American schools are confronting formidable challenges. Student detachment is on the rise, accelerated by pandemic-era shutdowns. Chronic absenteeism remains near all-time highs, and many educators report that students have lost interest in books or extended passages.
Schools need to address these problems, but they won’t be able to solve them alone. Students inherit these attitudes from the broader culture, sustained by the twin forces of social media and artificial intelligence. Bad behavior in schools is also the result of declining trust in institutions and plummeting religious participation.
Turning all this around will be a daunting task and can likely only be accomplished through efforts on multiple fronts. One part of the solution might be an idea offered by an enterprising Brooklynite. He suggests that students, teachers, and parents recognize the separation between school and the outside world through a minute of silent reflection at the start of the school day.
In an earlier time, many believed that schools, particularly in urban areas, needed to establish a boundary between the “street” and the classroom. Uniform policies, dress and grooming codes, security guards, and metal detectors helped to enforce that dividing line and keep gang activity, drugs, and acts of violence outside the schoolhouse doors.
Today’s challenges are less tangible, if more pervasive. No physical barrier can shield students from social media and AI at school; only behavioral changes can do that. Several states and school districts have considered banning cell-phone usage in schools. Such measures would certainly be appropriate, though parents might challenge them, demanding that they be able to contact their children at all times. Those objections reflect how few people seem to want public schools to act in loco parentis anymore. Parents, teachers, and students once understood that schools were special places, and that the classroom was distinct from the more profane world outside.
Enter an enthusiastic and hard-working young man from Brooklyn, Mendel Banon, who has developed his own simple, yet elegant, solution. His program, called “A Meaningful Moment,” is intended to help students “explore what it means to live meaningfully—one moment at a time.” Banon’s program is designed as an entirely voluntary effort, for both families and individual schools.
A Meaningful Moment asks schools to “promote a daily moment of silent reflection in schools and to inspire parents and children to illuminate these moments with meaning.” He does not instruct teachers to tell children what to think in that moment; that, he believes, is up to parents. Banon hopes that his initiative will “create a framework that encourages parents to have meaningful conversation with their children and for children to begin their day in school reflecting silently,” and he encourages parents to “share your deepest values and beliefs with your child and have them reflect on them while in school.”
Banon reports that his approach has been adopted nationwide in more than 80 schools that collectively teach over 40,000 students. He is building the program through relationships, encouraging parents, teachers, and community members to promote the approach. Families and teachers who see the value of the effort are encouraged to share their experiences.
A Meaningful Moment was inspired by Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who fought the removal of the non-denominational prayer once read in New York’s public schools at the start of each day. The ACLU and local activists challenged that prayer, and in 1962, the Supreme Court ruled in Engel v. Vitale that even voluntary prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment.
Though the Rebbe argued for the reinstatement of non-denominational prayer, in the 1980s, he suggested an alternative: beginning each school day with a moment of silence or quiet meditation. The Rebbe, Banon notes, felt that “the moment of silence could be even more advantageous than prayer in some ways,” as “it ensures that parents are the ones instilling their beliefs in their children, rather than risking teachers imposing their own beliefs.” Additionally, he recalls the Rebbe saying, the moment of silence “gives children the opportunity to reflect on their values and beliefs in their own words.”
Practical solutions to the issues facing families, children, and schools are increasingly found locally, where ownership of ideas takes root. As Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on policy and culture, local efforts—including classical, character-building, religious, and charter schools—give families a trusted respite from the political melee. With a Meaningful Moment, schools could provide young people with a respite from the barrage of social media, artificial intelligence, and intergroup conflict.
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