Of late, I keep getting asked why social and emotional learning got so political. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 get what people are even worried about,鈥� is how one superintendent put it. And yet, The Washington Post has SEL the 鈥渘ew target鈥� of critical race theory critics, and Salon has it 鈥渢he right鈥檚 new CRT panic.鈥� Heck, SEL was a big factor in Florida鈥檚 decision this spring to reject dozens of math textbooks.
What鈥檚 going on?
Well, on the one hand, SEL seems like a no-brainer. As the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has it, SEL is mastering 鈥渢he 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.鈥� That鈥檚 a pretty expansive list, but it鈥檚 also a pretty sensible one.
After all, SEL is a reminder that children are complex human beings鈥攏ot little learning machines. It encourages educators to do things that good schools have been doing forever and represents a useful course correction for an education system that got test-obsessed in the No Child Left Behind/Race to the Top era.
As Tim Shriver, CASEL鈥檚 board chair, and I a few years ago, 鈥淪ince the dawn of the republic, teachers and schools have been tasked with teaching content and modeling character.鈥� Pursued responsibly, SEL can help with all of that. In fact, while SEL can seem like a new idea, it鈥檚 more of a variation on a historical theme鈥攖hat educators cannot focus only on academic mastery but must also develop the 鈥渨hole child.鈥�
Add to all this the dislocations of a pandemic during which kids were lonely, isolated, and suffered devastating shots to their social and emotional well-being. Seen that way, the of SEL is obvious.
But as with so many well-meaning education reforms, SEL has a Jekyll-and-Hyde aspect. As I recently at The Dispatch, 鈥淚t can be reasonably described both as a sensible, innocuous attempt to tackle a real challenge and, too often, an excuse for a blue, bubbled industry of education funders, advocates, professors, and trainers to promote faddish nonsense and ideological agendas.鈥� Those who regard SEL as practical and apolitical shouldn鈥檛 be surprised that others see it differently when more ideological advocates use SEL to controversial ideas鈥攕uch as doing away with traditional grading, eliminating advanced math, subjecting students and staff to 鈥減rivilege walks,鈥� or teaching 1st graders about gender identity.
School safety illustrates the fine line that SEL seeks to walk. It鈥檚 a truism that kids who are relaxed, comfortable in their own skin, and able to get along with peers are less likely to disrupt classrooms or bully other kids. So, SEL can certainly help make schools safer. However, SEL proponents also tend to favor 鈥渞estorative justice鈥� as the preferred approach to accomplishing that goal. The problem is that the evidence for this model is , at best. Instead of suspending or expelling dangerous students, schools sit them down to share their feelings. Indeed, while alternative discipline may sometimes be life-affirming in the right hands, there鈥檚 cause for concern that when done rashly or clumsily, as is frequently the case.
Advocates and trainers have, seemingly almost by default, infused their cultural assumptions and biases into SEL. AEI鈥檚 Max Eden has that, in the past few years, CASEL has actively redefined core concepts to keep pace with woke dogma and has a of 鈥渟elf-management鈥� that now incorporates 鈥渞esistance鈥� and 鈥渢ransformative/justice-oriented鈥� citizenship. In its 鈥�,鈥� CASEL stipulates that 鈥渟elf-awareness鈥� now entails 鈥渆xamining our implicit biases鈥� and that 鈥渟elf-management鈥� requires 鈥減racticing anti-racism.鈥� It鈥檚 hard for me to read such descriptions and believe that proponents really expect them to be regarded as apolitical, anodyne, or evidence-based.
Asking teachers to cultivate character is one thing; telling 4th grade teachers that they all need to 鈥渢rauma-informed teaching鈥� is another. Credible research on cortisone levels and student anxiety gets scrambled together with calls for affinity spaces.
On the one hand, it鈥檚 entirely reasonable for school surveys to ask students about their views and values if it might help combat bullying, raise red flags, or ensure that schools are welcoming for all students. On the other, it鈥檚 equally reasonable for parents to when they learn that schools have asked their middle schooler combustible (and sometimes leading) questions about drug use, gender identity, or sexual activity without even a by-your-leave.
Yet again, a school reform that makes some intuitive sense has gotten sucked into a roiling culture war. Teachers and parents wind up trapped in between. And something that can and should be useful, when employed wisely and well, instead gets clumsily and carelessly.
Three years ago, Checker Finn and I seven things it would take for SEL to 鈥渟ucceed and survive.鈥� In that essay, we observed that SEL might prove to be either 鈥渁 durable pillar of American K鈥�12 education鈥� or 鈥渇addish, contentious, and evanescent.鈥� We concluded, 鈥淲hich of those futures lies ahead depends in significant part on the choices made by supportive educators, advocates, policymakers, funders, and scholars in these early days of the SEL movement. We hope that they choose wisely.鈥�
Sigh.
