Two Mind-Altering Curriculums

Abstract

Findings from neuroscience and psychological research reveal that the mind’s default state is wandering bearing directly on our well-being. These findings raise difficult questions as to the premises underlying the curriculum rendered as a “mind-altering device” (Eisner, 1993). This article analyzes the direction of causality between “thinking” and “mind” underlying educational theory and practice. The analysis yields two complementary curriculum strands: (1) the first concerns a common conception of the curriculum as training the student in how to think. Its direction of causality thus works from thinking to mind as it handles the mind’s deliberate thinking. (2) the second, reverses the first strand’s direction of causality suggesting working from mind to thinking to handle the mind as wanderer. Its defining curriculum question shifts the axis from how to think to whether to think. This curriculum applies mind-altering pedagogies grounded in “contemplative practice” (e.g., mindfulness, yoga, and tai chi).

Keywords

thinking mind contemplative practice mindfulness pedagogy

Following a formidable interest in contemplative practice and its place in education (Davidson et al., 2012; Duerr, Zajonc, & Dana, 2003; Ergas, 2014; Zajonc, 2009) this article distinguishes between two curriculum strands based on their conception of the human mind and its manifestation within thinking. The nature of this distinction stems from Eisner’s (1988) claim that “ … the curriculum is a mind-altering device. What we teach … is a means for altering the ways in which students think” (p. 19). Treating the curriculum as “mind-altering” allows for different renditions. The two strands of mind-altering curriculums proposed here are analyzed based on the directionality of their educational rationale and pedagogy. The first strand works from thinking to mind. It aspires to train students in diverse ways of thinking (e.g., rational, reflective, and creative). The foundational educational question from which such mind-altering curriculum emerges lies in how to think? The second strand reverses the directionality of the first strand and works from mind to thinking. This rationale has received far less attention in contemporary educational theory and practice, although its buds are becoming well noted within the growing interest in contemplative practices¹ (e.g., mindfulness practice and yoga) in education (Flook et al., 2010; Hart, 2004; Mamgain, 2010; Miller, 2007). The sources of the second strand’s rationale are traced to claims of some East Asian traditions now corroborated by recent developments in psychology and neuroscience research. This strand is based on the claim that our default state of mind is wandering. This implies that our mind is a poor instrument not fit for proper thinking since it is missing the basic conditions for such act (Wallace, 1999). The ramifications of this characteristic are not merely cognitive, however: Mind-wandering can in fact substantially affect our sense of identity, our well-being and our actions as will be shown. The wandering nature of our mind casts doubt as to the efficacy of the first strand mind-altering curriculum when it serves as our only model. It appears that there may be a need for a depth alteration of the mind that precedes or at least accompanies any form of manipulating the content of our thoughts such as pursued by a curriculum that educates in how to think. Thinking properly requires that one remain unbothered by random thoughts that affect his well-being and that one maintains a continuous focus on the subject matter. Both of these conditions are achieved by a mind-altering curriculum that shifts its foundational educational question from how to think to education in choosing whether to think and when to think. Less subtly put the distinction proposed here is between a curriculum that teaches us how to think and a curriculum that teaches us how to stop compulsive thinking. It will be claimed that both strands should be an integral part of the curriculum as each strand tends to a domain neglected by the other.

The article includes five parts. Part I defines the terms “mind” and “thinking.” Part II describes the features of the mind-altering curriculum grounded in how to think. Part III describes the mind’s wandering nature thus challenging the partiality of the curriculum described in part II. Part IV describes and defines the rationales of the two “mind-altering” curriculums emerging from the previous parts: altering-thinking and altering-mind. It then clarifies the distinction between these two strands based on their pedagogies. Part V characterizes mind-altering pedagogies demonstrating the applicability of the rationale proposed. A conclusion follows presenting the growing interest in mind-altering pedagogies and pointing to some difficulties inherent in their application.

“Mind” and “Thinking”

The mere mentioning of the term “mind” immediately thrusts us to the somewhat hostile territory of the mind/body dualism. This article avoids any dealings with this vexing dilemma. It will not make metaphysical claims as to the validity of dualism or monism in this respect, but it does embrace an approach which, “leaves room for pragmatically distinguishing between mental and physical aspects of behavior” (Shusterman, 2006, p. 2). In other words, I will employ a Cartesian language which treats “mind” as that which we experience by thinking. This distinction by no means refutes the clear intimate body–mind relation as Shusterman (2006) contended. My concern is not with making solid metaphysical claims, which I am in no point of making. I rather treat the Cartesian language as a pragmatic tool that enables me to make intelligible claims as to the nature of education and its further theoretical and practical development.

