Social & Emotional Learning (SEL): Is It Good for Kids?

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In today's podcast, we look at the popular Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum that is rising in public and even private Christian schools. What is it? Is it biblical? And is it something our children should be involved in? Tune in for an in-depth look at Social and Emotional Learning.

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello, friends. On today's episode, we are going to explore all things social and emotional learning. What is it? Is it biblical? Should our children be involved in it? These are all questions that we have received before through the Foundation Worldview podcast submission form. And in all honesty, for the past two years, I have avoided this question only because I have not known enough about social and emotional learning to be able to speak into it in a way that I thought would be both biblical and helpful. However, recently we have received an influx of questions about social and emotional learning from parents whose children are involved in schools that incorporate social emotional learning, and from teachers at private Christian schools that are saying, "My school is adopting a social and emotional learning curriculum. I'm not sure if this is biblical, what should I do?" So because we received the influx of questions, this summer I actually dove down deep into a lot of research on Social-emotional learning so that I could understand it well to then be able to speak into it from a biblical perspective. So social-emotional learning is what we're going to dive down deep into today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for today's episode.

Now, as I started diving down into research on social and emotional learning, also called SEL, so I might refer to it as SEL, what I discovered is that the title is a bit deceptive. I mean, who wouldn't want their child to have positive social skills and to learn to regulate their emotions? So social and emotional learning sounds great, but is social and emotional learning just about positive social skills and learning to regulate emotions? And the answer to that question is no. That is why this title is deceptive. So in a few minutes, we're going to look at all that is encompassed in social emotional learning. But first, I want to share what I believe is a helpful parallel to understanding why the term social emotional learning is deceptive. Think about it this way, when you discovered that you were going to be a parent for the first time, was planning for parenthood a wise goal? Yes, it was. You want to make sure that you're prepared for this little one that God is bringing into your life, that you know how to care for them, you know how to care for them physically, emotionally, spiritually, in all these ways. So planning for parenthood is a good thing. Does that mean that we should build more Planned Parenthood centers? Well, that depends. What does Planned Parenthood mainly seek to do? If you ask someone on the street what Planned Parenthood mainly seeks to do, probably the most popular response would be, well, Planned Parenthood seeks to promote reproductive justice. Okay, well, reproductive justice sounds like a good thing, right? But what is considered reproductive justice? Well, when you dive down into it, reproductive justice is murdering babies in the womb and then leaving their mothers without any physical, emotional, or spiritual support to grieve and heal from their loss. So as we can see in this parallel, the terminology Planned Parenthood, it's a coverup for the murder of innocent children and the physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse of mothers in crisis. So while planning for parenthood is a very good thing as an organization, Planned Parenthood is an evil thing. So the language there is very deceptive. And the reason that it's deceptive is because it's covering up something. And I think it's very true also with social and emotional learning. That the title, social and emotional learning points to something that's good. It's good for our kids to learn social skills, it's good for them to learn emotional regulation, but that title is actually a coverup for what is really going on.

So our next question is then what is social emotional learning? Well, the largest, most predominant organization in the US that is promoting and supporting social and emotional learning is an organization called CASEL, which stands for the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning. And so according to the CASEL website on the fundamentals of SEL page, they say SEL, again, remember, that stands for social-emotional learning, is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions. Well, that all sounds really great. I mean, shouldn't we strive to have our children develop healthy identities, manage emotions, and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions? I would hope most people would agree that yes, this should be something we strive for with our children.

However, the next question we need to ask ourselves is how are these terms being defined according to the SEL leaders and content creators? How are they defining things like developing healthy identities, feeling and showing empathy for others, establishing and maintaining supportive relationships? We need to ask ourselves, how are these terms being defined? Well, if you go on the CASEL website, they have a framework page for social and emotional learning. And on that page it says, students, families, schools, and communities are all part of broader systems that shape learning, development and experiences. Inequities based on race, ethnicity, class, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other factors are deeply ingrained in the vast majority of these systems and impact student and adult, social, emotional, and academic learning. Now, that's not the end of what I'm going to quote, but I want to pause right here to provide a little bit of commentary. So it was just saying that families and schools and communities have these deeply embedded inequities based on race, ethnicity, class, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other factors. Now, I'm not saying that every single part of that statement is untrue, but listen, that statement was just directed at your family saying that within your family, there are inequities that must be broken down. So keep that in mind. Now, I'm returning to quote from this website. It says, while SEL alone will not solve longstanding and deep seated inequities in the education system, it can create the conditions needed for individuals and schools to examine and interrupt inequitable policies and practices, create more inclusive learning environments, and reveal and nurture the interests and assets of all individuals. Okay? So social and emotional learning is not just about helping students learn to develop positive relationships and manage their emotions. It's about teaching children that there are inequities everywhere in society, and that their responsibility is to break down these systems that have inequities to rebuild a more just society.

