15. Opposition to Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in US public schools

Abstact – Criticism of Social Emotion Learning mostly shows the public misunderstanding of the concept and its advocates failure
to properly define it.

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The basic principle for gaining or increasing one’s political power today is that you must find a cause and rail against it, or for it. Can’t find a cause? Make one up. Claim that vaccinations are Satan’s work. Claim that gays or blacks or Jews or Muslims or immigrants or scientists or FEMA or colleges or parking meters hate America and want to destroy it. And only you stand against them to save America. Claim the moral high road. And also, don’t merely speak. You must shout. This is very important in the age of populism.

Having been a dedicated public school teacher for many decades, I am especially concerned by the raging school culture wars and those that have been railing against SEL, social emotional learning, a concept for helping children become ethically and socially well-adjusted. I also believe it can be overplayed. So – what is it, where did it come from and how is it supposed to help? Then lastly what critics are saying and if they have credibility.

The first social emotional learning activity occurred 30,000 years ago in a cave. The adult, Orp, was sitting on a log. Six children were sitting on the ground around him. Orp was telling them a story about a brave hunter who had only 1 arm and came home with a wild boar – food for the winter. But Larm and Zawk were having some kind of footsie fight, instead of paying attention. Orp paused his story and kindly explained that listening was very important to them – it would make them smarter. And, yes, it’s hard to pay attention sometimes but we all have to try hard, boys. Then he put the 2 boys on the ends of the row so they weren’t close to each other. And also, said Orp, if you all listen very carefully I will give you all a frog for desert today at lunch. Orp used four ways to help the children toward behavior that would be more beneficial for each and for the group . And this is what SEL is. It is the teacher or care-giver, using his creativity to induce the behavior conducive to well-adjusted and educated kids. Unfortunately, in the adjacent cave the same thing happened in Jorp’s group. But Jorp simply slapped the 2 boys hard upside the head. It was effective – the boys stopped kicking each other. But it also reinforced, a tiny quantum, that aggression/violence is a legitimate way to maintain authority, and did little to cultivate a helpful relationship with his wards

There are many Jorps and many Orps teaching in public schools today. Here is an Orp-Jorp story from the year 2007. In a small school, one 2nd grade class had only 8 students – 5 boys and 3 girls. There was no cafeteria and the children had to bring their lunches. They ate in the classroom as the teachers ate in the small teachers’ room. The lead teacher noticed that the one British girl was eating her lunch by herself every day as all the others ate in little groups. He pointed it out to the class teacher who expressed sympathy but “what can you do?”

Occasionally, during my long teaching career, I attended a “work shop” or “in-service”or “staff development” meeting where someone presented a package of activities which were designed to help teachers with a certain aspect of teaching. I presented one called Math Derby. It entailed small-group flash card sessions and 2 minute speed tests on math “facts”. 28 right out of 30 gave you a win. If you won, you moved to the next level – 10 levels for each of the 4 arithmetic functions. . On any test, everyone had the chance to win, no matter what level you were on. I put a “Star Chart” on the wall to show everyone’s progress and which acted as a positive reinforcement (reward) everyone. It was very popular so we changed it from 1 to 2 speed tests a week.

One in-service that I attended and used to great benefit was called “Assertive Discipline”, It was a package of activities to help maintain discipline. All teachers must develop their p ersonal repertoire of ways to maintain
appropriate discipline in the classroom and I had my own. But I tried to incorporate the Assertive Dicipline method into mine and found it to be surprisingly helpful: I put a jar on my teacher’s desk and whenever a child did something very positive, I put a colored marble in the jar. The behavior could be academic, or social and I made sure everyone earned marbles for the group. When there were 30 marbles the class was rewarded with a party. The variables, of course, were the number of marbles, how long between parties, (I chose about 3 weeks) and the length of the party. I chose 20 minutes. The teacher may also choose to take marbles out of the jar for negative or disruptive behavior. A helpful packaged program which included principles of behaviorism but left much room for the teacher’s personal touch -for example verbally rewarding the student who earned the marble and noting how s/he was helping the group get a party.