I will treat “thinking” based on Dewey’s (1910) initial and loose definition as signifying, “everything that, as we say, is ‘in our heads’ or that ‘goes through our minds'” (p. 2). As Dewey (1910) claimed, “Daydreaming, building of castles in the air, that loose flux of casual and disconnected material that floats through our minds in relaxed moments are, in this random sense, thinking” (p. 2). Thinking thus includes a host of incoherent as well as coherent thoughts. Some of these thoughts are well noted, while others can be hardly retrieved as in a case of “day-dreaming.” The point being made is that this article considers any form of discourse noted in the individual’s “head” as a thought, and as such it is a manifestation of “mind.” The validity, depth, or truthfulness of thoughts have no impact whatsoever on the characterization of their nature as thoughts.

Education as Mind-Altering Toward “How to Think”

Basil Bernstein’s (1971) theory of language use as a formative social process led him to claim that, “the curriculum is a mind-altering device.” The educational ramifications of this claim were developed and reiterated in many of Eliot Eisner’s writings. As Eisner (1988) maintained, “What we teach … is a means for altering the ways in which students think” (p. 19). In another article, Eisner (1993) claimed that “ … what schools allow children to think about shapes, in ways perhaps more significant than we realize, the kind of minds they come to own. Education … is a mind-making process” (p. 5). Eisner’s perspective reflects philosopher of education Richard Pring’s (1976) claim that, “Any educational theory or practice rests on a theory of mind … Central to the development of mind is the growth of knowledge” (p. 2). In other words, whatever claims we make as to the goals of education and its nature as process, imply holding certain premises concerned with the human mind, the way we learn and understand, and how we think. There is thus a clear relation between education, mind, and thinking.

This article explores the premises underlying the direction of causality between mind and thinking as they reflect on education and on pedagogy. That is, given a direct linkage between thinking and mind, the curriculum can work either from mind to thinking or from thinking to mind. Each possibility reflects different premises as to the nature of mind and lends itself to different pedagogies. Einser’s claims reveal the prevalent directionality of most of contemporary educational theory and practice. It reflects a focal concern of education as shaping how we think implying that our pedagogy focuses on working from thinking to mind. After shortly describing this strand of curriculum thinking, I will describe the reversal of this direction as we consider a curriculum that works from mind to thinking. Such orientation, it will be claimed, addresses a considerable domain which falls between the cracks of education in how to think.²

As Dewey (1910) wrote, “To expatiate upon the importance of thought would be absurd” (p. 14). Following Dewey’s tradition, Matthew Lipman (1985) developed Philosophy for Children based on his belief that “only the development of thinking skills holds out the promise of lifting the whole of education and not merely this or that aspect of it to a new level of excellence” (p. 83). These two figures roughly mark the boundaries of the 20th century. They themselves however stand on a long history of Western philosophers who have proposed theories of proper thinking. Formidable examples of such theories are reflected in Plato’s Socratic dialectics, in Aristotle’s formal logic, in Descartes’ grounding of scientific rationality, and in Kant’s rational approach to morality. The focus on human thinking has led to the development of diverse foci some of which have been directly applied to education and the curriculum. These include renditions of metacognition (Flavell, 1979), higher order thinking (Newman, 1990), critical thinking (Bailin, Case, Coombs, & Daniels, 1999), mathematical thinking (Dubinsky & Tall, 1991), and other. Lipman’s (2003) Thinking in Education constitutes a summary of diverse conceptualizations of thinking and their pedagogical renditions in light of his utter belief in education in how to think. Given the centrality of some of these formulations of proper thinking, one can certainly claim that the cultivation of how to think has been central to education.

While there may be a tendency to conceive of thinking as a rational-academic-oriented endeavor, theories of thinking have been central to other domains as well. In fact, Eisner’s very claim as to the curriculum as a “mind-altering device” was geared precisely toward pushing the curriculum beyond its academic-rational orientation. He critiqued the Platonic-Cartesian legacy as guilty of leading to a curriculum that neglects aesthetic education. Eisner’s (1998) “mind-making education” was thus directed at altering the mind by means of the sensual aspect of our cognition, so that we learn to “decode” diverse forms of cultural representations. Many of these representations are “encoded” through the nonrational language found in the arts. They thus compel us to broaden the ways in which students are trained to think.³ Nel Noddings’s work proposed another example of extending the rational hegemony. In her Happiness and Education (2003) and Critical Lessons (2006), she advocated a curriculum that highlights making a home, finding hobbies, and discussing friendship to mention but a few of the activities she explored as balancing an Aristotelian rationalistic legacy. These domains seemed to her much more in tune with life than the prioritization of algebra for example, that many of us would not utilize much in our adult life.

The cultivation of how to think has not been confined to the realm of disciplinary knowledge characteristic of much of the curriculum. How to think has been an integral part of education in morality as well. In fact, this domain has been given its foundations within Socrates’ view of philosophical discourse as training in livingness (Ergas, 2012). The Socratic dialogue was a rational inquiry that constituted a transformative pedagogy that was aimed at realizing the “good” and living accordingly (Hadot, 1995). Kant’s categorical imperative was an additional example of viewing morality as based on rational judgment. Education in morality for Kant meant being able to align oneself with duty—a task one can only accomplish by means of rational analysis. Yet again, the hegemony of the rational within the domain of moral education was critiqued toward broadening the ways in which we think morally. Noddings’ (1988, 2003, [1984]) ethics of care provided fertile grounds from which education in morality was extended from a masculine Platonic-Kantian judgment-based education to a feminine affective-intuitive one, framed as “maternal thinking” (p. 223).

