The plan was announced by the Education Secretary, Damian Hinds on Monday and involves children learning how to use a range of methods including breathing exercises to manage their emotions.
The trial will run until 2021and has been launched to mark Children’s Mental Health Week.
Shaun Lambert, who is senior minister at Stanmore Baptist Church and the author of a number of books on mindfulness, told Premier that Christian parents should check that the content of the teaching is fully secular and not tending towards Buddhism and other philosophies.
He said: “As Christian parents, we can practise discernment, so certainly under this sort of major trial, there should only be sort of tried and tested secular mindfulness practices that are being introduced. So there shouldn’t be anything that has a faith element to it. That’s the sort of question you can ask as a Christian parent.
“If these practices enable our children to sort of pay attention more clearly, to get less distracted, to cope better with exam nerves, you know, these are good things, but I think information and being well-informed is really important. And I think that’s one of the confusions – we’re not really sure what mindfulness is.”
Lambert said we all have capacities given to us by God which are mindful capacities, for attention, awareness, being able to regulate our emotions, being able to know what is…
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