What is Social and Emotional Learning?
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is a pedagogy that centers students’ social and emotional development in the classroom. Those who developed SEL believe social and emotional competence precedes academic achievement. They think educators can’t expect students to learn if those students don’t have self-awareness, control of their impulsivity, the ability to work cooperatively, and care for themselves and others. In other words, SEL educators argue that SEL must be a central component of student learning to improve academic achievement in subjects like math and reading.
The most preeminent and influential SEL organization in the U.S. is the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). CASEL defines the goals and sets the benchmarks for SEL nationwide. This is a massive problem for a few reasons, not least of which is that CASEL was founded in 1994 by the Fetzer Institute. John Fetzer, a television and radio magnate, was deeply inspired by the works of occultist Alice Bailey, widely known as the mother of the New Age movement and founder of the Lucifer Publishing Company.
Today, CASEL's "Transformative SEL" incorporates the whole "witches brew" of collectivist and spiritually driven Marxist theories, including Culturally Responsive Teaching, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory to transform “inequitable settings and systems” and promote “justice-oriented civic engagement.”
The most preeminent and influential SEL organization in the U.S. is the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). CASEL defines the goals and sets the benchmarks for SEL nationwide. This is a massive problem for a few reasons, not least of which is that CASEL was founded in 1994 by the Fetzer Institute. John Fetzer, a television and radio magnate, was deeply inspired by the works of occultist Alice Bailey, widely known as the mother of the New Age movement and founder of the Lucifer Publishing Company.
Today, CASEL's "Transformative SEL" incorporates the whole "witches brew" of collectivist and spiritually driven Marxist theories, including Culturally Responsive Teaching, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory to transform “inequitable settings and systems” and promote “justice-oriented civic engagement.”
Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Toward SEL in Service of Educational Equity and Excellence
SOURCE: Jagers, R. J., Rivas-Drake, D., & Williams, B. (2019). Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Toward SEL in Service of Educational Equity and Excellence. Educational Psychologist, 54(3).
Transformative SEL is one of the primary vehicles delivering Woke Ideology to school districts nationwide. Every state has SEL standards in preschool, and many have SEL standards that span K-12 education. Whether compelled by law or inspired by activism, educators incorporate SEL into their classroom discussions, curriculum, and activities. Increasingly, these educators use CASEL’s Transformative SEL framework to meet state requirements and to satisfy district “equity” commitments.
Transformative SEL is less about making sure children are of sound mind and more about plugging them into a Marxist framework. According to CASEL, “transformative SEL is aimed at educational equity—fostering more equitable learning environments and producing equitable outcomes for children and young people furthest from opportunity.” To achieve this end, educators practicing Transformative SEL must raise a critical consciousness in children so they can understand their positionality, power, and privilege. That is to say, these educators must practice Culturally Relevant Teaching, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory with their social-emotional learning to equalize outcomes, radicalize children, and change society.
The concept of transformative SEL is a means to better articulate the potential of SEL to mitigate the educational, social, and economic inequities that derive from the interrelated legacies of racialized cultural oppression in the United States and globally. Transformative SEL represents an as-yet underutilized approach that SEL researchers and practitioners can use if they seek to effectively address issues such as power, privilege, prejudice, discrimination, social justice, empowerment, and self-determination… it must cultivate in them the knowledge, attitudes, and skills required for critical examination and collaborative action to address root causes of inequities.
Transformative Social-Emotional Learning Competencies
When marketing to educators, CASEL presents a straightforward solution to help mitigate classroom behavioral issues and improve academic achievement.
"SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions."
Couched in this innocent-sounding language is a Marxist project to groom children into a revolutionary cult. In Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Toward SEL in Service of Educational Equity and Excellence, CASEL’s true mission is made clear. This work reads less like a self-help guide for children and more like Herbert Marcuse's An Essay On Liberation. Rather than inculcating methods for developing a healthy sense of self and others, CASEL describes a Marxist project that traces back to the Frankfurt School.
Education aimed at promoting personally responsible citizenship and its attendant individualism, consumerism, and passivity accords with a dominant neoliberal democracy; this is the dominant model. However, a critical democracy requires education to have collectivism, productive interactionism, and authentic engagement as its goals. Accordingly, the field of SEL could aim to prepare students for not only engaged but also critical citizenship.