There is no doubt that training us in how to think (rationally, critically, creatively, reflectively, intuitively, maternally, etc.) is a crucial and much required aspect of education. Yet, we may be lured by our very own predicament that masks the possibility of seeing beyond this question. The question “how to think?” fails to acknowledge that thinking, when viewed as including “all that goes on in our heads” as Dewey’s initial loose definition suggests, is also a compulsive activity. While there may be no need “to expatiate upon the importance of thinking,” as Dewey rightfully pointed out, we may still need to expatiate upon the problems plaguing most of us concerned with too much thinking; or in fact not being able to stop thinking. This article asks us to add a foundational curriculum question as equally important as how to think; a question that opens the door for a complementary curriculum that educates us in choosing “whether to think?” Such question may bear an ontological precedence over the traditional how to think? It shifts our discourse to challenge that which we may have been taking for granted as our starting point.

The mind-altering curriculum of whether to think proposed here does not target thoughts as content. It rather targets the mind as the apparatus from which thoughts emanate taking Eisner’s formulation of the curriculum as “mind-altering” much more literally. Make no mistake this article fervently advocates the importance of cultivating diverse ways of thinking in light of many of the previously mentioned accounts. It simply claims that the human predicament of mind-wandering described subsequently implies that much of the time we are not at all in our right minds to even begin such process. There are at least three pitfalls inherent in a mind-altering curriculum that focuses on how to think that may be healed by a mind-altering curriculum concerned with whether to think: (1) It does not acknowledge enough that thinking is a default state and that one can cultivate the ability to choose otherwise. (2) It does not handle all that “idle thinking” occupying the student much of the time. Yet it is now known that this very enigmatic terrain has immense impact on our actions, sense of identity, and our well-being. (3) Finally, an emphasis on how to think wittingly or unwittingly leads to a pervasive missed opportunity concerned with the “body’s” educational role in the curriculum. I tended to this issue in other articles (Ergas, 2013a, 2013b), and therefore will only slightly revisit it toward the end of this article.

The Problem With Thinking

Descartes is known for defining the human subject as “a thinking thing.” This observation constituted the “Archimedean point” from which he laid one of the cornerstones of modern science. However, if we reconsider this Cartesian Archimedean point from a different perspective, it is revealed as a human predicament. We are not just “thinking things (or perhaps beings).” We actually “live in our minds,” within words, concepts, and thoughts. This is not merely a product of modernism or the postindustrial age. It is rather embedded far more deeply in our primordial workings as Rosch (1997) demonstrated.⁴

We experience much of our living through the chatter produced by our minds. Some of this chatter constitutes coherent deliberate thoughts yet in other times (a good share of the day in some of us), our minds are hopeless wanderers. In Dewey’s (1910) words, “More of our waking life than we should care to admit, even to ourselves, is likely to be whiled away in this inconsequential trifling with idle fancy and unsubstantial hope” (p. 2). We simply cannot help but recycle our own product through endless permutations of past memories and future fantasy. This claim can be validated in at least three different ways:

Neuroscientists Raichle et al. (2001) have shown that wandering seems to be the brain’s default operational mode. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans show that when we are not asked to do anything in particular, our brains are still very active. Raichle et al. named this the “default mode network.” Further research has shown that the “default mode network” is associated with “activity during mental explorations referenced to oneself including remembering, considering hypothetical social interactions, and thinking about one’s own future” (Buckner, Andrews-Hannah, & Schcahter, 2008, p. 31). These, “functions of a self-referential nature” (Sheline et al., 2008, p. 1942) are the makings of our nondeliberate thoughts. Yet, this highly sophisticated academic language may conceal a less pleasing description of this default state of our minds. More boldly put the mind simply “chews the cud.” It feeds itself with thoughts, recycling (usually to no avail) the troubling issues of “its owner’s” life. Psychologists Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010), to which we shall return soon, have phrased this in the following statement, based on a substantial empirical study “ … human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all” (p. 932).

A second path of corroborating our compulsive thinking turns to some East Asian traditions that depict the human mind’s chattering-wandering nature in insightful, though derogatory ways. Buddhist texts equate the mind to a wild beast, an elephant, a horse and most famously, to a monkey.⁵ The “monkey-ness” of mind depicts its unsettled nature reminiscent of the chatter of monkeys. Another animal simile attributed to the Sung dynasty Zen Master Kaku-an Shi-en (12th-century CE) depicts the path toward enlightenment⁶ within the “Ten Ox-Herding Pictures.” The mind is represented here by an ox. The ox-herder is one who tames the mind in order to reach enlightenment, and the tree to which the ox is tied represents the practice of meditation.

