A group of parents at a Cobb County elementary are upset over the school’s use of yoga and other mindfulness practices for students because they believe it endorses a non-Christian belief system.I would wager heavily that the school's teachers don't understand the real Hindu customs or theology well enough to teach it if they had wanted to teach it. If they did, they'd understand that the suggestion that yoga has something to do with Hinduism isn't just some silly 'misconception.'
School leaders at Bullard Elementary held a meeting recently with parents to address the “many misconceptions” over the issue...
As a result, the school is making changes. When yoga moves are used in classrooms, students will not say the word “namaste” nor put their hands by their hearts, according to the email. The term and gesture are often used as a greeting derived from Hindu custom.
When coloring during classroom teaching breaks, students will not be allowed to color mandalas, spiritual symbols in Hinduism and Buddhism.
UPDATE: I win my bet. From the program founder's bio:
I consider Dr. Seuss one of my master teachers...She really doesn't know what she's teaching. I looked up those yoga credentials, by the way. The Yoga Alliance, which seems to be the source for them, points out that they are not certifications -- they're just acknowledgements that she's in their registry, and they've tracked that she's taught 500 hours, or has registered as a teacher of children, or whatever.
The good news is that you can stop worrying about her rubbing any Hinduism off on your kids. The bad news, I trust, is obvious.
8 comments:
Of course it's Hinduism. It's just watered-down, westernised Hinduism so it probably doesn't matter much.
It's a good sendup of the Ameerican fascination with Easten religions, but it ignores the fraudulent nature of Gandhi himself.
http://web.archive.org/web/20090226171138/http:/history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt
That's a well-constructed indictment.
I used to love, when people turned to Ghandi to argue a pure pacifist position in debates about war, pointing them at his "Doctrine of the Sword". That usually ended the discussion though.
It's not like most people are much interested in actually understanding anything, unfortunately.
There are local commenters at Reddit telling a different story.
The article is well less than clear about the actual objection the parents have.
"Moore also wrote that, although teachers have “never used nor taught about crystals having healing powers during these breaks, we understand it has become a belief. Therefore we will ensure that nothing resembling this will be done in the future.” "
The local principal was involved in teaching the kids about the healing properties of different kinds of stones. It's an anti-scientific New Age thing, like anti-vaccination superstition. It has, of course, nothing to do with exercise or real yoga.
Valerie
Yeah, when I saw the talk of crystals in the article, that was a major factor in suggesting that these people didn't have one idea what yoga was really about. Or "Namaste." Or any of it.
Yeah, having the kids do stretching exercises is one thing. Magic crystals is just foolishness.
Just general subversion and degradation in the teacher unions. It's a good thing yoga is unlicensed, otherwise the Left would have taken it over and used it to convert Boy and Girl scouts, like they already do with their own Leftist orgs.
The parents are right to be paranoid, with these types of trash teaching their kids. Not because of the material, because of the evil people that is in power.
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