Yoga in SchoolFollow

There's a city in CA that teaches Yoga in it's public school system.

They use Ashtanga yoga - it's pretty deeply rooted in Hinduism.

While I don't think this California school system is attempting to indoctrinate kids into Hinduism, I do think it's possible and even probable that they're promoting one religion over another.

It seems like you could take the positive or secular components from any particular exercise program and leave behind all that is spiritual. And it seems that if you wanted to have this program in a school, the educators would go out of their way to insure the program was free from any statement of faith. But maybe not, maybe the physical aspects are too tied into the mental to be able to separate them out and still have an effective wellness program using yoga???

At any rate this particular town didn't seem too concerned about secularizing their in-school yoga program. Not only that but the program is being funded by the KP Jois Foundation (KP Jois was the founder of the american Ashtanga style of Yoga)

What do you think...

I said "Yes" but with the understanding that it would be primarily a stretching/balance and perhaps meditative exercise versus anything spiritual. You can meditate without it being faith-based, mental health counselors teach it all the time (i.e., "find your happy place").

I have no problem with Yoga being taught in schools with a higher girl to boy ratio.

Meh. Some places tend to treat their football program with more religious fervor than actual religions.

Sounds good to me. It's a pretty common college elective anyway.

People will ***** if we teach them the wrong kind of spiritual stuff and we don't have enough money to cover all the different kinds.

If you were hung up on teaching the wonders and magic of the living world or something, I'd suggest the best place for doing so would be in the arts, not physical education.

Granted arts education budgets are being cut all over but that's a separate conversation.

What Elinda said.

I have no problem with people holding spiritual beliefs, but it is not the place of a public school to teach children about some non-scientific and controversial concept of spirituality. (outside of, say, a world religions class).



I'm an atheist (or an agnostic atheist, if you want to be technical about it), and while I respect your personal belief that there's some kind of unidentifiable, invisible yet omnipresent spirit, I don't think your personal belief should be taught in school. I also would like to point out that not "acknowledging" your concept of a spirit or some divine purpose to life hasn't made the world dark at all; on the contrary, it means we have hope of eventually understanding our universe and that's frankly exciting to me

Just call it "Eastern Kinesthetics" or something to mollify the xenophobes.


Edited, Jan 9th 2013 11:49am by trickybeck

Sounds like something you'd catch giving birth to a politician.

Then don't vote. Duh.

[:mind blown:]

Not voting is the same as voting for Obama yoga!