logicp_writings/new/SEL.md

Social Emotional Learning

Introduction

All of Marxism can be explained in about 10 minutes - literally, succintly but completely. Everything is variations on the same theme, with specifics in how it's implemented.

SEL Names

• Linda Darling-Hammond
  • Chief crusader for SEL in the world
  • Most Influential Educator in America (2006)
  • Tapped by Obama's Education Transition team (2008) (Every Student Succeeds Act), but replaced by Arnie Duncan (Common Core)
  • Tapped again in 2020 (Biden)
  • Recommended by Bill Ayres (Weather Underground - where did all the 60's radicals go? Classrooms)
  • CASEL (Collaborative for Academic and Social Emotional Learning)
  • The "gold standard" for SEL in the industry
• Maurice J Elias
  • "Godfather of SEL"
  • Psychologist / Prof at Rutger's University
  • Director of Rutger's Social Emotional and Character Development Lab and Co-Director of the Academy of Social Emotional in Schools
  • Humanizing education / Transform (Marx's project of having Man discover he is Social Man / Transform Man and the world by humanizing)
  • Transformation of Society into a truly Social Society (Marxist Communism)

Note

Henri Giroux was openly Communist (claims they ask the right questions)

Elias doesn't say it as openly as Giroux does. Giroux thinks the teacher's and education are far too right-wing and believes this is why the kids are still failing.

Maurice J Elias

"The cornerstone of SEL efforts is the delivery of essential skills and competencies to students without which children are at a distinct disadvantage when navigating classrooms, school, workplace or even family settings. Some children are fortunate enough to go through experiences with parents and other loved ones, educators and communities that afford them the opportunity to have these competencies nurtured and refined, however, it is evident that too many children do not have these experiences or at least do not have them consistencly and as a result struggle academically and socially and find themselves on a path towards problem behaviours and academic underachievement relative to their abilities."

• Some kids are fortunate, but too many don't have necessary experience
• Some kids have 'better parenting' and are relatively privileged
  • This dynamic must be corrected by institution / central

Broadcasting and Screening

• You don't do this for cancer. You don't put chemotherapy in the water supply.
• You don't do universal cancer screenings, as you are always resolving cancerous cells

But this is what's happening with SEL. Every kid has to fill out the surveys to identify who might be a problem-kid, or more accurately, what problems every kid has. They assume every kid has problems, as privilege is relational. Broad screening and then broadcast the program into other subjects.

The goal isn't to have targeted SEL interventions for kids who has identified problems delivered in private by professionals, with Parent's approval...

Other Subjects

Social Emotional Learning is to be infused systematically for every kid. An intervention that cures a problem like trauma or genuinely at-risk students from bad neighbourhoods/homes might be a situation where it could be rationalized for use (in accord with its original intent).

In any case, this is the sales pitch - privilege vs equity - strawman cartoon of two school houses.

• 1 with the pieces of "whole child" program, but not optimally configured or distributed
• 1 with organized pieces and put together like a completed puzzle - filling the school neatly and orderly

All these things are already happening in a way where they either go unnoticed, or they've been organized in such a way that they are sub-optimal. Imagine how much better it would be if it were organized and controlled

Whole Child Education

Started in 1968 with James Comer at Yale trying to figure out why inner city Hartford kids were facing the challenges they had and what could be done about it. Rescued many kids in 5 years and improved these schools by addressing what's going on in the kid's home / family life. In those specific pilots there was a measure of success, and Social Emotional Learning grew from this.

1994 the Fetster Institute latched onto this for spiritual in education purposes. Wholistic child education with Social Emotional Learning created on its back.

Marxist strawman construction: something like SEL or character education. Because there are people who fall through the cracks so we must conscientize (the point of Social Emotional).

"Every school in the US and in the world addresses the Social Emotional and Character development of the students who pass through its doors. Indeed it is impossible to bring adults and children together for long periods of tie over multiple weeks months and years and not influence childrens' competencies and teh types of persons they will become when putting those competencies to use."

Always happening, so we might as well do it through people who are thinking about it with a conscious and intended purpose with it. Doing it right to address pesky inequalities that can't be ignored.

"Because of social inequities, as well as the challenges of a globalized society characterized by rapid pace of change, there are no US school districts that can justifiably ignore the urgency for all students to be equipped with the skills, knowledge and disposition to negotiate the many challenges related to productive living in the 21st century".

Sounds like the WEF

"The answer is not to prepare students for a life of tests, but rather to prepare them for the tests of life. For this to happen, schoolhouses cannot afford to be jumbled. They must meet the challenges of preparing students with the full array of skills and perspectives needed for college and career success. A life of contribution and caring, SEL, is an essential aspect of this."

The goal of ESL is to meet challenge of preparing students with full array of skills and PERSPECTIVES. Teach your kids how to care correctly at school. Care correctly by teaching them the right perspectives, according to their humanizing and transforming vision for education

"As the number of schools and districts concerned with academic success of all learners steadily increases, there will be a growing recognition of SEL's essential role. Therefore, as districts and schools embrace SEL as a core component of the mission to prepare learners to succeed academically and socially, the technology for sustained implementation of school-wide SEL must also scale up."

