I just ran into this article from the Arizona Daily Star about a Transcendental Meditation^® program in an alternative school.

Now, remember, I teach meditation, so you think I'd be thrilled with the report that the school is supporting TM^® and the results have been so profound.

Oh, I wish it were that simple. Let's see why it's not. First, a portion of the article…

School sees quiet gains as its students meditate

By Rhonda Bodfield
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.02.2008

For 10 to 20 minutes twice a day, some students and teachers at alternative education programs in the Tucson Unified School District close their eyes and shush their minds.

There are no chants or incense sticks or burning candles, although some will use a mantra — a phrase repeated over and over to themselves — to help slow their thoughts.

Despite its simplicity, the practitioners report they're seeing significant benefits from Transcendental Meditation^®, the trademarked technique created by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi more than 50 years ago.

Priscilla Ramos, an 18-year-old senior at Project MORE High School, said she was only passing some classes before. Now, even though she's carrying 10 classes in an attempt to graduate on time, she's focused and making A's and B's.

Favian Marquez, a 17-year-old at MORE, said he used to "blow up really fast." Last month, some guy picked a fight with him on the bus, he said, shoving him and ultimately punching him in the face. "I got mad, but I controlled myself. I just said, 'It isn't worth it.' It's just helped me with my anger a lot."

David Tran, 16, said he immediately felt the calming effects after his first session, even though he'd scoffed at it beforehand. Even his mother noticed he was less anxious and sleeping better, he said; she even asked him if he was feverish.

The director of the district's alternative education department, Robert Mackay, acknowledges it all sounded a bit far-fetched to him when a teacher came back from a conference talking it up.

Mackay said the students who come to him often are troubled, some with severe family and academic issues. In some cases, his programs are their last hope of graduating. "I had grave doubts because I had never seen some of these kids ever stop moving or talking. I expected that we'd have a 15-minute discussion and that would be it," he said.

Instead, he heard the pitch, including testimonials from schools around the nation using it with populations no less difficult than his.

Mackay went through the training first in fall 2006, along with his teachers. His blood pressure dropped so much that it was the equivalent of what he would see with a prescription pill. His teachers have been known to ask before launching into a discussion if he's done his meditation for the day — and if the answer is no, will postpone the discussion for another time.

As for the students, he found them less aggressive, less anxious, even happier. And they didn't go right back into wild mode after it was over, either.

The program was offered as an elective last year, and 40 MORE students signed up. This year, because of a new focus on academics, it can't be fit into the school day, but there are still more than 20 students who regularly come before and after school to meditate. "That's saying something," Mackay said. "It's hard to keep a kid here. When the bill rings, you almost have to get out of the way."

Meditation also is being offered as an elective at the Museum School for the Visual Arts, with about 20 students enrolled. In January, the Drake Alternative Middle School will begin the program schoolwide, and staffs at the TeenAge Parent School and the Broadway Bridge alternative schools are both getting training.

Dynah Oviedo Lim, a TUSD number-cruncher, said preliminary achievement results with only one year of data are inconclusive. But some of the findings on its social aspects are encouraging, she said. The meditators began the year with higher anxiety than a control group of students but ended with lower anxiety. Their happiness increased from mildly happy to pretty happy, while the control group reported no change in happiness levels. They also reported higher self-esteem.

Okay, so what's wrong with this picture?

Well, let's start at the end, which features a CLASSIC thinking error: The "number-cruncher" compared 2 groups, the meditators and the non-meditators and came to the conclusion that it was Transcendental Meditation^® that was the cause of any differences between the two groups… as if the only thing different between the 2 groups was that one was meditating.

Can you spot the errors already?

First, the meditating group spent 10-20 minutes together, twice a day. Sure they were meditating during much of that time, but what was also going on was:

1. A break in their normal daily schedule
2. Forming bonds with a peer group (one of the few guaranteed ways to affect kids' feelings and behavior)
3. SOMETHING that can be relaxing (what if, for example, the kids were given massages, or watched stand-up comedy?)

Further, this group was self-selecting. The meditating kids SIGNED UP for the program voluntarily, meaning there was something different about them to begin with.

Oh, and their self-esteem went up! Yee-hah! Ignoring for a moment that research on teenage self-esteem shows that kids with higher self-esteem tend to be less well liked and perform less well, did you ever live through the situation of becoming part of the cool clique in high school? I got in when I dated Kathy Gertler (sadly, the year before she bloomed into a bombshell). Once the cool kids thought I was cool-by-association, my self-esteem went up, too.

Backing up the article, the rest is mostly anecdotal "evidence." And the problem, as always, with anecdotes is that they're usually fiction. Humans love to make up cause-and-effect stories. We've been doing it for over 100,000 years. It often worked out well for us — we learned when to plant crops, which animals to hunt and which to avoid, which plants tasted good and which led to "Og, is that plant tasty? Og? Og? Hmmm. Og not breathing… I wonder if plant make Og stop breathing."

Priscilla is taking more classes and doing better… Hmmm… haven't I seen half a dozen based-on-a-true-story movies where underperforming kids got motivated and then did better than they thought they could?

Favian didn't beat the crap out of somebody one time. Congrats? Don't we all — even the non-meditators among us — have stories of times where we didn't react how we "usually" do, for no reason we can put our finger on other than "it just didn't seem worth it." In fact, it's moments like those where our cause-and-effect-story-making brains kick into high gear trying to figure out — so we can reproduce — the cause of our unusual behavior.

David, a teenager, suddenly began sleeping more! Stop the presses! I've never heard of such a thing as a teenager suddenly sleeping more! (and let's ignore that TM^® is supposed to be so restful that you sleep LESS and get more done, like Priscilla).

Look, I'm thrilled for the kids, I love the idea of bringing meditation into schools. But let's not let our desire to prove that meditation is the solution to every problem turn off our critical thinking skills. Or, in this case, let's not let a press release from the Transcendental Meditation^® community be confused with actual reporting.

(BTW, TM and Transcendental Meditation are registered trademarks of the Maharishi Foundation, Ltd.)

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