Category: Bangor MSc

Edit: 2014-04-24 ~ Three Years Later ~ A friend just pointed out that this post is now coming second on a Google search for “Bangor Mindfulness”. I am somewhat amazed at this and slightly disturbed. It makes the post appear far more significant than it is. I considered taking it down but that seems a little too much like 1984. Instead I decided to add this note and a robots = noindex which should prevent it appearing in Google search in due course. Please take what is written below as a foot note by someone who was on the course and nothing more.

You will see from previous posts that I have been on the Mindfulness MSc at Bangor University for the past year. This will be the tenth post that comes in that Bangor MSc category. If you were to read through all the older posts you would see that I have become disenchanted with the course and will not be surprised that I am stopping. I have now completed the Foundation module and the Research module and have sufficient marks to exit the course with a Post Graduate Certificate in Mindfulness Approaches.

Attached is my second assignment from the Bangor Mindfulness course which has now been marked. This is the document as submitted but with my name and copyright information added.

• Foundation_Assigment_2_blog_version.pdf.

I got 64% which translates as a ‘B’. The marker made some kind comments about my “highly original ideas” but rightly points out that this becomes the focus of the essay and marks me down accordingly. You can judge for yourself what you think of the assignment.

On reflection one of the reasons I enrolled in the Bangor Mindfulness course was that I felt a need for some kind of accreditation before I could teach. In fact, if I want to teach in the public sector, I probably do need such an accreditation. We are as well to admit the world contains charlatans, fakes, hypocrites and quacks even if we don’t actually point the finger at anyone.  I wouldn’t expect my doctor to refer me to someone who hasn’t been checked out or my kids to be taught by a fraud so I have to admit that – if public money is to be spent on teaching people mindfulness – the trainers will need to have some kind of kite mark or branding.

As the Bangor course has progressed I have come to the realisation that, if I were to teach mindfulness, I would not teach it in quite the way the standard eight week courses are delivered. If I were a professional I would take that in my stride. I would be able to adapt to the available terrain, work through the course, get qualified and then teach in my way. I am sure that this approach would be perfectly acceptable and I am sure it is what many people will do. But I am not a professional in this particular field so I really can’t bring myself to invest the energy, time and money in working through the teaching modules  and assignments to show I could do what I wouldn’t do.

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