Social Emotional Learning is all the rage right now within the circles of education policy, research, and funding. Looking at Google Search Trends, we can see that the term reached it’s peak in September 2020. Which is an ironic time to have occurred. We see a slow build-up to August 2020, and then an immediate decline only a month afterwards. What could explain this? During the summer of 2020, parents, teachers, professional educators, politicians, and anyone else concerned with kids in school were frantic trying to figure out how and whether or not to open schools. I find this pattern intriguing. Does the popularity of the search term at that time indicate a push to use SEL to justify bad policy (closing schools), or perhaps the opposite? Perhaps it is indicative of the frenzy of activity around planning for school closures aka remote learning.
Whatever the reason, it’s clear that for better or worse, SEL is here to stay. It shows up in everything from STEM1 to school athletics2. As parents, we want our kids to be emotionally well adjusted, empathetic, and kind towards their piers. These are near-universal values that underpin our society. It seems as if the Education Industry is set on shouldering the burden of not just teaching reading, writing, history, math, etc.- but also rearing our kids to be good people. What could possibly go wrong?
What’s Not To Like?
The vocabulary that comprise the Social Emotional Learning framework and methodology is such that it makes it almost impossible to argue against. Wait, you’re against compassion? You don’t agree with empathy? Wow. You’re a bad person. These concepts are universally positive and altruistic. The promotion of emotional acumen and social skills can’t possibly be negative, can it?
Of course, this is the wrong question. When we’re talking about comprehensive frameworks3 all encompassing ideas, we should be asking ourselves if this is the best way to educate our children. Should this framework be so pervasive that every other framework or methodology is only secondary? Should our schools be spending energy teaching these values over and above the fundamentals?
The Evidence
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