Touch in Schools

Touch in Schools illustrates how the widespread embedding of positive touch and movement in school curricula, and into school activities more generally, is contributing to a revolutionary sea change across the globe in young children's emotional well-being. When schoolchildren shoot and kill other children, adults must take collective responsibility for what is merely a symptom of a much deeper malaise increasingly afflicting children in modern culture. Dramatic symptoms of a global crisis in Western schooling systems include more children developing mental illness, burgeoning child and teenage suicides, and record dropout rates. The program presented in this book (the Massage in Schools Programme, or MISP) involves the simple form of children massaging each other, and gives children a welcome opportunity to connect with each other in a playful, naturalistic way that cultivates the living