In describing the preeminent goal of education, CASEL argues that education shouldn’t serve to help children integrate and grow within the liberal democratic order as it is. Instead, CASEL argues - in no uncertain terms - that “critical democracy” is the end-game. To align oneself with CASEL’s SEL agenda is to cast off liberal values of individualism, equality of opportunity, and neutral principles of constitutional law in favor of collectivism, equity, and repressive tolerance. When educators plug children into the transformative social-emotional learning framework, they task those children with political activism. So directly does CASEL advocate for such madness that transformational social-emotional learning’s foundational paper states that “such efforts might be inconsistent with or violate existing local, state, and national laws."
1. Self-Awareness
CASEL’s self-awareness competency requires “the ability to recognize one’s own biases; to understand the links between one’s personal and collective history and identities; and to recognize how thoughts, feelings and actions are interconnected in and across diverse contacts.” Said another way, a student is said to be competent in self-awareness when they have bought into Critical Race Theory’s intersectional framework. A child isn’t sufficiently self-aware until they understand that their identity represents a kaleidoscopic array of structurally determinate forces that influence their behavior, actions, and positionality.
2. Self-Management
Self-management, according to CASEL, includes “appropriate expressiveness, perseverance, and being agentic in addressing personal and group-level challenges to achieve self- and collectively defined goals and objectives." In this context, self-management isn’t about regulating one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations. Rather, self-management is the practice of critical self-analysis. Students who are competent self-managers understand how to perceive themselves from within an intersectional context, practice “cultural humility,” and engage in collective resistance against oppressive systems. In short, transformative self-management teaches students not to be resilient individuals but to be collective agents of social change.
3. Social Awareness
CASEL’s social awareness competence “involves understanding social norms for constructing behavior in diverse interpersonal and institutional settings.” Transformative social awareness takes one’s critical self-analysis and uses it as a basis for “critical social analysis.” It is the practice of becoming socially aware of how the power dynamics buried within classical liberal values manifest themselves in one’s classroom and community.
4. Relationship Skills
CASEL defines the relationship skills competence as “communicating clearly, listening actively, cooperating, resisting selfishness and inappropriate social pressure, negotiating conflict constructively, seeking help and offering leadership when it is needed, and working collaboratively whenever possible.” If these standards weren’t situated in a marxist context, they might be well and good. But they are situated in a marxist context, one that adds “(multi)cultural – competence” and engagement to the mix. This means that students must demonstrate their ability to practice Cultural Responsiveness when communicating, listening, and cooperating. In addition, they must focus on group projects rather than more meritocratic demonstrations of skill mastery because some students can’t be expected to learn from within traditional and oppressive frameworks.
5. Responsible Decision Making
CASEL’s responsible decision making competence “requires the ability to critically examine ethical standards, safety concerns, and behavioral norms for risky behavior; to make realistic evaluations of benefits and consequences of various interpersonal and institutional relationships and actions; and to always make primary collective health and well-being." To build responsible decision making competence, students must use a marxist lens to critique their school, familial, and community relationships. They must buy into a collective ideology that leads them to conclude that their individual conceptions of well-being and justice are subservient to the needs of the identity groups to which they belong.
In Practice
Transformative SEL requires explicit critical examination of the root causes of racial and economic inequities to foster the desired critical self- and social awareness and responsible individual and collective actions in young people and adults. Programs and approaches that focus on identity development and/or systematic efforts to integrate issues of race, class, and culture into the academic content can have greater utility to the degree that they advance aspects of identity that comport with transformative SEL. Although considerable attention is given to historically disenfranchised groups, meaningful and sustainable change requires transformations in the ways in which those experiencing relative privilege understand themselves and their role in ameliorating inequities in interpersonal and institutional contexts.
The social-emotional programs in schools across the country have little to do with helping children manage their emotions and, in turn, achieve academically. They have everything to do with bringing Culturally Relevant Teaching, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Theory into your child’s classroom. The “social” in Transformative SEL (TSEL) represents a critical social critique. The “emotional” in TSEL represents the marxist's belief that everything is structurally determined, including how children express themselves and experience relationships. The “learning” in TSEL is the practice of Critical Pedagogy to transform students’ consciousness. Transformative social-emotional learning should be called marxist social-emotional leverage because that is what it is. The only thing transforming in TSEL-laden classrooms is a student’s ability to discern between reality and marxist conspiracy theory. TSEL manipulates children’s emotions to accept marxism and turn them into political activists. It is both a cult and child abuse.
