Mindfulness interventions, disadvantaged students, and the civilizing process

There has been an explosion of  "mindfulness" based interventions more or less integrated into educational settings. A few of these have been aimed at highly disadvantaged children and adolescents. According the scholars describing them, these interventions (strive to) habituate greater capacities for emotional self-control and the use of foresight. This brings us to the heart of what Elias theorized in terms of the formation of more civilized internal steering mechanisms. But the external social constraints and practices supposedly interrelated with these internal transformations seem to be very different than those discovered by Elias. Could secularized versions of an ancient Eastern practice be ushering in a new phase (or dimension) of the civilizing process in the West? And could these new developments be extended to the poorly born students presently attending our worst schools? Might this signal a new role for teachers in distressed schools?

Drawing from nearly six years of fieldwork and teaching experiences in New York and Amsterdam, this paper indicates that what truly disadvantaged teens need to avoid self-destructing in high poverty, high stress secondary schools is remarkably close to what advocates claim to observe being fostered among children and adolescents participating in mindfulness interventions. The paper then attempts to place the relevant findings and claims about short-term habitus formation processes related to mindfulness interventions in a longer-term perspective. Focusing as much on what Elias's helps us see as on what he may have missed, this longer-term perspective will focus on social and self-constraints emerging out of both Western and Eastern epistemologies and practices based body-based learning. Hype or not, the argument is that the flurry of interest in mindfulness in educational settings can at very least help us advance on Elias's theoretical accomplishments.