Social Emotional Learning, PART 4: POLITICAL MANIPULATION for SOCIAL JUSTICE

New Age Nanny State White Paper
SURVEY OPT-OUT FORM
Parents' Rights In Education Website
DONATE TODAY!

Common Core-Aligned and Other SEL Curricula 

 Because SEL is so prevalent in the Common Core standards, it is similarly infused into Common Core-aligned curricula. Many such curricula emphasize not just the SEL of identifying and controlling one’s own emotions, but the more political SEL of learning how to manipulate others’ emotions to achieve a goal. One example is the first-grade English Language Arts curriculum, Voices, approved for use with the Common Core in Utah:  

 “In the Voices Democracy theme, students use their voices to advocate solutions to social problems that they care deeply about [assuming that six-year-olds “care deeply” about social issues]. They are involved in learning the following theme related social knowledge and skills: social role models, social advocacy, and respect for each other” (emphasis added). 

 “Tell students when they write a call to action, they should include emotional words to get readers to feel so strongly about a problem that they want to do what is being asked of them” (emphasis added).

This curriculum goes far beyond helping first-graders get along with their peers and delves into political manipulation. It’s never too early, apparently, to use SEL to create little community organizers.

 An Education Week article discussed how SEL is being infused into academic subjects to motivate students toward political action. Given that this article was published in 2017, presumably these lessons are aligned to the Common Core standards for use in most public-school classrooms. SEL proponents enthuse that “[a] reading or math lesson can teach students to see their personal challenges as part  of  a wider struggle, where people work together to bring about change, what these teachers call social justice.” 

 A noteworthy example is an online math course used in high school: 

 It’s that sense of control that math teacher Kelly Boles wants to impart to her students in her statistics class at Betsy Layne High School  in  rural, eastern Kentucky. Boles also co-leads a Teach For America-sponsored online course on the  edX platform called “Teaching  Social  Justice Through Secondary Mathematics.” She teaches students to respond rationally to data that provokes strong emotions, without immediately responding with arguments. She does so by having them focus on the wider implications of data. It’s making math relevant, but the ultimate goal is to get kids to start asking certain questions of the data that ultimately could lead to civic action.