They don't really have evidence for this, but they'll just keep scaling up regardless of whether that exists or is of even poor quality

"This scaling-up inevitably requires a coordinated effort so that students and educators are not beset iwth a jumble of well-meaning but fragmented programs and school can become places where, in James Comer's words, all children "catch character" and Social Emotional Learning from those around them in ways that become integral to their lives"

Catch character and social-emotional leraning from those around you - the democratic classroom of Freire and Giroux being put into purpose through SEL structures.

"It cant' be a jumble of well-meaning but fragmented programs - it has to be a coordinated effort that teaches the perspectives that people need so they can care correctly about the right things and in the right ways and to the right degrees, which creates what Marcuse called "Liberating Tolerance" - a society that will value those leftist things and be utterly intolerant outside of them and extend unlimited tolerance to even the abuses of people like Weird Al."

"We use the word all intentionally because unlike experimental studies in which hypotheses can be "proven" despite many participants not conforming to the predicted pattern, schools in practice need all students to thrive. All means all."

With the word ALL, we'll always have rationale to intervene. It's going to become part of the school's mission to teach everyone who's connected to the school in any way, including: parents, visitors, alumni, community members

"As of this writing the field of SEL and related approaches is evolving and holds considerable promise for transforming educational practice into a humanizing experience for all who transforming educational practice for all who pass through, work in, support, visit and relate to our schools. Progress must be made in many areas beyond those covered in this chapter, and doing so is a developmental imperative for youth across cultures and contexts. Yet, emerging research highlighting Social Emotional Learning's positive effects on behaviour and academic outcomes elevates this importance as foundational to a quality education.

This represents a sea change from SEL as a non-essential addon whose success depended on whether school leaders had the time money or incinlination to focus on it. The future challenge is not if but how."

Key theme: Programming

• School program
• Program your kids
• Systemic instead of an addon
• Communities of practice (beyond school)
• Religion with school at the center (rather than a pulpit)

The essential pervasive mode of education so that the new rationality and new sensibility that schools should be imparting to students and people beyond the students (the community around them) so they can create a new reality with 21st century schools.

Maurice Elias' vision (The Godfather of SEL) Linda Darling Hammond (Queen of SEL or institutionalizing SEL)

• Obama and Biden education transition teams
• Recommended by Bill Ayres (Weather Underground)
• Pushed aside by Common Core guy (Arnie Duncan)
• Instrumental in getting Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)
• Include provisions for SEL, particularly SEL-based surveying of students This name should be plastered over everything the way Robin D'Angelo and Ibram Kendi

Linda Darling Hammond wrote the foreword to Maurice Elias' book:

Hammond's Foreword

"As the contributors to this book show, there is a large body of scientific evidence demonstrating the positive outcomes of SEL and suggesting how these outcomes can be achieved."

Done a PODCAST before about how this is a Bait and Switch. Old models replaced with new models as they constantly evolve. In fact, the data is spotty and selectively chosen to pain t apicture that this really works, but they're selling something that works better and are using this program that's broadcast in universal screening and is utterly damaging and openly transformative in the sense that it is Marxist and purposed to raise Critical Consciousness and systemic in the sense that it is to be infused into every aspect of education - to make it "Foundational" to all of education.

"This scientific foundation challenges us to undertake a decidedly humanistic endeavour (humanistic education? Freire). In particular, this endeavour includs the humanization of school institutions that, as Max Weber described, were deliberately de-personalized in the early 20th century in order to function as more perfect bureaucracies. Guided by rules and regulations that could avoid the need for individual considerations or feelings. As Paulo Freire explained, humanization is "the process of becoming more fully-human as social, historical, transformative, creative persons who participate in and with the world."

• Social: Socialist
• Historical: Dialectically Marxist
• Thinking: Critical
• Communicating: Dialogical
• Transformative: Marxist
• Creative: the creative subject (the goal of Marxism is to unestrange yourself so you can see yourself as a creative subject)

It's not enough to be educated, but you must become politically educated. They know what they're saying - we're not adding anything - we can see it here quite clearly.

"Educators, he argued, must "listen to their students and build on their knowledge and experiences in order to engage in personalized education approaches that further the goals of humanization and transformation".

This is not ambiguous or a question. It is a clear statement of intent

"Indeed, this is what we see in schools who successfully undertake the journey in becoming socially and emotionally educative".

Social Emotional Learning is Marxist programming - brainwashing in Marxism using Paulo Freire's method. These personalized educational approaches where you data-mine the students. What is Linda Hammond famous for? Requiring the relentless surveying and data-mining of the students. This is avery clear glimpse behind the curtain of Social Emotional Learning SEL for those of us who know what the words and names involved mean. Freirean brainwashing, or thought-reform, posing as 20th century school-building to build the economy of the future and fill it with peopl ewho are programmed to work in it when they give us a whole new economic order (circular economy - stakeholder capitalism running on a public-private partnership for sustainability - the new sensibility that Marcuse said we had to interject into people until it becomes a biological foundation). Manipulating their social-emotional experience so they have the right perspective and can care the right way.

21st century skill-building is Freirean brainwashing through Social-Emotional instruction into a broadly Marxist understanding of the challenges, issues and political context of the world that kids are growing up in and being ushered into