Prepare for the Far-Right's New Scorched Earth Campaign Against Public Education
Republicans' latest attack on public schools has social and emotional learning programs in its crosshairs.
SEL is the new CRT, and level-headed, sane parents need to be ready for it. Social and Emotional Learning helps kids navigate and manage their feelings and emotions, peacefully resolve conflicts, show empathy, and it helps teachers recognize and address students’ emotional struggles and potential subsequent misbehavior, among other things. However, for the far-right, it’s anti-white racism, Marxist, sexual grooming, promotes suicide, and is even occultist. Sadly, for my readers in Bucks County, unhinged paranoid talk like this is typical for a local school board meeting. And it was actually brought up locally this month at Pennridge’s CommUnity Committee Meeting, which was seemingly formed to bury the district’s DEI initiatives.
One thing we have learned this past year is that we can’t be caught flat-footed and we need to be proactive. That starts with educating ourselves.
Here are five articles to get you started:
Parents protesting 'critical race theory' identify another target: Mental health programs
“Groups have voiced opposition to suicide prevention programs, mental health coordinators and social emotional learning, claiming they are being used to indoctrinate students. The attention to social emotional learning in particular has been further fueled by loyalists to former President Donald Trump. The Center for Renewing America, which was started by a former Trump administration official, published a glossary that claimed that teachers and counselors were embedding critical race theory into social emotional learning programs.”
West Hartford Superintendent: Political Operatives Attacking Commitment to Social and Emotional Learning
Superintendent of Schools Tom Moore:
“We have national forces at play that continue to seek to tear us apart as Americans, and are attempting to use the children of West Hartford as pawns in their games of division. These are not grass roots parent groups – they are well funded advocacy political arms. We understand how they use media to generate controversy. First it was the boogeyman of CRT. That clearly did not work in Connecticut school board elections. Now it is “gender equity indoctrination” meant to frighten people about what their children are hearing, even though we rarely see any concrete examples, just books that people want banned. These outsiders even attack our commitment to social emotional learning at a time when children have just lived through a pandemic.” Read More: https://we-ha.com/west-hartford-superintendent-political-operatives-attacking-commitment-to-social-and-emotional-learning/
'Radical': Idaho's far-right ramps up conversation around long-established learning concept
“Anna Miller, education policy director for the Idaho Freedom Foundation, said in the webcast that social emotional learning is a “government endorsed morality curriculum” that shifts away from a Judeo-Christian understanding about morality and objective truth. She added that she believes it’s a radical program that can be harmful to students’ health, since it’s not being administered by a medical professional.” Read More: https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/education/radical-idahos-far-right-ramps-up-conversation-around-long-established-learning-concept/277-ea13672f-a9c0-4e4e-9dda-51411b07cb33
Right-Wing Sources:
National Review: ‘Social-Emotional Learning’: The Next Fight in Education
“While this three-letter acronym is less known and more euphonious than its CRT cousin, it may soon eclipse CRT as the acronym under debate in education. At best SEL is a secularized character education devoid of virtue or any foundation on objective morality; the theory justifies emotional competence not because it’s objectively preferable but for the utilitarian, economic, academic benefits it provides. Tolerance and open-mindedness replace humility and justice. Robert Pondiscio, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, sums up SEL by saying that it changes the role of the teacher from ‘pedagogue’ to ‘therapist.’ At worst it’s a sly shoo-in for a politicized education couched in therapeutic terms.”
Read More: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/social-emotional-learning-the-next-fight-in-education/
Epoch Times: Trading Academics for Far-Left ‘Social-Emotional Learning’
“Today, government schools use advanced methods including SEL to instill in children a radical new and oftentimes contradictory “politically correct” value system: radical environmentalism, radical feminism, critical theory, Marxism, social justice, LGBTQ-plus, population control, socialism, hyper-racialism, class struggle, and more. There’s also an occult connection to it all that would shock most secular observers—not to mention Christians, Muslims, Jews, and adherents of other traditional faiths.”
Read More: https://www.theepochtimes.com/trading-academics-for-far-left-social-emotional-learning_3466722.html
In case you missed it Thursday, please read my latest column: Bucks County needs to talk about systemic racism
Thanks for reading! I look forward to your feedback and suggestions. And most importantly, keep organizing!