The development of humane values in school

It is a common belief that evil and bad behaviour are personality properties. However brain and stress research indicates that it is the consequense of brain changes due to chronic stress.

Stress activates the primitive survival centers of the brain and inhibits the higher centers, responsible for intelligent, responsble and caring behaviour. In chronic stress the brain function changes so that the lower centers are more predominant.

If these changes could be healed, the negative behaviour would disappear. Recent stress research has found that chronic stress is very prevalent today.

This research confirms age-old Vedic knowledge, saying that all humans are inherently good, positive, loving. These properties are just covered by the influence of stress.

The cause of chronic stress is emotional trauma, especially early in life. Experience from psychoterapy shows that these deeply seated emotional scars are not easy to heal. They commonly take decades of therapy.

Research shows that it is possible to heal these deepseated scars in surprisingly short time with the ancient vedic meditation technique called Transcendental Meditation, which differs importantly from other techniques. The reason is that it creates a unique highly ordely (coherent) brain state, which causes a rewiring of the brain into a harmonious, stable, balanced and highly integrated way of working.

Experience and research from over two decades of application in shools shows that, with 10-15 minutes of TM twice a day, the behaviour of even highly problematic, violent and restless children with ADHD improve within a few months which reflects corresponding rapid improvement of brain physiology. The children change from within into emphatic, friendly, positive, attentive and disciplined persons without any need for special attention or guidance from the teachers.

This confirms the age-old Vedic statement that the real basis of ethics is love. Therefore really ethical behavior cannot be established through rules. It can only develop trough development of heart, of true lovingness. It is the loving consideration of others, yes the whole world, that is the basis of the highest level of ethical behaviour.

In addition, the performance of the children is improved as documented by the remarkable achievements of Maharishi School children. Yet a basic principle in these schools is stress-free education.

This makes TM a practical and simple method for developing spontaneously loving humanneness even the most disturbed pupils. Decades of experience shows that no special rules need to be applied to call forth positive well-adapted and cooperative behavior. It is just the consequence of normalized brain function.

The only requirement for the teachers is that they practice TM 20 minutes twice a day while the children practice 10-15 minutes according to age.

For more, see:

• Maharishi School
• Consciouness-based Education Association