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Full-Text Articles in Education

Critical Integral Contemplative Education, David Forbes Nov 2016

Critical Integral Contemplative Education, David Forbes

Publications and Research

Mindfulness programs in education proceed with little awareness of the cultural, social, political, and developmental context in which they operate. This chapter first argues that social critique is a valuable practice in its own right and can be useful toward developing more socially just and inclusive education mindfulness programs. It is critical of how mindfulness is practiced in schools to the extent it shares qualities of McMindfulness and reinforces neoliberal ideologies, policies, and practices. Without this critical awareness of contexts programs tend to promote individualistic solutions to social problems and inequities and thereby serve to maintain the status quo of …


Modes Of Mindfulness: Prophetic Critique And Integral Emergence, David Forbes Jun 2016

Modes Of Mindfulness: Prophetic Critique And Integral Emergence, David Forbes

Publications and Research

As mindfulness becomes more secular and popular, there are more arguments about its purpose and use value. Because of its disparate uses, many proponents of any one side often talk past each other and miss their mark. This paper employs an integral meta-theory that accounts for subjective, inter-subjective, objective, interobjective, and developmental perspectives on mindfulness. This helps categorize modes of mindfulness in order to clarify their purposes and functions within a society characterized by neoliberal principles and structures. It adopts the standpoint of a prophetic critique similar to those critiques of McMindfulness and insists on the inseparability of both universal …


The Quasi-Human Child: How Normative Conceptions Of Childhood Enabled Neoliberal School Reform In The United States, Debbie Sonu May 2016

The Quasi-Human Child: How Normative Conceptions Of Childhood Enabled Neoliberal School Reform In The United States, Debbie Sonu

Publications and Research

This paper argues that normative conceptions of the child, as a natural quasi-human being in need of guidance, enable current school reforms in the United States to directly link the child to neoliberal aims and objectives. In using Foucault’s concept of governmentality and disciplinary power, we first present how the child is constructed as a subject of the adult world, then trace how such understandings invite school policies and practices that worked on the child, rather than with the child. In order to understand how the child comes to be known and recognized as a learner, both at the intersections …