Now, biblically, we know that God is for justice. God is a just God. God requires that we act justly. But the question then becomes how is justice being defined according to this framework? Because think about things like gender identity, okay? So seeking justice for gender identity according to God's framework, justice for someone who is struggling with their gender identity would be to have compassion towards them, kindness towards them, and help provide the healing and hope needed to align their inner subjective emotional world with the outer objective reality of their biology. That would be just treatment according to the biblical worldview. Where according to this worldview, just treatment would be tearing down the system, tearing down the normative family structure and any systems that would not celebrate anyone's chosen gender identity. So behind this whole framework, there is a political agenda behind this language. Even though this language is crafted to make it sound like it's solely seeking to foster healthy child development. The truth of the matter is that social and emotional learning is one of the main vehicles that is used to get critical gender theory and critical race theory embedded into every single academic subject in the classroom.

Now, those of you who are faithful Foundation Worldview podcast listeners know that we try really hard to keep this podcast under 20 minutes. I don't know if I'm going to make it in under 20 minutes on this podcast, but still I cannot do a thorough hours long treatment of how SEL is used as a vehicle to get critical gender theory and critical race theory into the classroom. However, if you would like a very thorough treatment on the topic, highly recommend that you check out a book called The Queering of the American Child by Logan Lancing that will provide a very thorough explanation of this.

Okay. So that was my first point, that the title social and emotional Learning is deceptive, that there's a whole agenda behind this very innocuous sounding language. Second thing is as you dive into social and emotional learning curriculum, it becomes obvious that there are several key components of social and emotional learning that do not align with the biblical worldview. So we're going to cover several of these components. The first one that doesn't align with the biblical worldview is that in SEL, feelings become the ultimate guide to reality. In my research, I watched this whole, I think it was a 12 part video series that was put out in coordination with the CASEL Network and Public Broadcasting Services in the US, and a teacher was explaining how social and emotional learning is embedded into all of their day. And she was saying how in every classroom in their school, the first thing that they do is circle time that students sit in a circle and they're asked, how are you feeling today? And every single student answers the question how they are feeling. And then the social and emotional learning lessons are entirely focused on how students are feeling and acknowledging those feelings and exploring those feelings and diving down, drilling down into those feelings rather than exploring whether or not those feelings are pointing them towards the truth or away from it.

In the book, Mama Bear Apologetics, there's this great quote that the mama bears have that I think really describes emotions well, and they say that "emotions are a wonderful check engine light, but are a terrible GPS." Now, a teacher checking in with a student on how they're feeling in the morning can be a really great thing to help the teacher know where that student's at. It can be a really great thing. It's something that I try to do every morning with my students on the way into the classroom, try to get a read for how are they doing this morning? Is there anything that's bothering them that can be really helpful information for a teacher to know? And that's like the little check engine light. However, in social and emotional learning, students are asked to dive down into their feelings and to sit there and the emotions become the GPS. In that video series that I mentioned, watching students at all ages were sharing how they would share their feelings and then they would use those feelings to take action. This one girl who was in high school talked about how she and her friends were feeling like they weren't being treated fairly, so they staged a protest one afternoon at the school. And feelings are just given this authority that God never designed them to have. And now we know as humans that acknowledging how we're feeling can be helpful. We're commanded in Scripture in Psalm 62 to pour out our hearts before the Lord at all times. And so acknowledging our emotions is a really important thing, but sitting in them and just wallowing there is not a healthy thing. I saw in my own experience in the classroom that throughout the years, I had many students who went through really hard things. I had students who went through the loss of a parent, students who went through parents' divorce. I had a student one year who was going through homelessness, so many different things that students had to grieve. And as the teacher, I knew that it was my job to support those students and make them know that they were loved and to recognize what they were feeling. But I also knew that one of the best things for those students was that during the classroom hours, they could get a break from those overwhelming emotions as they focused on reading and writing and mathematics and social studies and developing relationships. And so it was so healthy for them that while they were grieving, they knew their teacher acknowledged what they were going through, and then they could have some relief from those really strong emotions during the day. Where with social and emotional learning, the children in many cases, are actually required to share their grief with the entire classroom. Can you imagine how awful it would've been for that little girl in my classroom if she had to share with everyone that she was homeless? I mean, that would've been so embarrassing and humiliating for her. Instead, during the day, she knew that I knew what she was going through. She knew that I would let her come and talk with me, and that she could cry if she wanted to. We also had our school counselor, but she wasn't forced to bear everything in front of the entire classroom and then have them sit there and empathize and think, oh my goodness. Imagine how hard it would be to be this little girl and to be homeless, where that's what social and emotional learning asks kids to do. Where if you have a teacher in a classroom that knows how to manage emotions in a healthy way, it can be a really safe space for that student to know they have someone to share with, but they don't have to wallow in those emotions all day long. If you're just looking for some resources to help you teach your children how to manage emotions well, and how to discern whether an emotion is pointing them towards truth or away from truth, highly recommend that you check out our Biblical Thinking track at Foundation Worldview, our Biblical Worldview curriculum, Comparative Worldview curriculum, and Careful Thinking curriculum. The first units in all three of those curriculums focus on truth and feelings. So that was the first thing that in SEL feelings become the ultimate guide to reality.

