More schools are teaching yoga in hopes of promoting mindfulness and relieving stress, writes Alia Wong in The Atlantic. However, yoga is controversial in some parts of the country. Georgia parents who complained yoga classes “promoted a non-Christian belief system,” forced the district to remove the “namaste” greeting and coloring-book exercises involving mandalas, she writes. San Diego County parents sued on grounds the yoga program “promoted Eastern religions.” Since 1993,

Dressing up as Batman, Dora the Explorer or other heroes helps four- to six-year-olds concentrate on a task and resist the distraction of technology, writes Jenny Anderson on Quartz. Researchers asked young children to do a boring computer task for 10 minutes, but told them they could play a game on an iPad if they got bored. The 180 kids were assigned to one of three conditions: a control group, which asked the children to think about their thoughts and feelings as they went

The other day, Dana Goldstein’s article “Why Kids Can’t Write” (accompanied by an ironically distracting animated gif) appeared in the New York Times. She describes the work of Judith C. Hochman, founder of The Writing Revolution, which, according to its website, “brings proven strategies to underserved schools that enable students to improve their writing skills, become better readers, speak more coherently, and elevate their thinking in all content areas”–through extensive