Social-Emotional Learning: CRT-Lite Coming to a Classroom Near You
By Erin Spellman
As Covid-19 raged on and children were stuck at home in Zoom class, many parents noticed that assignments and lesson plans were becoming more politicized. Progressive school districts exploited the disruption of the pandemic to push radical curricula, specifically critical race theory (CRT) and gender ideology, onto children. Supported by Republican governors such as Ron DeSantis, parents nationwide revolted against state-led public school indoctrination and won many battles at school board meetings, elections, and ballot box initiatives. But the fight is not over, as a new threatening model of pedagogy emerges: social-emotional learning.
Social-emotional learning (SEL) takes education beyond arithmetic and grammar to focus on the emotional wellbeing of students. The two years of remote class and school closures caused severe learning loss but also social and emotional stagnation. Originally, the goal of SEL was to bridge the gap for children struggling with social and emotional issues, which can interfere with academics. So, where’s the danger? While it seems benign and even helpful, SEL is more insidious than it appears. It will require that educators become psychologists and will ask children to frequently scrutinize the equity standards in their families and private lives. Finally, it will function as the vessel for the long-run rooting of CRT and gender theory in K-12.
Through focusing on the integration of race, class, and culture, SEL programs lead teachers to interpret their students’ behavior in the classroom as stemming from their internalized racism or oppression. One prime example of an SEL lesson includes a survey given to a Maryland classroom that asks elementary school students, “How do you feel about two men kissing?” Another example is a question from a Florida math textbook, later rejected by the state’s Department of Education, that asked students to measure racial prejudice by age and political identification. The word problem begins, “What? Me? Racist? More than 2 million people have tested their racial prejudice using an online version of the Implicit Association Test.”
Through SEL, fundamental subjects and building blocks of learning are abandoned in order for teachers to dwell on identity politics. It is no wonder that American test scores lag far behind those of other developed nations. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) is one of the leading SEL programs that’s been planted in schools. CASEL’s CEO Karen Niemi argues that SEL is a tool for anti-racism, helping students to “move from anger to agency and then to action” by teaching them to “examine prejudices and biases and evaluate social norms and systemic inequities.” From the mouth of one of its chief proponents, SEL ultimately aims to transform children into the next generation of social justice warriors.
By switching to SEL, school districts make teachers neglect their educator duty to effectively serve as psychologists for students. The delicate emotional issues students deal with should be handled in a one-on-one setting with a licensed psychologist or in the home setting with their parents. With SEL, some of that help will be outsourced to the large classroom setting.
Let’s say a seven year old female student approaches her teacher and argues that she’s a boy. SEL might empower such a teacher to refer the student to a gender clinic to begin transition treatment, possibly without notifying the child’s parents. The SEL argument could be that the child’s gender dysphoria interferes with her learning and must be addressed in order for the child to succeed. By turning teachers into unlicensed therapists, SEL adds another roadblock isolating parents from their children.
Mimicking in some ways the Chinese Communist Party’s social credit score system, SEL is implemented in some school districts by creating psychological profiles for students. Sometimes asked about their sexual orientation, views on racial issues, or their family’s financial status, students are often administered assessments judging their DEI compatibility, for which they are given a rating based on algorithms.
These rating systems identify “at-risk students with early warning indicators across math, literacy, behavior, and SEL.” From the algorithm, a student may be considered “at-risk” due to parents’ political or religious views. The data mining on children through SEL is also used for outside stakeholders. SEL programming provider Panorama Education, funded by Mark Zuckerberg and founded by the son-in-law of Attorney General Merrick Garland, who deployed the FBI and federal law enforcement to probe and prosecute parents as “domestic terrorists” who protested radical K-12 curricula, has contracts with thousands of schools across all 50 states. Much like Facebook, the social media platform Zuckerberg founded, Panorama also sells the information it collects through surveys in the classroom.
The purpose of schools is to educate, not indoctrinate. The RAND institute found scant evidence that SEL actually provides any real academic, social, or emotional benefits for students. Instead, it peddles leftist ideology, undermining real learning, alienating parents and the family, and creating a woke litmus test for public school children.
Photo via Emilie Heathe
