Being Mindful Stories

Story · Ajahn Brahm

'Miss, can we have quiet time now?'

As told by Ajahn Brahm in The Power of Mindfulness & Compassion | by Ajahn Brahm

3 min read

Content note: claims about improved academic results are the principal's impression, reported second-hand

The story — as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

one of the uh the people who learned meditation with me uh she was a a deputy principal of one of the schools primary schools she's retired about 10 years ago now so it shows you how old the story is but she would uh be teaching meditation in her class of kids and there were year sixes grade sixes and know grade sixes you know they're starting to you know get close to puberty and starting to be a bit Troublesome but she started teaching the meditation from the very beginning of the year now she called it quiet time rather than meditation cuz now meditation is uh looked upon as being Buddhist and for a good reason cuz basically Buddhism invented meditation now we started it off so it has that Association even though that you know anyone can meditate you don't have to be a budhist to meditate and you even some people say that when they sit down meditating at home they the dogs meditate too which is one of the other nice areas they they sit quietly next to you and I'm sure that people who meditate next to their dogs their dogs bark less and they're much quieter maybe that could be could be a study on how to quiet down dogs but the uh she was teaching quiet time starting off with 5 minutes at the beginning of the year and finishing off with 15 or 20 minutes as a group activity which started every morning of the school year and she told actually it wasn't her but it was her principal because I remember going to the school once and obviously having some tea with the principal and he was he was not a Buddhist but he was praising sort of this lady and how that her meditation introduced in this year 60s the changes which he saw happen which was not just the children's intellectual ability increased because their attention was strengthened and but also and their academic uh results increased and he could see this having been a principal looking at it from objective position but also he found out some other things which were happening that the social interaction of the children in that class improve they are more sensitive more compassionate and less aggressive towards each other which was an important part of what happens when you do become more attentive more sensitive just the the mindfulness develops the compassion and the understanding and I remember her giving an example of what happened and many many times she said that sometimes in the class of kids in our modern schools sometimes there'll be some sort of argument or some sort of altercation and usually whether that would be a fight or a big argument now that one of the kids in the class would put up their hand and say Miss can we have quiet time now and when they had quiet time just for 5 minutes just doing a simple relaxation watching the breath calming the Mind down afterwards the altercation finished and there was no sort of big argument or big problem not only that that people were sensitive to each other because of their digital development of meditation year sixes they could actually tell when somebody was in a bad mood or someone was sick or someone was unhappy and because of that they had this beautiful little mini Society in their classroom which had been enhanced by doing a tiny bit of meditation every day

▶ Watch Ajahn Brahm tell it from 3:47 (to 7:33)

A reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

A Year 6 teacher gave her class a few minutes of quiet time each morning, and the children grew kinder and more attentive. When a quarrel broke out, a pupil put up a hand: Miss, can we have quiet time now? Five minutes later it was over. A little daily stillness costs nothing, and children understand it.

In brief (our summary)

A deputy principal who learned meditation with Ajahn Brahm teaches her Year 6 class 'quiet time' every morning, from five minutes at the start of the year to fifteen or twenty by the end. Her principal, not a Buddhist, tells Ajahn Brahm over tea that the class's attention and results improved and the children became kinder and less aggressive. When an argument breaks out, one of the children puts up a hand: 'Miss, can we have quiet time now?' — and after five minutes of watching the breath, the quarrel is over.

Teaching point

A little daily stillness grows attention, sensitivity and compassion, even in a classroom of eleven-year-olds.

When this story may help

Themes

Source & credit

Told by Ajahn Brahm in The Power of Mindfulness & Compassion | by Ajahn Brahm · 2008-04-03 · ▶ watch from 3:47 to 7:33 · Buddhist Society of Western Australia

7 other tellings of this story

Caption notes: YouTube auto-captions: unpunctuated, words left exactly as captioned.

The narrative is Ajahn Brahm's own telling, quoted from the talk captions. The summary and reflection are Being Mindful Stories's editorial notes. Please credit the teacher and link the original talk. Markdown version

  • The Taiwanese school quieter than a cemetery

    In brief: Visiting a large traditional school in Taiwan, Ajahn Brahm thinks it must be a holiday because there is no sound — even cemeteries are…

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    Even I visited one Taiwanese school. You know, it was the the ancient tradition. And when I went there to this big school in Taiwan, I thought it was a holiday or they had some sort of day off school. Cuz when I went in there, there wasn't a sound to be heard. Even cemeteries are louder than that school. And I found there was about 1,600 pupils there. You can never go into a school in Australia that's quiet. They're always noisy. They're always alive.