Schools that practice TSEL ask unqualified teachers to conduct psychological evaluations on groups of students. Educators sometimes build these evaluations into the curriculum or activities. There is also a ballooning industry of surveyors that are happy to implement TSEL into daily questionnaires in exchange for taxpayer cash. One such company, Panorama, is found in 21,000 schools and 1,500 districts, helping to “improve systemic SEL efforts” by aligning its methodology with CASEL’s framework. What Panorama does with the student data is unclear. What is clear, however, is that companies like Panorama “make detailed requests for students to disclose opinions and feelings about gender identity, racial topics, family structure, and sexuality.”
Social-emotional learning surveyors like Panorama often enjoy special protections when collecting student data. According to Parents Defending Education (PDE), these protections appear “precisely designed” to allow third-party vendors to capture student data without parental consent. In a testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 2021, the president and vice president of PDE, Nicole Neily and Asra Nomani, revealed that Panorama’s contract with one school district made Panorama’s Authorized Representatives “school officials.”
"In response to a parent inquiry about Panorama’s contract, Deborah E. Scott, director of intervention and prevention services at Fairfax County Public Schools, responded that “Third-parties who are considered ‘school officials’ are permitted to receive student data absent parent consent.”
Schools that practice TSEL ask unqualified teachers to conduct psychological evaluations on groups of students. Educators sometimes build these evaluations into the curriculum or activities. There is also a ballooning industry of surveyors that are happy to implement TSEL into daily questionnaires in exchange for taxpayer cash. One such company, Panorama, is found in 21,000 schools and 1,500 districts, helping to “improve systemic SEL efforts” by aligning its methodology with CASEL’s framework. What Panorama does with the student data is unclear. What is clear, however, is that companies like Panorama “make detailed requests for students to disclose opinions and feelings about gender identity, racial topics, family structure, and sexuality.”
- “How confident are you that students at your school can have honest conversations with each other about race?”
- “How well does your school help students speak out against racism?”
- “Currently, I most strongly identify as: Genderqueer, nonbinary or fluid; Female; Male; Transgender; Prefer not to answer”
- “Currently, I identify as: heterosexual/straight; LGBTQ+; prefer not to answer.”
Social-emotional learning surveyors like Panorama often enjoy special protections when collecting student data. According to Parents Defending Education (PDE), these protections appear “precisely designed” to allow third-party vendors to capture student data without parental consent. In a testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 2021, the president and vice president of PDE, Nicole Neily and Asra Nomani, revealed that Panorama’s contract with one school district made Panorama’s Authorized Representatives “school officials.”
"In response to a parent inquiry about Panorama’s contract, Deborah E. Scott, director of intervention and prevention services at Fairfax County Public Schools, responded that “Third-parties who are considered ‘school officials’ are permitted to receive student data absent parent consent.”
In Summary
Social-emotional learning may have once been a reasonable method to help a child manage their emotional development in a clinical setting with a trained professional. But times have changed, and today Transformative SEL tasks unqualified teachers to practice Marxism with groups of children. Radicals and third-party vendors have teamed up to make activists of children, leaving no option for parents to opt-out of state-sanctioned child abuse.
To make matters worse, Panorama is funded, in part, by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Facebook’s tie to Panorama is a conflict of interest as Facebook openly studies kids to determine “the long-term business opportunities presented by these potential users.” One wonders what a company caught — whether nefariously or not — data-mining users to influence a presidential election may do with a lifetime of children’s surveys.
To make matters worse, Panorama is funded, in part, by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Facebook’s tie to Panorama is a conflict of interest as Facebook openly studies kids to determine “the long-term business opportunities presented by these potential users.” One wonders what a company caught — whether nefariously or not — data-mining users to influence a presidential election may do with a lifetime of children’s surveys.
REFERENCES:
1. Jagers, R. J., Rivas-Drake, D., & Williams, B. (2019). Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Toward SEL in Service of Educational Equity and Excellence. Educational Psychologist, 54(3).
1. Jagers, R. J., Rivas-Drake, D., & Williams, B. (2019). Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Toward SEL in Service of Educational Equity and Excellence. Educational Psychologist, 54(3).
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Copyright © 2024 The Lancing.
Copyright © 2024 The Lancing.