32% of America’s 12th grade students do not read at even the most basic level. 45% of those young students do not do math at the most basic level. Only 22% of those students do. The public schools in America are in utter disarray, so says the nation’s report card.
Right thinking American’s know that critical race theory is dead wrong, and that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is very wrong for America, as well. But SEL, now so very universally pervasive, can be extremely harmful, as well.
SEL is a therapeutic approach to education. Teachers conduct a form of group therapy in the classroom. Public school children in the classroom gather in a circle, sit on mats, akin to a yoga experience, and the teacher leads the group in a radical empathy experiment, and leads the class in a circle in an emotional self-examination. The exercise is internal to the neglect of external subject matters.
The SEL empathy generated is used by the teacher to indoctrinate students in various left-wing ideologies, from climate change extremism, to support the transgender ideology, to globalism, to the gay agenda, and more liberal and radical causes and ideologies. The concept developed as far back as the 1960s, invented by Dr. James Comer. The motivation for the origination of SEL in 1960 was legitimate, for it was designed to teach underprivileged minority students in New Haven, CT how to relegate their emotions, make decisions, and behave appropriately in schools. However well-intentioned, SEL quickly became mostly political and became an excellent tool for radical-thinking teachers, counselors, and school psychologists to indoctrinate children in liberal ideology. This focus on internal and emotional matters led to a certain de-emphasizing of external subjects, including and especially reading, math, writing, and basic educational subjects. Many experts agree that this therapeutic approach to life has taken over the lives of Gen-Z to the detriment of these young people.
These same experts argue that this unceasing attention to emotions and the emotionally difficult parts of a student’s life create EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY. SEL seeks to dominate the thinking of the child and as such, sabotages the parent-child relationship by undermining the moral authority which a parent rightly has over values and religion in the home. It is another attempt by radical, some say anti-American, individuals to disrupt and even destroy the family, and treats children as agents of social change rather than as individuals to be educated. This radical activism seems to be made a part of everything, including math, history, language, and all other subjects, and the objective of education becomes the training-up of children to become social activists. SEL, these experts say, is a disaster, and left unchecked can severely weaken family bonds and authority or even destroy them. So that, SEL became a total indoctrination system and social ideology was the main and most important thing that children 12th grade and below in America’s disastrous public schools were learning.
The bottom line was that schools and their education came in many instances to replace the family as the place and with the individuals where public school children learned values and principles and not at home and not from the parents. Public schools in America were notoriously populated by liberal/radical teachers determined to change the moral structure of this great country. Naturally, right thinking parents rose up, fought back, and did their best to do away with SEL and return public school education to basic, external subjects and learning opportunities. In some cases, they were successful. In others, not so. When SEL was identified, exposed, and dealt with, it was simply re-named, reborn, and came back to the classroom in a different form. The child indoctrination in K-12 went on with the same negative and disastrous consequences.
Major textbook companies build SEL into everything they publish. So do software firms, and now even UNESCO endorses and promotes SEL, as well. But the teachers who promote SEL are not equipped to engage in this psychological, emotional exercise and training, and they should, as one expert said, be teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, history, language, and all other external and accepted subjects for learning.
What is worse than this ideological indoctrination is the fact that SEL allows a child to think that it is acceptable to fail at a job. A teacher, says one expert, can say that reading and writing are important but by teaching the whole child and developing emotionality, it allows the child to decide that failing at reading, writing, and arithmetic can be acceptable for him/her. Obviously, that will be disastrous for society.
Any child in public school K-12th grade is simply not prepared to analyze and evaluate his/her emotions and to make critical decisions which can last a lifetime. In reality, SEL perpetuates any kind of emotional disorder which a young student may have.
There is little question that American public schools are failing. That is why private schools and homeschooling are all growing by leaps and bounds. Parents want control over the education of their children and wherever possible, they are willing to pay for it. There have been many nation-wide attempts to introduce reform and change to public school education, almost all failures. That is why parents by the millions are seeking other ways and means to educate their children, to make certain that education deals with the basics, including and especially reading, writing, and arithmetic, and making certain that the family remains dominate and in control of values, morals, and religious teachings, and that the child, their child, is:
TRAINED UP IN THE WAY HE/SHE SHOULD GO, SO THAT WHEN THEY ARE AN ADULT, THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE, AN INDEPENDENT MEMBER OF SOCIETY, AND THEY WILL BE ABLE TO COMPETE, UNDERSTAND, AND LIVE A PRODUCTIVE, HAPPY, AND FULFILLED LIFE.
SEL, social emotional learning, will do its best to win that battle and dominate public school education, but right-thinking parents are determined to maintain the authority and control of the family.
That goal, my fellow Americans, achieved and perfected, is critical for the future of America.