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  • The boy who stretched his seedlings

    In brief: One of Ajahn Brahm's first meditation teachers recalls planting seeds with his father at five or six. After three days with nothing…

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    there's a story of one of my first meditation teachers in Thailand he told me I usually tell this on the meditation Retreats not usually on a Friday night he told me when I was starting out my meditation career that when he was a young boy in Thailand that his father gave him some seeds to grow in the garden he was only about five six years of age and this was the first time he grew anything so this little five or six put his little seeds with the help of his father underneath the ground underneath the soil and he would water them every day after 3 or 4 days he saw no result said where are my plants where my flowers is three days now can't see anything his father had to tell him that when you have seeds when the water gets to them they germinate they split the seed a little green shoe comes out it's probably under the ground right now pushing its way to the surface just wait for a little while and you'll see a shoot be patient and he took his father's advice and fortunately at the end of two days a tiny green shoot was appearing above the Earth so so he decided to water those flowers two times a day he was getting excited and those flowers grew grew grew until about 2 in high and that's when he lost his patience he decided to stretch them to make them grow faster and he killed every one of them but he learned a wonderful lesson you can't stretch nature nature takes its time to grow

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  • Class A and Class B

    In brief: An English school splits a year group into two classes of exactly equal ability by exam score — only the headmistress and two…

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    This was a story of a test which was done in a school in England. Two classes of kids, the end of the year exams, you know, we just done the end of the year exams for our kids in school here in Western Australia. The school year is just finished or about to finish. And it's usually the usual thing is on the basis of the results this year, you know, that's how you'll be graded for, you know, the streams of learning for next year. And there was one school did this really interesting experiment. They had two classes in one year and having done their examination, they never published the results. There was, if I remember correctly, the head mistress and two psychologists were the only ones who knew what scores every kid got. But instead, what they did, they allocated the children as evenly as they possibly could. The kid who came top went in the same class as a kid who came fifth and sixth. No, fourth and fifth. Yeah. Fourth and fifth, 8th and 9th, 12th and 13th, 16th and 17th. They all went in one class. The kids who came second and third, sixth and seventh, 10th and 11th went in the other class. So they split the classes up as evenly as they possibly could. And the head mistress tried to find teachers who she thought were equally good. And they even went as far as to find classrooms with equal facilities. They made everything equal as possible except for one thing. They called one of those classes class A and the other one class B. And they were totally equal in ability based on the exam results. and they wanted to find out what would happen next year. Half of those kids went into class A and they weren't more brilliant, but their parents said, "I don't know how you did it, son. You're in class A. Carry on. Well done." And even the kids who came second and third going into class B. I want you to work harder next year. You know, no more privileges for you, more homework. the the parents thought class B meant the worst and even the teachers taught her to a lower level and the kids be know with her in class B the kids started to believe the class A kids were superior than the class B kids because one year later when they gave the exam again the children in class A did so well as if they were the top half chosen from the year before. And the class B kids did terribly. Literally after one year, half those children became class A children and the other one became class B simply because they gave that label and they believed in it, they became it.

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  • The 'hopeless at maths' boy who came top

    In brief: As a young schoolteacher, Ajahn Brahm is told a boy in his maths class is hopeless — he came bottom of three or four classes the year…

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    another case this was from this time I was a school teacher I love doing experiments some of them were maybe not fair but they were worth it because there was a kid in my maths class and the teachers told me he's hopeless at Mass he came bottom the year before of those about three or four classes in this school now is his math teacher for one year so I decided to find out whether it was because he can't do maths or there was some other reason so for 12 months I don't know nine months of the school year after every lesson I'd ask him did you understand that give him extra attention praise him when he got the thing right go to his desk you know doing the exercises and give him a bit of a hand really just give him special attention I say it was unfair because I never gave that attention to any other child in the class just this one boy because I wanted to see whether it was a case that a person just cannot do math or because they believe they can't do it and of course it was a second case because at the end of the year that boy came top I moved him from bottom to top just by giving him a belief

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