What does two plus two equal? And how does that make you feel?
Thanks to Gov. Ron DeSantis, math instruction in Florida schools will focus exclusively on the first type of question. The fact that Florida is an outlier should make parents feel uneasy.
Florida sent shock waves across the education establishment when it rejected 41% of math textbooks for containing elements of the Common Core, Critical Race Theory, and Social and Emotional Learning. At first, the conversation focused predominantly on CRT. After all, CRT-infused mathematics certainly is a thing. The “Equitable Math” framework, which encourages teachers to be on guard against the so-called “white supremacy culture” in traditional math instruction, has received major philanthropic foundation support and was highlighted as exemplary by the Department of Education. It wouldn’t be terribly surprising to see elements of it spread to textbook manufacturers.
But the New York Times did a bit of spadework, reviewing 21 math textbooks that Florida rejected, and found that most didn’t touch on race. But they did contain plenty of SEL content. Right now, CRT has stronger connotations than SEL for parents. But as the months go by, more parents will start to wonder: What exactly is SEL? And how did it spread so far and fast into public education?
SEL is the buzzword at the core of the latest education-industrial-complex mass-marketing campaign. It’s a buzzword that could mean any number of things — several are alarming. But it’s a buzzword with a built-in subsidy for gaslighting parents who express concerns. As a Times reporter put it: SEL “is all about helping kids academically by building skills like perseverance and cooperation” and has “close ties to popular psychology ideas like the ‘growth mindset’ and ‘grit.'”
Who could be against that?
Unfortunately, as with all mass-marketing campaigns, there’s quite a bit of daylight between what’s advertised and what’s purchased. As the Times shows, SEL can be an awkward and sloppy tack-on layer to traditional instruction. For example, writing a “math biography” to “soothe math anxiety.”
Soothing anxiety is less the purview of the teachers’ chalkboard than the therapists’ couch. As my American Enterprise Institute colleague Robert Pondiscio argued in an excellent report, more focused SEL instruction essentially asks teachers to act as therapists. However, there is a very good reason why medical ethics prohibit the practice of therapy by unlicensed, untrained amateurs. Mental health amateurs trying to help can unwittingly do profound harm.
The Times also cites the rising concern that “Social Emotional Learning” can amount to “Social and Emotional Engineering,” manipulating feelings to indoctrinate students into a “social justice” worldview. The Times blames this concern on “right-wing activists” who have “sought to tie social-emotional learning to the broader debate” over CRT.
But readers of the Washington Post know that “right-wing activists” are tying these strands together for a very good reason. The Post explained how, in 2019, the central SEL organization, CASEL, embraced the CRT-infused vision of “Transformative SEL.” Formerly value-neutral “competencies” have been filled with CRT-ideological constructs. “Self-awareness” is understood through “intersectionality.” “Self-management” is understood through “transformative/justice-oriented” citizenship.
CASEL’s former CEO declared, “We believe that our work in Social and Emotional Learning must actively contribute to anti-racism.” CASEL’s road map to school reopening is chock-full of calls to embrace “anti-racism” and links to leftist advocacy organizations.
As the math textbook examples show, SEL isn’t always synonymous with social-emotional indoctrination. But if you think that the education establishment and media will have the “self-awareness” to acknowledge the validity of any concern over SEL’s ideological content, then think again. Far more likely, they will gaslight parents and accuse activists of being opposed to the mass-marketed definition: “helping kids academically by building skills like perseverance and cooperation.”
The mass-marketing campaign is working quite profitably.
From November 2019 to April 2021, SEL spending grew by 45% to $765 million. Last month, President Joe Biden declared the first “International SEL Day” and encouraged school districts to spend part of the $120 billion in COVID-19 relief funds on SEL implementation. If this marketing campaign succeeds, it risks reorienting the ethos of public education away from an overriding emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic and toward the practice of politicized pop psychology.
Parents will not be able to stop this burgeoning billion-dollar industry by activism alone. States will need to step up and make clear to textbook manufacturers and education vendors what is and isn’t acceptable. But so far, Florida has been essentially the only state to step up. Time will tell whether other governors and legislators will have the “self-management” or “grit” to follow Florida’s lead.
Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
