It’s not as if parents these days don’t have enough things to keep them up at night. You know with all the crime, drugs, prostitution and teen pregnancies, you would think there couldn’t be many more things for baby boomers to worry about.
But alas, there is a new demon in town and some of the more overbearing parents are having a meltdown. This is something so terrible, so harmful to children it might reform them into Eastern- deity worshiping, Hindu-practicing little hellions. What is this horrible new influence on youngsters today, you ask? One word: yoga.
No, seriously. Yoga.
Some parents of students at Encinitas elementary schools threw a fit last month about the new yoga classes offered to their children. The classes are part of a new curriculum available thanks to a three-year, $533,000 grant from the Jois Foundation. The foundation promotes Ashtanga yoga, which teaches breathing techniques, meditation and balance.
Some schools started the yoga classes in September, while others are set to begin in January. However, the yoga program is being scrutinized and parents who want the class removed completely from the school curriculum hired a lawyer.
Now, aside from other obvious arguments, I am trying to wrap my head around what seems to me like racist and ignorant displays from these adults and role models. Am I—a nonreligious parent of a child who enjoys soccer—supposed to assume because my daughter kicks a ball around the field with other kids, she might pick up some sort of Hispanic influence because soccer is popular in Latin America? Are these parents equally worried about undue influence on their children from Judeo-Christian prayers before football games and car races?
Devout Christian writer David Grant said children won’t be influenced by yoga any more than other teachings, “In the same way they would be if they were practicing Kama Sutra. Hinduism is an applied philosophy.”
“When it comes to yoga and such, it has nothing to do with worshipping any of their gods, demons or cattle,” Grant said.
Despite the health benefits of the yoga program, some parents took their children out of the class and complained to district officials. Escondido Union School District Superintendent Tim Baird told the Associated Press in October he doesn’t expect the program to be removed from schools. Religious content had already been removed from the program and the class is taught solely as physical education, which many schools are losing because of budgetary constraints.
In a country where obesity has become an epidemic and it is often more fiscally sound to purchase fast-food every day than to make home-cooked meals, kids could use a little extra push to exercise. Parents need to step back and realize teaching yoga won’t make their kids want to practice Hinduism. In fact, they are instead teaching their children intolerance, something any role model should try to avoid.
“Ignorance breeds contempt,” Grant said.
The class has been “dumbed- down,” for a lack of a better phrase, by the school officials to ensure religious reference is not used in any way.
In an interview with ABC News, Baird addressed these concerns.
“Yoga is a physical activity that’s completely mainstream. It’s done in universities and churches around the world. I understand it has a cultural heritage coming from India and there are people that use yoga in their religious practices,” Baird said. “We are creating lesson plans in kid-friendly language that is really redesigning the program. We are not using cultural references. We are not using Sanskrit. We’ve changed the names to ‘gorilla pose’ and ‘ mountain pose’.”
Parents also complained the twice-a-week, half-hour sessions take away from the children’s 100 weekly minutes of PE. I took yoga in community college as an exercise science requirement and it made its way into my top three most disliked classes. Not because of any absurd complaints like these parents are making, but because the class was really hard. The parents are probably thinking the same thing I did when I signed up for Exercise Science-028: Yoga is for old ladies and lazy people.
Honestly, weight training was easier. Yoga is a workout that could benefit these kids.
The bottom line is children these days need any sort of physical activity they are willing to participate in.
Make the class optional and offer something else for those kids (or parents) who don’t want to take it. In the meantime, parents need to take a step back and allow their children to form their own ideas and beliefs about the world around them.
As Grant put it, “This is all about belief and how people view the world morally. They simply don’t understand the subject matter, don’t care to understand it and think they’re doing
what’s right for the child’s best interest.”
Step off, parents. Let your kids decide what they do and don’t like.
