Sleep is most especially important to growing kids. Most parents would urge their kids to take a nap after lunch. However, a school in China's Guagdong Province has a better suggestion for their kindergartens than sleeping. Kindergartens at Shishan Shuben Primary school were asked to meditate on their usual mid-day nap time.
According to the news in ECNS, notices were already sent to parents ahead of time, before the new semester started. The notice contains a message saying that the school has decided to suspend mid-day naps and students will be introduced to guided meditation instead. When the new semester started, each student was given a paper to sit on. Then the students were made to watch instructional videos on how to meditate. The video featured the school's headmaster, Mr. Wu. However, Mr. Wu's instructions did not have the intended effect on students. Most of them slept anyway.
An interview with one of the students has generated this response, "He just keeps talking all the time while some of us have been falling asleep".
After two days of implanting the pilot program, it was stopped following a backlash from parents and media. The headmaster explained that the program was only a trial and final decision whether to replace naps with meditation depends on the students' feedback after a month. It appears that Principal Wu has good intentions. He has been known to practice meditation for the past 20 years. He claimed that it is very effective for resting and thinking that this is better than sleeping in the school's poorly ventilated dormitories, he decided to let the children try meditation instead.
Not so many parents agreed with this switch instead, lots of them called in to complain and the school was criticized for in social media for being "cultish" according to Oddity Central.
"The school can promote this new way of rest but they can't force children to do it, and actually people who practice sitting meditation study Buddhism and Taoism," a user wrote. "Sitting for naps is good, but perhaps children can't practice it very well," another said.
