Tzipporah Gold
Social-Emotional Learning, with its siren song luring children to their destruction, is the backbone of education in some Indiana schools. It is defined as the ‘process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills to (1) understand and manage emotions, (2) set and achieve positive goals, (3) feel and show empathy for others, (4) establish and maintain positive relationships, and (5) make responsible decisions. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Of course, it does and most parents would say you have to be an idiot or a sociopath not to want all those things. I don’t disagree that these are good things.
What I do disagree on is the fact that schools are not able to teach both SEL and math, reading, and writing. The truth is, the schools cannot do both and, unfortunately for the students, they have decided to stick with this garbage instead of giving them an actual education. The real problem isn’t what this philosophy wants to produce. All those skills aren’t just good; they are absolutely essential to a happy, productive and moral life. “Well, then of course this should be taught in our schools, you moron! You just don’t want children to be happy!” the harpies screech from their jobs which they invest more time and energy into than their own children. If these skills are so essential, and they are, aren’t schools obligated to teach them? No, and here’s why.
Never mind the fact that parents seem to skip over the fact that teaching empathy and establishing healthy relationships is their responsibility, but the only way for schools to successfully implement this plan is to erase human difference and discourage exceptionalism. Look at the diversity statement from Noblesville Schools:
We embrace a broad definition of diversity including race, color, ethnicity, national origin, sex, transgender status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, socioeconomic status, disability, immutable physical appearance (weight, scars, deformity), age, religion, military status, ancestry and genetic information. Additionally, we place a high value on accepting and encouraging different skills, perspectives, interests and pathways. It’s our goal that all students and staff feel safe, heard and valued. Taking time to listen to both students and staff gives us insight into what we can do to make our environments more inclusive.
More inclusive? I’m not sure how that is impossible, unless they include trans-species students who identify as bison or possibly allowing a middle school student to identify as a kindergartner. But see what they have done? They have not embraced diversity. They have a created a place where diversity has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. Diversity only matters if exceptionalism is real. That’s why diversity has to be stamped out through this disgusting social-emotional learning. The schools aren’t interested in fostering individuals because individualism is now an indicator of white privilege according to these and many other sources:
Why Can’t we all just be individuals? Countering the discourse of individualism in anti-racist education (Robin DiAngelo)
Inviting Complexity: Resisting Individualism and Acknowledging Intersectional Frame (Ashley Gregory)
Developing a Positive White Identity (Racial Equity Tools) which claims that white American culture emphasizes individualism because we are the dominant racial group and as such, we can impose our viewpoint.
On Whiteness and Individualism (D. L. Shultz) which says that this individualism is part of the reason many white people can’t even understand white privilege to begin with.
So, with diversity being defined into meaninglessness, how can anyone foster empathy? You only have empathy for someone different than yourself and social-emotional learning teaches students they are all the same. Since you can’t have empathy for yourself, what’s left? Creating a common enemy, that’s what. And it’s the unstated dark side of social-emotional learning.
The common enemy is the individual, which is why this whole social-emotional learning experiment is, without a doubt, going to destroy those who are subjected to it. The only use the individual has is making the group stronger. He is to use his talents to benefit everyone else, because if the group fails at the hands of one individual, that individual is going down, too. He has to keep everyone else afloat in order to make sure he himself doesn’t drown.
This does not mean he cares about the other people in his group. He is only making sure they are fine because his life depends on them as well and this is a terrible place for children to be.
The schools are forcing children to need the group, to define themselves by the group and the way they do that is to make sure that anyone outside the group dies. The only responsible decisions a child can make, therefore, are those which will benefit the entire group. An irresponsible decision is one that benefits only the individual. This, of course, is the opposite of real life. Everything in real life, in the adult world with jobs and mortgages and debt and marriages and children, depends on the strength of the individual to produce success or failure. Social-emotional learning would like to tell you it doesn’t.
There is one group, and only one group, that will do all the things this philosophy would like to do and that is the family. No other group can give a moral compass, identity, and emotional support except the family. Empathy is born in a family. Being responsible for yourself inside your family unit is the best way to learn how to make responsible choices because it’s the place that teaches you who matters to you and who you matter to. Those are the people for whom I am responsible, not a bunch of random students I am assigned with in a classroom. By neutering diversity, rooting out bias and forcing equity, social-emotional learning is depriving students of the very thing they need in order to meet the five competencies of social-emotional learning-discernment.
Discernment. The dirty word in public education. By linking the success of the individual to the success of a group, SEL has effectively cut discernment off at the knees. Don’t think too hard about who you are depending on. Don’t look at differences, look at similarities. Ignore those things that bother you or concern you because the group can’t sustain itself unless everyone is of one mind. This denies human beings the very thing that makes them human.
Biases, another target of the SEL monster, are what give us the ability to make decisions that are important to us as individuals. They allow us to make decisions, form relationships, set goals and foster empathy based on ideals that are meaningful and important to us. Discerning who is evil and who is not is the key to empathy. Discerning who has my best interests at heart is the key to positive relationships, whether in marriage, business or family. Discernment is the key to understanding and managing emotions and that’s why this whole social-emotional learning experiment, and the futures of public-school children who buy into this nonsense, are doomed to failure. The only hope these children have is their parents. The parents have to wake up and demand better. If parents don’t, your child’s identity will be destroyed, his value negated, and his purpose stolen from him.
