TM groups in other cities lobby local school boards

Event at M.U.M. broadcast by satellite to 14 locations.

Branches of the Transcendental Meditation movement in other parts of the United States and Canada are trying to sell local school boards on what the movement calls “consciousness-based education.”

TM groups held press conferences Friday in San Diego, Los Angeles, Palo Alto and Oakland, Calif.; Chicago; Minneapolis; Iowa City; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Providence, R.I.; New Haven, Conn.; and Phoenix, Ariz.; in addition to the Canadian cities of Edmonton and Montreal. Friday’s 30th anniversary ceremony at Maharishi University of Management was broadcast to those cities by satellite.

M.U.M. spokesman Bobby Roth said the groups were “urging local school boards to utilize Transcendental Meditation as a way to reduce classroom stress and to develop the total creative potential of the students’ brains.”

TM already is being practiced by about 160 students at a charter school in Detroit and by students and teachers at a public school in Washington, D.C.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported the group in Chicago, called the Committee to Promote TM in Schools, is offering to help interested schools find donors to underwrite the $2,500 cost of learning TM.

Opponents in Chicago, the Sun-Times reported, say the TM movement is “advancing a religious philosophical outlook” and does not belong in the city’s public schools.

Roth said the programs TM groups are asking schools to adopt would be voluntary.

For the complete story, read the Sept. 16 Fairfield Ledger.

Source

(Listed if other than Religion News Blog, or if not shown above)
Fairfield Ledger, USA
Sep. 16, 2003
Erik Gable
www.zwire.com
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Religion News Blog posted this on Wednesday September 17, 2003.
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