The second issue that makes SEL not align with the biblical worldview is that schools take over the God-given roles of parents. Again, on that CASEL website, they have a framework, they have a diagram that talks about what social and emotional learning is. And in the middle, you can go on the website, on the CASEL website and see this, in the middle, there's a white circle that says social and emotional learning. And then there's five components that are included in it, and it is relationship skills, social awareness, self-awareness, self management, and then responsible decision making. Great things, things we want our kids to have relationship skills, social awareness, and responsible decision-making. And then outside of that circle with the wheel, with those five different components, there are different concentric circles. And the first circle that's right next to the wheel is the classroom. Then the circle outside of that is the school. The circle outside of that is families and caregivers. And the circle outside of that is communities. So what place are families given? What place are parents and other caregivers given in this diagram? They are the third ring. Who's the first ring? The classroom. The second is the school. The third is the parent. And so it is not viewed as, okay, parents are imparting their wisdom and their values to students, and then the school is coming along and supporting that. No, any partnership language in this SEL framework assumes that you as the parent are partnering with the school, not vice versa. It's not the school partnering with you. The school is the primary instruction giver and the primary source of wisdom here. And you as the parent get to partner with them.

And now, I can be honest here that in my own teaching, I taught for a decade in a Christian school. And even though I went to a Christian university to get my education degree when I graduated, I did not have a distinctly biblical view of education. And I'm sad to say that for my first about four or five years of teaching, I did not have a biblical view of education that I thought that parents were partnering with me to educate my students. It wasn't until I actually took a class on the biblical worldview and on competing worldviews where a professor helped me realize that biblically the parents had the authority over the child, and they were graciously allowing me to come in and partner with them. But it was me who is partnering with the family, not the family who is partnering with me. And so that's where this framework for social and emotional learning gets it wrong, that the families are the third circle out.

So any partnership language assumes that the parent are partnering with the school. And then each of these components that I mentioned, the relationship skills, social awareness, self-awareness, self-manangement and responsible decision-making, each of these components is defined according to the SEL curriculum creators' values, not those of the parents. And so the values are coming from those who are creating the curriculum, not from the parents. So when the curriculum is talking about empathy and justice and inequity and compassion, they are defining those terms in specific ways that may or, most likely, may not align with the way a parent who's stemming from the biblical worldview is going to define those terms.

The third way in which I believe SEL curriculum does not align with the biblical worldview is that academic subjects are hijacked to teach moral lessons that often do not align with Scripture. In that video series that I mentioned, you can find that video series on the CASEL website, it's also on YouTube, but in one of the videos, a man named Tyrone Martinez-Black, who is the policy and practice specialist at CASEL, he said, "In SEL, you tie mathematics concepts into topics relevant to students because fractions incorporate divisions and distributions, and our youth around the nation know that some things are distributed fairly and unfairly. And so an understanding of mathematics from the context of what it means to share equally is rooted in some very real problems and circumstances. So that kind of lesson, rather than simply being about numbers and symbols, becomes an actual lived and culturally relevant experience." Okay, so do you see here how he's describing what would be done in a math class that you learn about fractions, and then you tie it in to talk about how resources are often distributed in a way that is not equal, in a way that is not equitable. So what's going on here is there's an entire moral and ethical framework that is assumed behind such lessons and is then used to teach the academic subject. So yes, there's some things about fractions, but most of it is about how the systems in our world are not set up in a way that promotes justice. Now, as we talked about before, justice is a biblical concept. Justice is important to God. God is just, God requires that his people lived justly. We are called to live justly. We are called to seek justice, but in Scripture never is justice described as there being a complete equal distribution of all goods. Now, there's lots in Scripture that talks about caring for the poor, caring for the weak, caring for the downtrodden. And so at times that might involve us taking resources and giving them to those who do not have them. But God's standard of justice never says that every resource is going to be distributed equally. That's not the biblical worldview. That's the socialist worldview.

