This is the first part in a series about the concerning movement to inject political ideology, pop psychology, and moral relativism into America’s classrooms. The focus of this installment of the series is the history and progression of social-emotional learning (SEL).
SEL is not just a controversial topic—it is also big business. According to a 2017 paper titled “The Scale of Our Investment in Social-Emotional Learning,” primary and secondary schools in the United States were already spending as much as $47 billion each year on SEL. Expenditures included $640 million for SEL products and programs and an estimated $20–46 billion in teachers’ time. With this significant investment in SEL, we ought to understand the movement so we can determine if it is worthy of our tax dollars and appropriate for our children’s education.
Beginnings
SEL has its origins in 20th-century American progressive education. From Columbia University Teachers College, Edward Thorndike recommended combining education with psychology and endorsed “learning by conditioning.” He suggested that children could be conditioned to display desirable behaviors through a system of positive or negative consequences associated with specific actions, similar to Pavlov’s dogs.
John Dewey, a prominent figure in American progressive education, believed in using psychology to manipulate children’s learning and behavior. He praised the educational strategies of totalitarian societies that utilized “social behaviorism” and emphasized the importance of collective thinking and cooperation. Dewey saw the school’s role as countering and transforming the influence of domestic and neighborhood environments, including the home and church. Dewey aimed to implement comparable methods in American education by using group work to socialize students. Group consensus, collaboration, and problem-based learning are widely emphasized in modern education.
Development
Yale University was instrumental in the development of SEL. Its Comer School Development Program, designed by Dr. James Comer, began in 1968. The program’s objective was to boost academic performance in two schools with a low-income student population. Comer believed that a child’s home and school experiences profoundly influenced their psychosocial development, impacting their academic success. He proposed that schools could improve a child’s chances of success by focusing on psychosocial development.
Although Comer claimed that the Comer School Development Program improved academic achievement and reduced behavioral problems, critics pointed out that he replaced one of the schools with a different one. Furthermore, it took seven years to see any significant progress. Three decades later, Comer acknowledged that out of the 650 schools that adopted his program, only one-third were able to maintain the changes over time. Other studies also found negligible benefits to academic achievement or juvenile-justice interactions. Nonetheless, the Comer approach is widely accepted as the basis for much of the current SEL movement.
The emergence of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) was linked to and co-occurred with these and other similar concepts. OBE morphed into “transformational OBE,” which demanded various competencies and types of knowledge beyond academic content. This approach aimed to produce individuals that the government deemed beneficial to society—in other words, social engineering. The OBE movement disintegrated in the 1990s under parental scrutiny. Still, its key ideas were recycled into the beginnings of SEL in 1994 by the Yale-based Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning, which changed a few years later to Collaborative for Academic [emphasis added], Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).
Progression
The publication of journalist Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ in 1995 led to a surge of interest in prioritizing emotional skills in education over traditional intelligence. Despite criticism from the many psychologists and psychiatrists who refuted the validity of Goleman’s theory, CASEL and other SEL advocates used the book to justify promoting SEL in schools. One psychologist responded by stating that the concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) is a fraudulent marketing scheme, a passing trend, and there is no scientific basis for EQ. Nonetheless, a surge of comparable publications followed, each aiming to enhance emotional abilities as a forecaster of future success.
Since then, SEL has received more backing from the federal government. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, was predominantly centered on OBE principles. That same year, the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA) was authorized, which made it compulsory for states to adopt the National Education Goals to secure federal funding. Authorization of the IASA signified the start of federally mandated testing and standardization and set the stage for greater federal authority over public education through Race to the Top/Common Core, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and No Child Left Behind. SEL was a significant component of these initiatives and reauthorizations.
Through 2019, SEL had been centered on morally neutral student “competencies” such as “self-management” and “self-awareness.” In 2020, however, CASEL incorporated critical race theory into SEL, calling the ideology “Transformative SEL.” This most recent incarnation of SEL seeks to “reimagine” the levers with which impressionable young minds can be aggressively manipulated into becoming “social justice warriors” for the radical left.
Upcoming installments in this series on SEL will:
- Expose the people and organizations involved in creating and funding the movement
- Challenge the claim that SEL is “evidence-based”
- Uncover the reasons why SEL in our schools is unlawful
- Reveal the values that SEL represents and advocates
- Examine the moral and ethical concerns involving parental rights, privacy rights, religious rights, and harm
Sources
Eden, M. (2022, April 6). The Trouble with Social-Emotional Learning [Statement before the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, On Social and Emotional Learning and Whole Child Approaches in K-12 Education]. American Enterprise Institute. Retrieved May 2023 from https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AP/AP07/20220406/114597/HHRG-117-AP07-Wstate-EdenM-20220406.pdf
Effrem, K., & Robbins, J. (2019). Social-Emotional Learning: K–12 Education as New Age Nanny State [white paper, Pioneer Institute]. Retrieved May 2023, from https://pioneerinstitute.org/featured/new-study-finds-multiple-problems-with-push-for-social-emotional-learning-in-k-12-education/
Larocca, S. B. (2017). The Scale of Our Investment in Social-Emotional Learning. Transforming Education. Retrieved May 2023, from https://transformingeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Inspire-Paper-Transforming-Ed-FINAL-2.pdf