Santa Clara Meditation Education – Elementary School Students Throwing Away Smartphone Addiction
These days, are the minds of elementary students at peace just because they are young? As mentioned in the previous blog, too early in life children are stressed about competing and scores in this competitive society.
4th Grader ___ Choi
When I come home, it is 7pm or 8:30pm. I have to do homework, take a shower, and read books. It is so hard. So I drew my mind that I want to burn away the stress that I have built up!
In 2014 during the 1st semester at Jinhae JungAng Elementary School grades 3 through 6, approximately 35 children participated in the “Growing Happiness Classroom, Meditation Program”. It lasted three times a week after school for approximately 40 minutes, totaling 20 times.
This is the drawing of one of the student participants who was asked to draw an image of himself during his daily life.
Just by looking at the words, you can see how busy his life is, and you can feel how much stress he was getting inside there. This child described how he felt after throwing away his minds for the first time through this meditation program.
‘I am so happy to have thrown away all the things I built up every single day! Haha!’
Teacher Youngae Kim who led this program at Jinhae JungAng Elementary stated that these days school fighting, outcasting, internet addiction, and game addiction even in elementary schools are the biggest issue these days.
“You may think what kind of minds could children possibly have, but even elementary students have a ton of minds. The most common were school grades, being outcasted by friends, minds about their teachers, unhappy minds, and not wanting to go to school. There were even some children who stated seeing their future self as committing suicide. Shocker!”
To prevent these kinds of problem, the school chose this meditation program in this urgent situation.
Especially in this program, they spent extra care to help children with smartphone addiction or potential violent tendencies to throw away their minds. Let’s take a look at the children who threw away game or smartphone addiction and how they changed.
Elementary school students throwing away smartphone addiction
[School Story #3] Jinhae Elementary School “Growing happiness classroom – meditation program”
4th Grader ____
As soon as they were told to find minds you are obsessed with, this student wrote down mostly game addiction minds.
“Computer, Game machine, I want to keep using my smartphone, I want to touch it every day, addiction, giant gaming game, I want to live in the arcade…”
Full of thoughts of games only.
4th Grader ____
As he states his mind is attached to the internet and smartphone games constantly, this student is living around gaming only. All the answers he gave is related to gaming; it is more precious than gaming; it is not more precious than gaming, or I like it more than gaming; I don’t like it more than gaming.
For example, writing during class time: I do not like to do it compared to the internet, smartphone, and gaming. Family: I like it more than the internet and smartphone games. He wrote it down like this. Thank goodness, at least he said he likes his family more than gaming. But he wrote that his image of his future self to be “difficult”. Hurts the heart to hear that.
6th Grade _____
The box that is colored black is representing his mind. And inside that box there are 4 minds he wants to express.
Game, family, smartphone, I don’t want to.
What is relieving is that these students who threw away their minds on gaming had fewer minds about gaming. And they had more confidence in describing themselves.
“I had thoughts about gaming while studying. But after doing this meditation, I have thoughts about studying.”
He is a 6th Grader who said that after he has thrown away his minds, when he is studying, he thinks only of studying. The interesting thing about this student is that on the outside, during meditation class he would be lying down, appear to be doing something else, and did not look like he was doing this meditation diligently. But in actuality, he was really throwing away his minds diligently. After the 20th session, he was asked to write how he felt after doing this meditation and stated the following:
“It’s too bad that this is over as soon as my mind has changed to a new one. I feel like this meditation has changed my mind to a new one.”
Other students were the same. The first student mentioned above who had plenty of minds of gaming said “computers, game players, smartphone games – those minds have all disappeared”.
4th Grade _____
And at the last session, he mentioned regarding this meditation the following.
Before doing this meditation, my mind was completely stuffed. But after throwing away with this meditation, my mind is completely empty. So I want to continue to discard my mind.
* My attached minds regarding internet gaming and smartphones has disappeared. 6th Grade ____Park
* I no longer have bad thoughts and I can now study well so I like it. 6th Grade _____Suh
* My mind is at ease and I feel much better. 6th Grade ____Jung
Many children answered positively about this meditation after they had thrown away a lot of minds regarding internet gaming and smartphones. Besides the children who gained fun in studying after throwing away the addiction to games, one child who could not even close his eyes for one second without doing something else (ADHD) became calm, another child who was aggressive and angry was now self-controlled, and etc. A lot of teachers were so surprised when they saw these changes in the children after just one semester of the meditation program. The school hopes they can continue this meditation program as a long term curriculum.
4th Grader ____ Choi
4th Grader ____ Choi
After throwing away my minds, my mind is clean and refreshed.
P.S. There are teachers who like to find alternative solutions for teaching true humanity from the “mind”. Combining the discarding mind method of this meditation with the classes. The children said that they can find their way of living life as much as they got brighter and emptier after throwing away heavy burdens in their mind. We will look at each story next.
– Research Results >> Meditation Teacher Training http://www.meditationedu.org/
– Number one in Korea, Humanity Camp for students held during Summer and Winter vacation. If you are interested in Meditation Youth Camp http://www.meditationyouth.org/
