QUIET TIME

I caught the tail end of an NBC Nightly News "Making a Difference" segment while recording something else on the television last night, and was so impressed that I went online to check it out.  The report is about a meditation program at Visitacion Valley Middle School in San Francisco where, outside the school, violence, vandalism and other social problems are the norm, and where students were struggling to keep up.  The "Quiet Time" program introduced two 15-minute periods of silent meditation each day about four years ago and the results--no surprise, surely, to those of us who have been practicing for a while--have been significant: the kids are calmer, happier, less prone to violence and anger, and the school's performance statistics have improved dramatically.  There are far fewer suspensions, fewer absences, and grades are significantly improved.  Outside the school, the kids are better prepared to deal with the daily stress of an impoverished urban environment.

Here's a report from SFGate, whose reporter, David L. Kirp, writes, "I've spent a lot of time in urban schools and I've never seen anything like it."  The report continues:

In this neighborhood, gunfire is as common as birdsong - nine shootings have been recorded in the past month - and most students know someone who's been shot or did the shooting. Murders are so frequent that the school employs a full-time grief counselor.  In years past, these students were largely out of control, frequently fighting in the corridors, scrawling graffiti on the walls and cursing their teachers. Absenteeism rates were among the city's highest and so were suspensions. Worn-down teachers routinely called in sick. 

Unsurprisingly, academics suffered.  The school tried everything, from counseling and peer support to after-school tutoring and sports, but to disappointingly little effect.  

Now these students are doing light-years better. In the first year of Quiet Time, the number of suspensions fell by 45 percent. Within four years, the suspension rate was among the lowest in the city. Daily attendance rates climbed to 98 percent, well above the citywide average. Grade point averages improved markedly. About 20 percent of graduates are admitted to Lowell High School - before Quiet Time, getting any students into this elite high school was a rarity. Remarkably, in the annual California Healthy Kids Survey, these middle school youngsters recorded the highest happiness levels in San Francisco.

I knew that meditation had proved notably successful in prison populations, but this is the first time I heard of an inner city school introducing such a program.  The improvements at Visitacion, it seems, resulted in the adoption of similar programs at other middle and high schools in the San Francisco area.  Despite initial skepticism on the part of administrators and teachers, they too are bringing about remarkable transformation in both attitude and performance.

Can we foresee--could we hope for--a time when the practice will be introduced into school curricula nationwide?  What a difference that would make to a country that is suffering so much, these days, from ignorance and delusion!

JUSTICE

It seems there are two mutually incompatible understandings of the word "justice" at odds in Ferguson, Missouri.  The first is based on the adjudication of facts and evidence, to arrive at proof of guilt or innocence.  This is the strictly rational, legal understanding of the word.

The second is larger, more encompassing--and more truthful.  It has to do with social justice, with the assertion of equal rights for all, the fairness of the law itself, and the way it is implemented by police and the judicial system.

My brain is with the former definition.  My heart is with the latter.

I am not surprised, nor can I in good conscience condemn those whose patience is at an end.  There is clear injustice at work when young Black men can be regularly shot and killed with impunity, not only by police but by armed bystanders; when unemployment rates for young Blacks are wildly disproportionate to those of their white peers; when they are routinely profiled, whether in traffic or in stores, as worthy of suspicion; when they are arrested and jailed more frequently, and with longer sentences, for crimes that are often trivial and victimless.

This is a reality in this country which few reasonable people would dispute.  No matter how legally rational and defensible, it is not justice but a mockery of justice.

We are now in the twenty-first century in America, and the historical stain of slavery continues to pervade our social structure.  Racial prejudice is rife, and generally unacknowledged.  We need look no further than the irrational hatred for our first Black president to see its toxicity at work.

I abhor violence.  I hear pleas for peace on all sides.  But when you have struggled peacefully for so long and have met with the same denial and the same resistance, when you have reached such a point of despair that you no longer believe in peaceful methods and no longer care, what alternative are you left with?

It's to be hoped that out of all this anger, all this violence, we will come at least to an acknowledgement that we have a problem that needs to be addressed; to honest public discussion of the issue; and to a new understanding of how "the law" must be applied if we are to have real justice, not just its outer husk.