Read the following and let us know your position on this issue.
Excerpt from:
How motivation restricts the scalability of universal school-based mindfulness interventions for adolescents --https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdep.12508
"...effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness interventions for adolescents will always be limited by the high motivational commitment required to meditate. Mindfulness interventions rely on a single and demanding health behavior—namely, meditation—to cultivate mindfulness skills. But unlike traditional mindfulness interventions delivered in clinics to self-selected adults who are motivated to manage personal problems through meditation, universal school-based mindfulness interventions are delivered to all adolescents regardless of their desire to meditate. I review evidence from multiple randomized controlled trials of universal school-based mindfulness interventions to show that adolescents consistently report low levels of engagement in meditation and that many interventions have failed to improve adolescents' mental health. I propose that universal mindfulness interventions eliminate meditation entirely and focus on instilling contemplative viewpoints conducive to flourishing, and that the skill of mindfulness is taught only to adolescents who want to meditate....
Adolescents do not seek out these programs to resolve a personal problem and are not screened prior to starting. Consequently, these interventions must operate as though all teenagers already are (or can be) motivated to meditate regularly. But developmental science raises doubts about this assumption.
>First, adolescents do not like it when adults tell them how to behave. If youth perceive meditation as yet another form of coercion, they could reject it and what it represents.
>Second, adolescents often do not act with their future best interests in mind. It is unclear whether the prospect of building skills to address problems that exist only in an imagined future is compelling to adolescents who are not coping with depression or chronic stress.
>Third, even for youth who want to cope more effectively, is meditation the sole activity on which they would rely? Because these interventions offer just one way to cope with suffering—by developing mindfulness skills—they exclude a collection of other strategies teenagers can and do use, like seeking social support, reappraisal, or physical exercise....
Common reasons teenagers give for not doing meditation “homework” (i.e., meditating at home) are that they do not find it helpful, do not feel they need it, and think it is boring....
A two-part solution to the motivation problem
1. The prevention rationale behind universal school based meditation conflicts permanently with the expectation that all adolescents develop specialized mindfulness skills through meditation. So the first part of a two-part solution is to remove meditation and skill-building from the curriculum entirely, leaving a focus only on instilling salutary worldviews.... Such views, including the idea that emotions like worry or sadness are normal and temporary human experiences, or that negative self-judgments do not necessarily reflect reality....
Help young people reframe their difficulties as temporary, malleable, and even surmountable. Such a perspective could prompt stronger feelings of agency and resilience to stress... Focusing on views solves the motivation problem because, unlike developing mindfulness skill sets through meditation, it does not require prolonged deliberate practice to change one's mind about certain ideas. In fact, persuasive, noncoercive, and targeted messages alter adolescents' views and subsequently, their behaviors and well-being, in sustained ways. Because new views can be internalized relatively quickly, can be brief, low-cost, and easy to administer. ...
2. The second part of solving the motivation problem is to reserve meditation training for adolescents who want to learn it... When adolescents choose to meditate, they are exercising autonomy and revealing interest, both of which should contribute to higher levels of engagement and learning. When low levels of engagement are no longer a main challenge, programs can focus on other goals, like increasing opportunities for adolescents to get high-quality training. This could involve expanding access to existing programs (e.g., mindfulness retreats) and adapting programs to the values and cultural practices of diverse groups of youth. To the extent that mindfulness meditation training continues to be delivered in schools, it could be offered as an elective or extracurricular activity ..."
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