Contemplative Cosmopolitan Education: From Mindfulness of the Breath to Mindful Citizenship

• In Event: 52.073 - Expanding the Idea of Equal Educational Opportunity Through a Cosmopolitan Prism

Abstract

This presentation will draw together two discourses: cosmopolitanism and the burgeoning 'contemplative turn in education'. Based on this exploration, I will propose what may seem as a paradoxical claim: contemplative pedagogies, the foundation of which is the turning of one's attention to examine one's mind-body, may be a fruitful path toward a grounded and practical cosmopolitanism.
The contemplative turn in education is manifested in a rapidly growing incorporation of contemplative practices (e.g., meditation, yoga, tai chi) across educational settings (Barbezat & Bush, 2014, Palmer & Zajonc, 2010; Lin, Oxford & Brantmeier, 2013). Most notably this turn has been growing based on the scientific study of mindfulness practice (Black et al, 2015; Kabat-Zinn, 2005) and its applications within education (MLERN, 2012; Schonert-Reichel and Roeser, 2016). This discourse has mostly been associated with stress-reduction and social emotional learning but the cosmopolitan perspective seems to be underdeveloped. At the face of it, the image of the meditator/yogi seems to jar against the vastness implied by the image of a 'citizen of the world'. How would a practice such as mindfulness, in which one is instructed to observe one's breath and/or bodily sensations non-judgmentally, contribute to visions of caring and attentive citizenship, which expresses “concern for the world as if it were one’s polis” (Benhabib 2004, p. 174)?
As this presentation will suggest we may need to reframe how we think about the curricular-pedagogical practices by which cosmopolitanism might be realized. Following Todd, missing from our accounts of "humanist education" is the acknowledgement of "the very human aspects of our inhuman actions" (2009, p. 3). This statement will be interpreted here as a claim that lofty ideals (cosmopolitanism included) may require pedagogies by which we will explore the locus from which inhumanity, inequality and injustice appear in the world. This will lead me to propose a contemplative perspective, which suggests that our attention is invested in the world out there, in which we will find the symptoms of actions, but actions emerge from minds. We have become masters of third-person scientific investigation, but we are hardly as competent in the understanding of our own minds (Roth, 2006, p. 1787). Perhaps, then the mind itself ought to be positioned at the center of our curriculum and pedagogy? Following this question, this presentation will turn to examine what this might mean practically by considering the case of mindfulness practice.
Mindfulness, as applied commonly in mindfulness-based curricular interventions, implies practicing the bringing of one's attention intentionally to the breath, and returning to the breath non-judgmentally whenever one finds that attention has wandered (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). I will suggest that in this very basic act we find grounded embodied experience, the cultivation of moral agency (Roeser & Peck, 2009), as well as the development of socio-emotional dispositions (MLERN, 2012; Schonert-Reichl & Roeser, 2016; Zenner, Herrnleben-Kurz, & Walach 2014) such as those that some cosmopolitan visions on the ground aspire to develop (Noddings, 2005).

Author

• Oren Ergas, Beit Berl College and Hebrew University