A third corroboration path suggests a first-person experiment, which may be much more illustrative and powerful than any fMRI picture or wisdom tradition. That is, since it becomes a stark experiential testimony that provides one with a snapshot of his very own makings: simply close your eyes, and count your breaths from 1 to 10. Every inhalation and exhalation would constitute one cycle. See if you can keep this going for ten minutes … It sounds simple enough, however most people trying this form of “concentration meditation” suggested by Thich Nhat Hanh (1975), report either becoming lost in unrelated thoughts about yesterday or tomorrow, losing count one way or another, or becoming sleepy. The moment we try to focus on something such as counting our breaths, our minds protest in diverse ways confirming the very observation of Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) stated previously.

The previously mentioned claims point to these two facts: (1) We are indeed thinking beings but much of the time our thinking is uncontrolled, (2) saying we are thinking beings is a very flattering formulation of a condition that can be phrased less satisfyingly: We are not just thinking beings we are “beings who can't stop thinking.” These two claims drive us home effectively to education once a cogent claim shows that our nonstop thinking determines our well-being, and our sense of identity all related diversely to education (Dewey, 1938; Noddings, 2003). Evidence for this claim is ready at hand as well:

Consider again Killingsworth and Gilbert’s (2010) empirical study, now elaborated: These psychologists examined 2,250 randomly picked adults in order to measure how often their minds wandered and how such wandering is related to their sense of well-being. Their conclusions were that (a) much of the time our thoughts are unrelated to the actions in which we are engaged (46.9% of over 500,000 samples showed mind-wandering), and (b) the content of our thoughts is a far better indicator of our well-being, than the actions in which we are engaged. The stark conclusion of their study was that “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost” (p. 932).⁷ In addition, psychologists Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman (1978) demonstrated that drastic changes in one’s life do not affect one’s sense of well-being for long. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the thought-patterns employed toward the assessment of our subjective well-being do not change significantly as a consequence of drastic life changes. In other words, since our thoughts remain similarly structured, the thoughts concerning the assessment of subjective well-being do not significantly change either, even given events such as winning the lottery or having an accident as Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman’s famous study showed.

A more personal approach would ask us to consider the following wry saying attributed to Josh Billings: “I am a very old man, and I have suffered many troubles in my life, most of which never happened.” If this saying bears any family resemblance to your own experience, then Killingsworth and Gilberts’ findings become a statement of the obvious. Were you worried recently? Stressed? Angry? Afraid?—What are these experiences and how much have they affected your well-being? Your actions? Your sense of identity?—Following the logic of Billings’ saying—how much did these feelings have to do with the actual reality of your present moment? How much of your worries become a faint phantasm, given the elapsing of a week or two? One of the ways in which you have experienced your worries, anger, stress, and so on, was via thoughts (via “mind”). That is how you came to conceptualize them through the terms “stress,” “anger,” and so on. Thoughts come into being within our minds whether we deliberately choose to have them or not. They color our days and affect our actions. Some of us can attend work quite well even when worried, yet perhaps we may snap much more quickly at an intrusion which at other times would not bother us? Perhaps we are good at going through the motions, but the hollow sensation in our stomach accompanying these motions constantly reminds us that something is wrong. We do not even always know what that something is, but the feeling is so vivid, that it compels us to believe it, constantly introducing unpleasant chatter into our minds. The previously mentioned, then shows that our capability to think that Descartes took to be a foundation for science, has a flipside. It can become a grave human predicament. “It comes with at an emotional cost,” as Killingsworth and Gilbert claimed.

The question then becomes whether all this drama has to do with education. Instead of directly tending to this matter, I rather continue with the thread of the argument here and believe the relation to education will clearly emerge by the following. What I propose is a very basic polarization that will enable me to develop an educational rationale later on: Our default mind operates in two different modes: (1) It can be harnessed to a deliberate task that I shall call controlled doing or (2) it wanders, which I shall call uncontrolled doing. This wandering can take various forms, yet as Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010), and as numerous scholars and teachers show (Hanh, 1975; Kabat-Zinn, 1994), there is a common denominator to uncontrolled doing—Mind-wandering literally implies that we wander away from “here” and “now.” The term “here” refers concomitantly to locality and temporality. Simply put when we are not within controlled doing, we are everywhere but here and now: We are not present. Presence is the determining factor that marks the rift between the poles of controlled and uncontrolled doing suggested previously.⁸

