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School replaces detention with meditation

Is this the way UK schools should combat errant kids?

School replaces detention with meditation
Danielle de Wolfe
27 September 2016

Child swears? Won't do what they're told? Gets into a fight? The old solution would've been to send them to detention, and an even older choice the cane, but in 2016 there's an alternative to shaming punishments for youngsters - meditation.

Robert W. Coleman Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland has introduced mediation as a peaceful solution instead of detention to its misbehaving students, and since it has it hasn't suspended a single pupil.

The idea was brought to life in conjunction with local charity Holistic Life Foundation, whose ethos is to get children mediate or breathe deeply in the 'Mindful Moment Room', which is full of lamps, pillows, decorations and mats, which aids them in calming their selves.

Detention isn't the only scenario they're employing meditation in either, as the school got the kids to mediate before receiving their Christmas presents. Kirk Philips, Holistic Me Coordinator for the school said: "As a little kid, that’s got to be hard to sit down and meditate when you know you’re about to get a bag of gifts, and they did it! It was beautiful, we were all smiling at each other watching them."

So is this the way forward in helping to discipline children in Britain?