The young possess characteristics that make learning easier for them than for adults: they are more impressionable, more flexible, and more dependent. Whether these qualities advance or inhibit their progress in life is determined by the knowledge and experiences to which they are exposed.

A loving home environment, encouraging and skilled teachers, and kind classmates make a deep and positive impression on the young; they quickly adapt and thrive with such influences. Being dependent, their world is wherever they are placed; and when they are placed in a life-nourishing environment, their creative powers, joy, and confidence expand.

Conversely—and this is most common— in school environments that are stressed, crude, and incoherent, students readily absorb these influences, which effectively clamp down the natural flow of their creativity and happiness. The teachers, not educated in what life can be or how to develop it, give too little and demand too little of their students. The students, dependent on others for a picture of who they are, remain only dimly aware and unconvinced of the immense potential of life.

How to hoist schools out of the murky waters and into the light? From 30 years of our own teaching experience we would say—put the Transcendental Meditation program in the school. All that is good in students and teachers flourishes and all that is negative and weakening falls away; hundreds of research studies and educational out-comes from all continents verify this.

The effectiveness of this technology of consciousness is a phenomenon of nature, as predictable as gravity: any individual, by virtue of possessing a human nervous system, benefits. Scientific research verifies that the Transcendental Meditation program directly improves the integration of mind and body, developing the latent potential of the brain. This practice eliminates stress, increases creativity, increases intelligence, increases tolerance and appreciation of others, reduces and eliminates substance abuse, and promotes self-actualization.

In the theoretical explanation provided by Maharishi Vedic Science, the Transcendental Meditation technique gives the experience of the total inner intelligence of mind and body. This field of intelligence, which modern science has identified as the Unified Field of Natural Law, gives rise to all the laws of nature responsible for maintaining order in the ever-expanding universe; this same field is subjectively experienced in human awareness as Transcendental Consciousness.

As soon as students start practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique, their innate creative intelligence and bliss begin to be expressed in greater receptivity to knowledge; in academic, artistic, and sports achievements, in harmonious relationships. To watch the contrast is like seeing an outboard motor replace oars. The same acceleration of progress and fulfillment is enjoyed by teachers and administrators who start the practice. Spontaneously such students and teachers produce a school environment that is purposeful and joyful, conducive to learning and to living in harmony with Natural Law.

The regular experience of Transcendental Consciousness also exerts a steady, salutary influence on the students’ thinking and behavior: their impressionable, flexible, and dependent natures start to respond only to what is useful for their growth. Increasingly students are impressed by what is life-supporting and not by what is not; they adopt what is good for them, and naturally reject what is not; they come to depend on people who are wise and positive, not on those who will narrow their possibilities in life. As one father remarked, they seem to develop a shield through which only good can penetrate.

Let us introduce the Transcendental Meditation program and the knowledge of enlightenment into our educational institutions and watch our children, our communities, and our nation thrive in every way.