This is a distinction that a good share of educational theory and practice fails to make. Our minds can produce the thoughts required for the invention of penicillin and the writing of Hamlet, they can solve quadratic equations, discuss moral issues, and read the bible. Yet these are the products of a deliberate effort carried successfully toward certain ends. They are the products of a mind, which is in control when conceiving these ideas, or engaged in such activities. I would presume that when many teachers enter a classroom to teach a certain discipline such as history, math, science, literature, geography, and so on, they expect to encounter their students literally in their right minds; that is in controlled doing rather than as wandering-minds within uncontrolled doing. They may be required to draw students’ attention to the material taught, but essentially they are required to teach a certain discipline. That is, once the attention of the students is there, or assumed to be there, the teacher–student encounter concerns the discipline taught based on the assumption that both sides’ minds are in controlled doing. Yet, the discussion of the human predicament of mind-wandering brought previously, shows that our natural ability to remain continuously within controlled doing is very poor. If most students’ (and teachers’) wandering habits are close to those of the 2,250 adults in Killingsworth and Gilbert’s research, then it would be safe to claim that they dwell in uncontrolled doing nearly half of the time. According to the previously mentioned, that means that this determining factor of their actions, identity, and sense of well-being, is not handled directly (or even indirectly in most cases) neither by the pedagogy nor by the content of most school lessons. Most of our school day is based on the assumption that we are in our right minds. This means that our schooling takes charge of a very partial aspect of our existence, however, the part left unhandled (all those “unknown” thoughts emanating from the wandering mind), has major consequences on our actions, well-being, moods, and to a great extent on our ability to attend to any academic endeavor at stake. The theories of how to think underlying our curriculum may be altering the mind in various ways however they are not altering our minds’ main predicament of wandering at least not intentionally or significantly. In working from thinking to mind, we may be leaving too big a portion of our lives to the mercy (or cruelty) of chance rather than rethinking how our curriculum can be extended to target our wandering minds directly.

Two Mind-Altering Curriculums

A rendition of the curriculum as “mind-altering” based on the previously mentioned distinction between controlled and uncontrolled doing suggests two points of departure: (1) It can either assume the mind to be in controlled doing or (2) it can assume the mind to be in uncontrolled doing. Both of these renditions are concerned with mind-altering, however the first works toward this end indirectly, and the second which will be clarified later on, works directly toward this end. The first strand assumes the students to be present and works to alter the mind in the sense of improving its ability to manipulate its thinking processes. It teaches the student to think properly; that is, to handle the content of his thoughts based on the premise that the student knows what goes on in his head; he attends to it; he is mindful of it. The content of his thoughts is concerned with the subject matter taught at that moment. The content of the subject matter can be a disciplinary curriculum as described previously or it can certainly include education in morality as discussed in part II. This curriculum seeks mind-altering indirectly by working with thoughts. One can think of this as working from the branches to the stem and the roots if we view thinking as a product of the mind. From now on, I shall name this strand as mind-alteration by altering thinking and shortly put: thinking-altering referring to the direct activity entailed in the pedagogy as I elaborate hereafter.

The other strand concerns a curriculum that sets its goal as altering the mind in the sense of transforming its default nature by tending directly to its tendency to wander within uncontrolled doing. The premise of this curriculum is that our mind is a wandering mind and that means that much of the time we are not in control of our thoughts. That is, thoughts run in our minds and we may suddenly note that we have been thinking with only a faint idea of what exactly it was that we were thinking about. This curriculum will be named thinking-alteration by mind-altering and shortly put: mind-altering. This strand presents a more direct and literal interpretation of Eisner’s rendition of the curriculum as a “mind-altering device.”

I have begun to articulate the rationale for this strand earlier as the relation between mind-wandering and our well-being and actions was established. I wish to deepen this claim and begin pointing to the pedagogy of this second strand found in one of William James’s (1890 [1981]) numerous piercing observations: “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will…An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence” (p. 401). James not only acknowledged the problem of our wandering minds, but he also viewed it as the primary business of education. If the first conception of the curriculum as “mind-altering” was concerned with teaching students how to think properly, this second strand would be concerned with cultivating the conditions that precede any form of proper thinking that to a great extent determine actions. Why would “bringing back a wandering attention” be considered education par excellence?—Some examples concerned directly with the world of a contemporary student may help explain this. Consider the following situation and the analysis that follows after them:

A ninth grader has flunked two math exams. He studies hard for a retake. Right now, he is taking this exam again. If he flunks again, he may get kicked out of school. Up until these two exams, he was an A student. Something went wrong in the last two exams; something, which he could not define or understand. So he prepared himself now extremely well for the exam, but now it’s “money-time.” He can’t get through more than one question out of five. His “mind” is all over the place. A chorus of voices tells him: “you can't do this,” “you’ll get kicked out of school,” yet then out of nowhere he hears a faint voice: “you studied hard for this,” “you can do this … ” … and then again “you're stupid … ”

Larry is a teenager. He meets up with his friends after school. One of them pulls out two funny-colored pills, which he has never seen before. An inner voice tells him—“stay away from that,” but then immediately some other part in that same “mind” of his tells him: “won't they call me chicken for not trying those pills?” or perhaps: “what would that attractive girl think of me if I don't try these?” …

