San Francisco, USA - Plans for a public high school meditation club evaporated this week after parents caught wind that students would be taught Transcendental Meditation, which critics argue is a form of religion.
Faced with protests from parents, a foundation backed by filmmaker David Lynch on Tuesday withdrew the $175,000 it had pledged to Terra Linda High School in San Rafael.
The grant would have provided funds for 250 students and 25 staffers to practice the meditation style developed by a one-time spiritual teacher to The Beatles, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Lynch, best known as the director of dark, surreal films like "Eraserhead" and "Blue Velvet," has meditated for more than 30 years and credits TM with nourishing his creativity.
"Not only does it reduce stress in the body, but the research shows it wakes up the brain," said Bob Roth, vice president of the David Lynch Foundation.
But an information meeting for Terra Linda parents about the program last week turned chaotic, with one parent rushing the stage to denounce TM as a cult.
Others said they felt TM was a form of religious practice and therefore inappropriate for a public school. Supporters say TM is a technique, not a religion — that people can meditate and still be of any faith they want.
Alternative forms of spiritual expression are nothing new in Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. Flower children of the 1960s flocked to the county's coastal bluffs and rolling hills after they decided to settle down.
In more recent years, Marin County has become one of the most affluent in the country. That wealth has brought with it the kind of high-pressure academic environments common to schools in prosperous communities.
Marin's openness to nonconformity combined with its stressed-out students seeking release made Terra Linda, located in the town of San Rafael, one of the last places the Lynch Foundation expected to find resistance.
Since last year, the foundation has given more than $3 million to fund TM programs at 20 public, private and charter schools from Detroit to Washington, D.C., without causing a stir, according to Roth.
Terra Linda Principal Carole Ramsey said interest in meditation had grown recently at the high school. A club started by a school health instructor there last year attracted 60 students.
"I think it helps them to calm their minds so that they are able to focus," Ramsey said.
Ramsey blamed "a few individuals" for creating "an environment that has led to the withdrawal of this grant" and said the school would encourage students who remain interested in meditation to investigate alternative programs.
A federal appeals court in 1979 called TM a form of religious teaching and ruled the practice could not be taught in New Jersey public schools. The decision is often cited as a precedent in religion-in-public-schools cases.
Whether TM is religious or not, state education officials said that religion clubs are allowed in California public schools under certain conditions.
"You can have a religious club on campus as long as it's student-run and there's no church affiliation," said Pam Slater, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Education.
Ramsey said club members would have meditated twice a day — once before school, and once after school — and not during school hours, and participation was voluntary. Religious clubs, including a Christian club, have existed at the school without stirring debate, she said.
Nina Rush, 15, a soccer-playing sophomore at Terra Linda, said the TM club had generated a lot of buzz at the school. She said she had planned to sign up along with many of her friends.
"It would be such a nice thing for me to clear my mind. Because I realized I'm always thinking about my assignments, and school and work and grades," she said. "I could have really benefited from this program. And I know a lot of my friends could have benefited from it, too."
Rush's mother, Suzanne Rush of San Rafael, agreed.
"I work with kids every day that are stressed out," said Rush, who tutors elementary school students. "If can offer our kids something to help them de-stress and work up to their potential, then that's what we want."