Meditation workshops in colleges worry associations and unions

“Mindfulness meditation” workshops conducted in several colleges are worrying associations and unions, who have written to the Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, to alert him to practices “potentially risky on the psychological development of children”.

In an open letter, they indicate that a project to experiment with this meditation technique “proposed by an esoteric lobby” was abandoned following protests issued in June 2021.

Twelve reports

But “we have been seized by its reappearance in a made-up way since September in several colleges with the multiplication of relaxation workshops, breathing exercises, meditation”, write these organizations. Among them are the Human Rights League, the Education League, the FSU, CGT and Unsa unions, the FCPE parents’ federation and the association for the fight against sectarian aberrations Unadfi.

Mindfulness meditation (MPM), which has its origins in Buddhism, is based on focusing on your sensations, your breathing, a point on your body, etc. It was the subject of 22 requests for information between 2018 and 2020 from the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Aberrations (Miviludes). At the same time, 12 reports concerning minors and relating to the various meditation practices were received by Miviludes, according to its latest report.

A “potentially risky” technique

For the signatories of the letter to the Minister of National Education, “the practice on minor children of a method which can lead to a conditioning with loss of critical spirit and subjugation of the individual generates (…) significant risks which cannot be neglected.

“We renew our deepest concerns about these experiments, and ask you to intervene to put an end to them without delay” in order to refuse in national education “a technique, the MPC, with uncertain and potentially risky consequences on the psychic development of children,” they write.