Karen is a sixth grader very eager to get accepted to a prestigious high school. Her parents are putting a lot of pressure on her. She’s just noted an article slipping from her teacher’s bag. She looks down, and to her surprise finds out that it’s a copy of tomorrow’s history exam—that subject that gave her so much trouble on the last exam. With her pulse jumping from 70 to 140 in a matter of seconds she places her bag on this article, and waits for a safe opportunity to sneak it into her bag …

Each one of these examples makes a certain point: (1) The first story fleshes out an example given in Mamgain (2010, p. 25) and comes close to my own experience. I did not flunk that math test again, nor was I very successful, yet whichever the consequence was, it was determined by my ability to “bring back my wandering attention” to the task at hand. Whenever my mind lost control I lost control, and the possibility of doing math was lost with it. This story involves two main factors directly concerned with education: (a) The instrumental side of it reveals that our ability to quiet our minds is a precondition for academic success. (b) While academic success is surely a worthy cause, the more profound point is that we need to quiet our minds when they begin an endless chatter that completely shatters the sense of “who we are”; our identity. Cultivating the skill of “bringing back a wandering attention” implies that we become educated in seeing through our mind’s chatter. We can resist the lure of these thoughts as determining factors in our identity formation and our actions. In so doing, we can attend the present since we do not allow self-defeating thoughts to carry us away from the task at hand.

(2) Larry’s story demonstrates the need to withstand peer-group pressure. Again, this concerns our identity, yet here the example reflects one possible situation in which misjudgment can be fatal. Whether Larry takes the pill (which I am not even bothering to name) or not depends on the extent to which his attention will remain fixed on right judgment. Deep inside he probably knows what’s best, but such knowledge may be easily covered by the chatter of his mind that lures his attention elsewhere. (3) The third example takes us more directly to education in morality which I will soon handle. Karen also knows what’s right. When she first saw that article on the floor she simply acted quickly. It would be hard to claim that she was thinking at all. It was a quick move unaccounted for as if it was “not really her” that was performing it. This action reflects the first part of her mindlessness. On her way home, she “re-awakened” to find herself in this new situation. A host of thoughts may come to her mind: “is this the right thing to do?” Some of her thoughts might be quite compelling rationalizations calling her to cheat, while equally compelling voices call her to confess. It is certainly plausible to claim that there are moral dilemmas that make it hard for us to choose the right thing to do, yet this case is slightly different. This is a typical case in which many of us would know what is right, yet some would fail to act accordingly. What would make Karen do the right thing?—Perhaps if she was trained in calming her chattering mind even just for a few moments, the right thing to do would become much more transparent. This moment of quiet may bring a much clearer sense of who she is? What is at stake here? And from there, the question how should I act? may more naturally follow. However, the precondition for such moment of quiet is an education of “bringing back a wandering attention”—a depth education of the wandering-mind yielding “judgment, character and will” as James suggested.

I am quite sure that those who cannot identify with these examples specifically may have numerous versions of their own. These personal stories will reflect our “wandering attention” which plays tricks on us as we awaken suddenly during a drive to work, not knowing who was there to drive the car for quite some time; as we are being introduced to someone, forgetting their name as soon as it is mentioned; as we are about to reconcile with a close friend yet are overwhelmed by our bodily sensations as we are approach the phone, or simply as we forget where we left the car keys, just now when we need to rush outside … Some examples are completely prosaic, others are deeper, and some are life-threatening. Overall, they are snapshots of who we are. They are presented in this rather grim passage only for the sake of awakening us educational theorists and practitioners to consider, that there is a mind-altering curriculum very much called for which we have not yet considered enough.

Sharpening the Distinction Through Pedagogy

Both thinking-altering and mind-altering are curriculum devices involved in “Education as a mind-making process” (Eisner, 1993). They both rest on the assumption that our mind needs training. That is, if we leave our minds untrained, they are more susceptible to error. Errors can be reflected in not knowing factual knowledge or within the domain of morality, as not being able to tell right from wrong (at least within a certain culturally based decorum). Assuming thus that both curriculums seek a depth process that transforms one’s being, affecting both the mind and the thoughts emanating from it, the question is where exactly does the difference between these strands lie? What is the determining factor that distinguishes between the two strands of “mind-altering” whether it is concerned with disciplinary knowing or with the domain of morality?

It would be the pedagogy. If the pedagogy relies on an assumption that the student’s mind is in controlled doing, then such pedagogy is part of a thinking-altering curriculum. By no means does this mean that such method is ineffective. However, if the pedagogy is based on teaching of disciplinary knowledge or morality, through dialogue or discussion then such pedagogy fails to address mind-wandering directly. Such pedagogy in fact assumes the conditions it aspires to create—a mind that is in control of its thinking. This claim is further accentuated if we raise the possibility of education in morality, for example, as entailing students’ reflection about their actions. Such pedagogy would be crucial to the cultivation of morality. Still, it must be acknowledged that if our vehicle remains thinking (even within self-reflection in the sense of thinking about our actions), we are not engaged in thinking-alteration by altering mind but rather in a worthy form of mind-alteration by altering thinking. Thinking-altering remains within the mind’s default state of not being able to “stop thinking.” By no means am I claiming that thinking is wrong.⁹ I am only claiming that it makes less sense to assume that by thinking we can be cured from the habit of wandering that manifests in our inability to control thinking.¹⁰ Had we always been in charge of what goes on in our minds, and had it not been a major factor in determining our well-being, identity, and actions, thinking-altering would perhaps suffice. However, given that this is not the case, and given that mind-wandering is so pervasive in our lives, and has such impact on the way we feel and behave, it is highly plausible to claim that our curriculum requires an additional form of mind-altering; one that directly targets mind-wandering.

