Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness • Hacker News Board

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#121

Post by sridca » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

weavie wrote: post #120

sridca wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a vegan-inspired/ anti-meat diet (similar to Canada's New Food Guide), backed by the processed food industry, but with plenty of issues which are neatly summarized by Georgia Ede here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...

Thanks. I would tweak that diet slightly. Drop the whole grains by an order of magnitude, up the vegetables as much as possible, and increase the lard/tallow to make up the rest. I do agree that we probably eat more meat that we should, but it does look like they are swinging the other way here. How much is 15 calories of beef? About a spooful?

> I do agree that we probably eat more meat that we should, but it does look like they are swinging the other way here.

Meat is actually nutritious and healthy. You can read the details in the following link: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/foods/

(I personally am on the carnivore diet).

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#122

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

carlsborg wrote: post #68

bencollier49 wrote: post #33

My five year-old son now talks about his mind in the third person as a result of this. I'm having to retrain him with responsibility for his own actions. Lovely idea and all but having untrained people teaching psychological practices to reception-grade children seems rather foolhardy to me.

Why is that a bad thing? If they can evaluate their thought process at such a young age, I would think that's a win.

Are they evaluating their thought processes, or are they parroting what they were taught while still being, you know, five years old?

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#123

Post by weavie » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

sridca wrote: post #121

weavie wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I would tweak that diet slightly. Drop the whole grains by an order of magnitude, up the vegetables as much as possible, and increase the lard/tallow to make up the rest. I do agree that we probably eat more meat that we should, but it does look like they are swinging the other way here. How much is 15 calories of beef? About a spooful?

> I do agree that we probably eat more meat that we should, but it does look like they are swinging the other way here. Meat is actually nutritious and healthy. You can read the details in the following link: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/foods/ (I personally am on the carnivore diet).

Personally, I try to eat as wide a variety of foods as possible (that includes cheesecake!) I don't find just limiting myself to meat, or just to vegetables, or indeed just to cheesecake to be appealing.

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#124

Post by Cthulhu_ » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

fiala__ wrote: post #29

ionised wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are asserting that depression is a learned behaviour?

They're probably also the kind of person who tells depressed people to "cheer up, life's not all that bad after all!"

I've seen a few posts like that in this comment section so far.

Obligatory Reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/wowthanksimcured

"Homeless Chicago man suffering from hypothermia makes miraculous recovery after someone from Wisconsin informs him 'it's actually much colder where I'm from'"

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#125

Post by sridca » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

weavie wrote: post #123

sridca wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do agree that we probably eat more meat that we should, but it does look like they are swinging the other way here. Meat is actually nutritious and healthy. You can read the details in the following link: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/foods/ (I personally am on the carnivore diet).

Personally, I try to eat as wide a variety of foods as possible (that includes cheesecake!) I don't find just limiting myself to meat, or just to vegetables, or indeed just to cheesecake to be appealing.

I do it to cure (99%) a chronic condition (and it remains to be seen whether my gut will heal enough to allow old foods back). If I had a choice, I'd be eating a meat-based diet with rice and ice cream!

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#126

Post by lm28469 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

nulbyte wrote: post #105

lm28469 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My current company also recently introduced a Mindfulness workshop only this time it was really a basic meditation workshop which I enjoyed. I find it extremely weird for companies to offer these things. The only reason they'd do it is to boost their own productivity / margin / whatever. As in "be healthy because we need your ass on that chair and your brain working on our problems". There is already a thin enough…

I want to be healthy. My employer needs me to be healthy. My employer is willing to pay for some of it. Where's the problem?

You're free to see it how you like.

I personally see it as one step in the direction of work totalitarianism where everything you do is thoroughly designed for workplace productivity.

I have no doubt that if megacorps started to build bedrooms in their offices (even with bunkbeds) and offered them for free a lot of people would gladly move in there permanently without even thinking about the big picture.

But again, you do you, and you set your own boundaries.

