Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?

Abstract

The introduction explains how yoga, mindfulness, and meditation entered the U.S. cultural mainstream, including public schools, between the 1970s and 2010s, and why it matters for education, law, and religion. In the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited public schools from endorsing prayer and devotional Bible reading. Yoga and meditation advocates reframed these practices as secular by downplaying religious beliefs and advertising scientific evidence of health benefits and cultivation of universal morality and ethics. Certain promoters used tactics of self-censorship, camouflage, code-switching, or frontstage/backstage behaviour to win a “Vedic Victory” or skilfully advance “stealth Buddhism.” Drawing on the author’s experience as an expert witness in four legal challenges, the introduction examines key terms: “yoga,” “mindfulness,” “meditation,” “Hinduism,” “Buddhism,” “religion,” “secularity,” “spirituality” and “science.” Because meanings of these terms are contested, social institutions such as schools and courts must arbitrate disputes by formulating and applying definitions for policy purposes. The introduction argues that the school programs considered are both secular and religious, and that their integration into public-school curricula may result in an unrecognized, fundamental historic and legal transformation: the reestablishment of religion in America.