If we consider Mezirow’s (1997) conception of transformative learning as fostering our ability to expose the “structures of assumptions” through which our experiences are perceived, then we need to go beyond the discursive material from which the practice of reflection is made. The material out of which the pedagogy of such curriculum is made must be other than thinking. In a sense, it must precede thinking ontologically for if we remain at the level of thinking, we remain controlled by the habits of the source of thinking that we eventually wish to target—the mind. We need to go deeper, to the place from which thoughts emanate and can be observed. We need to reestablish an “Archimedean point” from which we can dissociate from our own thoughts and become educated in choosing to believe the thoughts we deem worthy.¹¹ This would indeed be education in judgment, character, and will, as our identity becomes grounded in presence and our actions are not held captive by random thoughts we know not their merit. We need a mode that steps out of doing since both controlled and uncontrolled doing remain within thinking. We need a mind-altering curriculum that teaches us non-doing. What would the makings of a mind-altering curriculum be?

Mind-Altering Pedagogies

The following section suggests some contemplative practices as mind-altering pedagogies. I do not intend this as an introduction to contemplative practices; a theme requiring much more breadth.¹² Here, I only propose to clarify some aspects of such pedagogies based on broad-brush strokes in order to show the practical and applicable sides of the theory developed.¹³ Many of these pedagogies are already deployed in various school settings as I shall later mention.

Very simply put, if the problem that a mind-altering curriculum seeks to handle, concerns our poor ability to remain present, then mind-altering pedagogies would be defined as pedagogies that work toward “bringing back a wandering attention” as rendered by James. Such pedagogy entails working directly against the tendency of our wandering-attention. The technical instruction here concerns “ordering” our attention back to a certain object of choice whenever it is noted to wander away from this object. We must distinguish clearly between “ordering” and “thinking.” Whereas the content of “thinking” can be infinite, the content of “ordering” in this case has only one subject matter. It consists of willing our attention back to the locus of choice. One can think of these as two different modes of attention that are here described phenomenologically avoiding any ontological claims as to the nature of mind.¹⁴ Thus, “ordering” can be viewed either as (1) having one thought the content of which is: “I must return my attention to X” leading to the execution of this order or (2) it can be thought of as a deliberate act of will, that requires no preceding aware thought at all, as in a case in which I reach for the coffee mug, without having any need to literally tell my hand to do so.

There are various ways of typologizing mind-altering pedagogies. One way I suggest opens two possibilities concerned with the object we choose for bringing back the wandering attention. The object can be either (1) the natural unfolding of present experience—implying a constantly changing object or (2) the object can be chosen particularly for the sake of the exercise, implying an unchanging object.¹⁵ Each category can then be further unpacked. The first category can be referred to as mindfulness practice. The sources of this practice lie in Buddhism and take us to the sati patthana suta, yet as Hyland (2009) shows there have been compelling contemporary accounts that have extracted the basics of the practice from a “spiritual”/traditional orientation to yield a pragmatic approach. Kabat-Zinn’s (1994, p. 4–5) clinical rendition of Mindfulness-Based-Stress-Reduction offers the following definition for the practice, which serves us well here, “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.” In a 2011 American Educational Research Association (AERA) symposium, John Miller, one of the founders of the Holistic Education movement, referred to mindfulness as “the opposite of multi-tasking.” It implies slowing down our pace and giving utmost importance to any experience unfolding. That includes focusing on our sensual experiences, breath, sensations, and thoughts.¹⁶

A very important aspect in the education of the wandering mind pertaining to this first category concerns what I define as “body-oriented pedagogy” (Ergas, 2012, 2013a, 2013b). “Body-oriented pedagogy” is the rendition of “body-based contemplative practice” (i.e., yoga, embodied mindfulness, tai chi, and Feldenkrais technique) within educational and pedagogical terms. Its essence lies in cultivating mindfulness to the realm of sensations (body) at the expense of thoughts (mind). It is a mind-altering pedagogy that reverses the Cartesian subject as we are educated in becoming “sensing beings” as well as “thinking beings.” This orientation is the very countering of the mind’s tendency to wander, since it compels our attention to remain grounded in present bodily sensations.¹⁷

The second category concerns objects that are chosen in advance to serve for the duration of the practice. Differing from breath, sensations, and other sensual experience which can be monotonous yet are constantly in flux, here, the object chosen is conceived as unchanging. Zajonc’s (2009) Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry offers a rich reservoir of such pedagogies some of which can be viewed as concerned in the most direct way with “bringing back a wandering attention.” These include, for example, studying an extremely simple object thoroughly (e.g., a pin, paper clip, and a pencil) and attempting to reconstruct it fully with one’s eyes closed.¹⁸ One unchanging point of reference is chosen as the anchor of this practice, clearly reflecting James’s “bringing back a wandering attention over and over again.”