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#127

Post by austincheney » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 3:31 PM UTC

SomethingOrNot wrote: post #119

austincheney wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't adults just solve their mental problems instead of introducing them to children? Because people live in an artificial world. In the absence of real problems everything is emotionally traumatic, first world problems. As I sit next to a war on a military deployment I await people to prove me right with the sadness of their downvotes.

You’re like the main character in Hurt Locker at the end of the movie. He has come home from deployment and is standing in a supermarket. The mundane, everyday reality of First World civilian life seems meaningless in contrast. So he goes back for another deployment. Another deployment in a pointless and meaningless war, yet another racket that has everything to do with the interests of the powerful and nothing to do…

I don't disagree with you. Seeing civilians with real struggles in a world destroyed by years of warfare that would crush the soul of the average depressed American puts your own trivial problems in a completely different perspective, especially when they are happily making the best of their situation.

This is my fourth deployment. When I go back to my comfy civilian job as the elite senior developer it is a bit depressing seeing the things people complain about at the job.

As an example consider this scenario that I went through:

Another developer was telling me I was using the wrong IDE. I needed to be using Atom because it has the fantastic extension called Atom Beautify that beautifies a whole bunch of different languages with a huge ton of options. I guess he didn't realize I am a collaborator on the project and many of the supported languages are available because of my beautifier integrated into the extension. Then when I am leaving the company for this military separation I had to hear from my boss in the exit interview that some code I wrote months ago was horrid, because the other developers only know how to read OOP code (even though I provided extensive documentation). Nobody bothered to talk about it or explain their distaste. How am I supposed to process that?

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#128

Post by austincheney » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 3:33 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #89

austincheney wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a tragic event. Healthy people bounce back from trauma after a healing period. Healthy people aren't the ones in need of institutional self-awareness. Conversely, do you have chronic income insecurity? Are you dodging bullets and bombs daily as some people do? Were you ever a victim of child slavery in a third-world nation? I suspect if you have internet access you probably have reliable shelter and don't str…

Yes, I was forced to leave my home and sleep on friend's houses multiple times during my childhood; once, we were forced to leave by threat of force in the evening, and spend three months living on a floor mattress in another city. For a couple of years, I often struggled to fall asleep due to fear, not just for me but also for my younger brother - my chest would compress at every loud noise. Randomly crying when alo…

That is a dreadful experience that will empower you in ways others can never understand or appreciate. I have tried to explain living like this to my kids in the past and they just look at me like I am stupid.

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#129

Post by icebraining » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #128

icebraining wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I was forced to leave my home and sleep on friend's houses multiple times during my childhood; once, we were forced to leave by threat of force in the evening, and spend three months living on a floor mattress in another city. For a couple of years, I often struggled to fall asleep due to fear, not just for me but also for my younger brother - my chest would compress at every loud noise. Randomly crying when alo…

That is a dreadful experience that will empower you in ways others can never understand or appreciate. I have tried to explain living like this to my kids in the past and they just look at me like I am stupid.

No, it won't. It screwed me up in ways I still haven't fully grasped, and has long term negative consequences in my life. And I certainly wished I had been more mentally prepared to handle its impact.

Which is why is fucking bothers me that you dismiss life for kids in the developed world as an "absence of real problems". Just because we're not scavenging for food, doesn't mean we don't have real problems.

Sure, thankfully many kids won't need that knowledge until they're older, if ever. But it's not always clear who will. My family certainly didn't meet the stereotype.

Re: Schools in England Introduce a New Subject: Mindfulness

#130

Post by icebraining » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

mapcars wrote: post #58

icebraining wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in an utopia, this class may be useless.

There are still many places on a planet where kids are not burdened by depression and sadness. It happens to them as well, of course, but not in any extraordinary amounts.

Most kids in the UK don't need to know multiplication to get their basics fulfilled either. Most of schooling is about preparing them for the future, not for the present. But some will benefit sooner, and you can't always tell which ones.