Incorporating Contemplative Practices / Why Incorporate / Accelerating pace of life / Issues teachers and students are facing
Accelerating pace of life
The most recent reemerge of Contemplative Education is said to have started with the opening of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CCMIS), 1995 in Massachusetts, USA (for further information see my article on the history of this reemergence). Since then Contemplative Education has grown at such a rate that in her timeline of the development of contemplative education detailed in “Contemplative higher education in contemporary America” Mirabai Bush (2010), cofounder of the CCMIS, reported that by 2008 the field had expanded at such a rate that there were too many activities to catalogue.
The accelerating pace of communication through ICT and the constant connectivity and information overload that it brings is also implicated in the need for Contemplative Education. The contemplative theorist David Levey from the University of Washington, Seattle, is a pioneer in the Slow Technology Movement his research focuses on the ethics of information and technology and he speaks widely on ‘mindful tech’ and the concerning issue of ‘no time to think’. In his co-authored “No cellphones? No internet? So much less stress” he and his colleagues suggest that digital natives may not be as happily intertwined with technology as digital immigrants suggest. From their research in the area they conclude that, “Indeed, we have reason to believe that today’s students (age 18 and up) have significant concerns about the role of the new technologies in their lives” (Levey, et al., http://chronicle.com/article/No-Cellphone-No-Internet-So/127391/) The issues associated with constant connectivity are currently being outlined in trends such as Digital Detoxing. Reflection on such matters as digital addiction and chronic stress highlights the role that Contemplative Education can play in helping to remediate or at least highlight the economic rationalism resulting from the hyper-materialist society we currently live in, which underpins these issues.
The accelerating pace of communication through ICT and the constant connectivity and information overload that it brings is also implicated in the need for Contemplative Education. The contemplative theorist David Levey from the University of Washington, Seattle, is a pioneer in the Slow Technology Movement his research focuses on the ethics of information and technology and he speaks widely on ‘mindful tech’ and the concerning issue of ‘no time to think’. In his co-authored “No cellphones? No internet? So much less stress” he and his colleagues suggest that digital natives may not be as happily intertwined with technology as digital immigrants suggest. From their research in the area they conclude that, “Indeed, we have reason to believe that today’s students (age 18 and up) have significant concerns about the role of the new technologies in their lives” (Levey, et al., http://chronicle.com/article/No-Cellphone-No-Internet-So/127391/) The issues associated with constant connectivity are currently being outlined in trends such as Digital Detoxing. Reflection on such matters as digital addiction and chronic stress highlights the role that Contemplative Education can play in helping to remediate or at least highlight the economic rationalism resulting from the hyper-materialist society we currently live in, which underpins these issues.
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Digital natives are said to possess high self-esteem, assertiveness and narcissistic traits, they also tend to exhibit elevated anxiety and a low sense of agency
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Contemplative orientations and pedagogy are beginning to address some of the problems arising out of these issues, including: fragmented attention, low emotional intelligence, lack of moral and ethical awareness, and disengagement from meaningful human contact that many students and teachers are suffering. In the case of constant connectivity and digital addiction in education there are concerns regarding the expanding integration of ICT into education at all levels, for despite its benefits little is known about its negative impacts.
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It appears that the hype and enthusiasm in providing ICT solutions to both distance and on campus learning have been founded on overly simplified assumptions about student learning with and through ICT (Bingimlas, 2009; Pelgrum, 2001). Students are said to prefer multitasking, have low tolerance for lectures, enjoy active rather than passive learning and rely heavily on communication technologies to access information (Ghaith, 2010, p. 490). However these assumptions, often made by digital immigrants (older academics and those developing teaching technologies), are frequently based on anecdotal evidence (Bennett et al., 2008; Oh & Reeves, 2014). What we do know is that while students seem to have developed a fundamental need to be connected to each other the majority of the time (Andrews & Higson, 2008) this does not mean that they have the types of interpersonal capacities and skills they need in their private lives or that are increasingly being required by employers (Humburg et al., 2013). Paradoxically, as the need for refined communication and interpersonal skills increases because of the multiple global communication platforms many graduates are now required to engage, their soft or social skills are diminishing. In addition, while digital natives are said to possess high self-esteem, assertiveness and narcissistic traits (Twenge, 2006) they also tend to exhibit elevated anxiety and a low sense of agency.