Both strands of mind-altering pedagogies counter the two founding features of the wandering-mind: (1) its default of thinking. (2) its default of wandering. These practices concern attending and observing; a mode that contrasts the mind’s constant thinking conceived as doing. Attending and observing yield the possibility of non-doing. The only doing involved in these pedagogies consists of the “ordering” of our wandering attention. Once attention is back attending or observing imply non-doing. It is deployed solely toward noting that which is at this very moment; no judgment, no tinkering. This disposition is opposed to thinking which is here conceived as an act which has an end, even when it occurs as an endless ruminative loop. It is a perpetual mobile that seeks resolution yet never quite satisfies this end.¹⁹

By mind-altering pedagogies, we study our mind directly and learn that we actually have a choice other than the default doing mode. We are not compelled to one mode of being within thinking. We are thus educated directly at the level of the mind, as we do not heed to the level of thought content whether controlled or uncontrolled. By practicing the returning of attention over and over again, we foster the conditions over which the conventional thinking-altering curriculum training in how to think can be erected. While it is certainly not proposed that we can gain full control over the content of our thoughts, through practice we do gain a measure of control over what we can do with our attention. The fact that we hear constant thoughts in our mind does not directly imply that we are to listen. By returning to the object we have chosen we train ourselves in whether to think or to attend and observe. We cultivate choice whether to think or not to think.

While I alluded to James’s conceptions of character and judgment that clearly point to our morality, my focus here has been mostly on the cognitive aspects of the education of the mind. It is well worth stating that working to bring our mind-wandering under more control through a mind-altering curriculum is a crucial basis for education in morality. Both Robinson (2004) and Mamgain (2010) stress the need to ground contemplative practice within an ethical framework. Zajonc (2009) conceives contemplative inquiry as based in an “epistemology of love.” I strongly agree with these claims and offer the previously mentioned analysis as lending itself to the further development of such orientations.

Conclusion

The mind-altering curriculum is already present. There is a growing amount of empirical evidence demonstrating promising effects of the incorporation of mindfulness practice, yoga, tai chi, and other contemplative practices within various school settings (Davidson et al., 2012; Ergas, 2014; Flook et al., 2010;). Creative contemplative pedagogies are finding their way into higher education (Barbezat & Bush, 2014; Lin, Oxford, & Brantmeier, 2013; Palmer & Zajonc, 2010; Shapiro, Brown & Astin, 2011). Concomitantly, Organizations such as the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education and Mindfulness in Education are becoming increasingly known. Mind-altering is thus certainly here. The purpose of this article is to provide an additional perspective on its nature, propose one of its names, broaden its philosophical basis, and render its underlying rationale as simply common sense.

There are clearly further issues that this article did not handle. Though the short description of mind-altering pedagogies may give a sense that such practices are simple, such impression is quite misleading. James (1890 [1981]), who was described as one of the formulators of such curriculum, has acknowledged the difficulty of “bringing back a wandering attention” in claiming that “ … it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about” (p. 401). His claim is not precise in this case. The “practical directions” given for these practices are surprisingly simple. The challenge lays in their execution. One attempting to bring his wandering attention back to his breath/sensations or to an object of choice, quickly finds, that the simplicity of the instruction is reversely proportionate to the difficulty of execution. As noted previously, the default state of wandering quickly takes over this deliberate act, constantly resisting this sudden change of habit. The nagging question “why am I doing this at all” quickly initiates within the “mind” of the practitioner luring him back to his regular business of doing; thinking (whether controlled or uncontrolled). Thus, only very established teachers can teach a mind-altering curriculum since only present-minded teachers can teach their students presence. This raises difficulties as to the possibility of the implementation of a mind-altering curriculum. It begs us to reconsider our teacher education programs. Other concerns refer us to the question of balance. What should we consider as the right balance between mind-altering and thinking-altering? How would we assess the extent to which mind-altering has been successful? What is the age-appropriateness of mind-altering pedagogies? Can these be applied in kindergarten or primary school? These are difficult questions requiring further theory, but most of all they require the implementation of some of these pedagogies, while concomitantly figuring out the appropriate ways of assessing them. I presume that these very tasks will require that we train ourselves further both in how to think, and in whether to think. We need both. The curriculum needs both. This leads us to answer the question posed in the title of this article: “To think or not to think?”—I believe to think and not to think—and most of all to be able to determine whether to thing, how to think and when to think.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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