical thinkers. Across the boundaries of race, class, gender, and circumstance, children come into the world of wonder and language consumed with a desire for knowledge. Sometimes they are so eager for knowledge that they become relentless interrogators-demanding to know the who, what when, where and why of life. Searching for answer, they learn almost instinctively how to think . Sadly, children passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only. Most children are taught early on that thinking is dangerous. Sadly, these children stop enjoying process of thinking and start fearing the thinking mind.”
To make our kids critical thinking from an early age, we must use Yoga, Greenberg remarks that, “Mindfulness practice s can increase people’s awareness of their own emotions and their ability to regulate them, This can make it possible for them to reduce feelings of depression and anxiety, and since a pretty good percentage of teenagers are at risk of depression. It’s important to have it in the education tool bag. “  If we can help our kids stay focused and help them become emotionally and intelligently, independent, leaders and thinkers, then eventually we will stop seeing our schools as factories and our students as the end product.  John Gatto states, “Our schools are…..factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned……and it’s the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down. Mr. Gatto believes “that we have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our will to political exhortations and a commercial blandishment that would insult actual adults. “

Mike Rose also points out, “to convince policy makers and officials to stop using corporate speak, when talking about education. “game changer”,” non-starter”, “leverage”,” incentivize” and so on. We would chastise our student for resorting to such clichéd vocabularies. Education of all places should reflect a fresher language. And while we’re at it how about moratorium on the phrasing, we are doing it for the kids or its good for the kids when referring to just about any initiative or practice. Talk about clichéd language, the phrase is used as substitute for evidence or a reasoned argument.” Schools should not be used for this; schools should help open a young kids mind. Greenberg speaks about mindfulness and how this helps kids focus, “Mindfulness is not just a series of practical techniques. It helps us have ethical character we need to live in the world. It carries with it a world view of not harming other. “He later states also that. “Kindness, caring, empathy, being able to de-center form your own point of view and listen deeply to others these are values that should be cultivated in our classrooms. These are the social and emotional skills that a person who experience optimal nurturing condition, would develop during childhood and adolescent and bring with them into adulthood.”

Yoga can be taught at a young age. They help strengthened motor skills, increases flexibility and it also helps self-regulate. It helps with obesity. Since childhood obesity rates have doubled and so has low-self esteem. Yoga encourages physical fitness activity for kids. Yoga helps you self-regulate, since kids snack out of boredom, sadness, and tiredness. Kids with Yoga are better self-regulator and they make more conscious choices regarding what foods they eat and when.

Kids have so much stressed and distraction and need a way to release the tension. By doing Yoga, it is known to biochemically release a lot of hormones when you exercise that actually allow you to feel better. Harvard medical school recently did a study on High school student and Yoga. They all reported being less stressed, greater control over negative emotion, respect for self image, impaired posture and more relaxed with plenty of energy. Yoga as a learning tool and critical thinking actually goes hand in hand yoga is the seed that gets planted and critical thinking cultivates that seed. In order to get a student to believe in critical thinking, you just can’t give them a book and tell them to read about, hooks, Gatto, Preire, Rose or Giroux. Yoga should be used as a learning tool; you teach kids it’s not about telling-it’s about creating experiences for them. It helps children learn how to control their energy so they can focus and concentrate better and think more clearly. Critical thinking is not hard to teach, bell hooks best states that. “Students do not become critical thinkers overnight first; they must learn to embrace the joy and power of thinking itself.  Engaged pedagogy is a teaching strategy that aims to restore student will to think.”

At this point it, it is critical for a child because as a child’s pedagogy, you can embrace the art of critical thinking and you and the student will be as one or you can damage them by emerging as a teacher-student and student –teacher. “You can also lead the student to memorize mechanical the narrated content. Worse yet, it turn them into containers into receptacle to be filled by the teacher. The more completely he fill the receptacles, the better a teacher he is. The m more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.” Quotes Mr. Freire.

Thru Yoga remember you will be playing the role of “problem-posing educator , you are always the cognitive, engaging dialogue with the student. The dialogue of teacher of the students cease to exist, this must happen as an educator.

In conclusion, Yoga added as a K-12 curriculum will bring much needed help to teachers. They will see a much more alert student, more focused, resilient, relaxed. They will be more physical and mentally challenge to take on everyday challenges and be able to sort and prioritize various aspect of school. You start at any early age in kindergarten and slowly every year upgrade the different breathing and stretching technique and exercise. You will build an army of self-thinkers, critical thinkers instead of an army of “workforce that will enable the United States to complete in a major global economic and military power”, as stated by Paulo Freire.

Yoga will build so much confidence in our kids that we will be overflowing with confidence, and confidence is something we don’t lack off.  It is best said by our scholar Lewis Black, “We have a silver lining we rank 25 in math, 21 in science, we fail behind just about in all topics in school except in one; CONFIDENCE. Who needs physics and math, geometry; just a little more confidence and he would have cleared the roof.”

Shambhala Sun- A Real Education (The Mindful Society/May 2012) page 75 by Barry Boyce

Bell hooks- Teaching Critical Thinking Practical Wisdom published Jan. 2009

John Gatto- Against School (How public education cripples our kids, and why) Harpers Magazine Sept 2003

Mike Rose- Resolutions someone should make for 2011 , Washingtonpost.com/answesheet

Paolo Freire- The Banking concept of education form pedagogy of the pressed- Chapter 2, (1970)

Paoulo Freire-Lesson to be learned from Paulo Freire as education is being taken over by the Mega rich –Truthout, Nov. 2010

Lewis Black- Back in Black-Education in Crisis.www.thedailyshow.com