Then in SEL, other subjects are used to teach empathy over gender identity. This is especially true in literature classes, using empathy to think through, oh, what would it be like to be a person whose internal feelings didn't match with their, I'm going to put up air quotes now with their "gender assigned at birth", and then to have students actually try to feel that and try to live that and try to empathize with that. Now, the moral assumption behind this version of empathy is that the problem with gender identity is not some mental and emotional distress over the biological and the emotional not matching, but it's actually an issue with society not celebrating a person's chosen gender identity. Do you see how there's so many moral assumptions here that do not align with the biblical worldview, but yet the academic subjects are hijacked?

So again, I know that this was a really short just coverage of social and emotional learning, but I'll recommend some resources at the end that you can check out to learn more, to do more research on your own. But now the question is, okay, what do you do if your child's school has a social and emotional program? So my recommendation is if your child is going through social and emotional learning, go into the school administration with a humble attitude. We're told in Scripture that God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. We need to go in with a humble attitude to the administration and ask, just, can I ask you some questions about this social and emotional learning program? And some good questions to ask are, what are the goals of the curriculum? Then ask for definitions of words to say, and this curriculum mentions a lot about empathy and justice and supportive relationships. Can you explain to me how the school is defining these terms? Then ask to view the curriculum and the materials that are being used with your child, both in his or her grade level, and then in the grade levels, either below or above, or both. Ask how your school views your role in your child's social and emotional development. Are they looking to partner with you or are they thinking that you are going to partner with them? So take some time, go in humbly, ask for questions, do your due diligence, and then all throughout, be praying that the Lord would give you wisdom as you look at these materials. And then also be okay with maybe having to reconsider the best academic setting for your child. Maybe this current setting is the best setting, or maybe this is not the best academic setting for your child.

Now, some of you may be thinking, well, my child goes to a Christian school. I'm pretty sure that this is a good setting for them, but I think my Christian school has a social emotional learning program. So what should I do there? Again, would recommend that you do the same thing that I just recommended. For any child who's in a social and emotional learning program, go in with a humble attitude, ask those questions. Now, I think that if social and emotional learning is incorporated in a Christian school, it can be very confusing, because often the same language is used in Christian schools that are using social and emotional learning and public schools that are using social and emotional learning. And even ACSI, the Association for Christian Schools International has a position statement on biblical social and emotional learning. And so in my research, I read that position statement multiple times, track down some of the footnotes in it, and in the closing paragraphs of ACSI's position statement, it says, "Christian educators should be cautious in selecting curriculum and aware that SEL apart from the gospel is unbiblical."

Now, I was grateful that this sentence was in there, but I thought, oh man, what a missed opportunity because the whole position statement is talking about social development and emotional development and using biblical support for social and emotional learning development. And now most of the things that they said, I would agree, are biblical, how we want our children to learn to interact with others, how we want them to learn to regulate their emotions, all of those things. But they kept weaving in just secular social and emotional learning language without ever explaining how they were defining terms differently or how this framework should be hopefully vastly different than what is implemented in the public schools. And so I thought, oh, man, to just throw in this one sentence, but then nowhere warn of the incredible dangers of most SEL practices that are embedded throughout most curriculums, I think is a really dangerous thing. And I think that this is going to be confusing for a lot of Christian schools. Because social and emotional learning as it was defined in the ACSI position statement is very different than social and emotional learning presented by CASEL as is presented in most public schools. But I think ACSI did not do a great job in this position statement in explaining the difference. It's my prayer and hope that they're going to go back and change this because just recently, ACSI has made some wonderful updates and changes to their policy on biblical unity and diversity, and they've made some great biblical changes. So it's really my hope and prayer that they will go back and that they will revise this position paper so that they are showing how biblical social and emotional learning is vastly different than what is presented in the public education realm.

So, if you are a part of a Christian school, whether you're a teacher administrator, a parent there, and your school is teaching kids positive social skills and healthy emotional development from a biblical framework, that's a really good thing. But my recommendation would be, don't call it social and emotional learning, because that terminology means something completely different than what you are hopefully doing in your school that. By the vast majority of people that are implementing social and emotional learning, it looks like just what I outlined in the first part of this podcast where it is my hope and prayer that at Christian schools, it looks vastly different. So just as you wouldn't call a parenting class at your church Planned Parenthood, because the term Planned Parenthood in general means something completely different than biblical planning for parenthood. It's wise for Christian educators, for Christian schools to have different terminologies. So just please don't call it social and emotional learning. Call it character development. You can call it personal and relational formation. Call it growing in the fruits of the spirit, but just don't buy into that social and emotional language and don't buy into that framework because it is not a biblical framework.

Some resources that you can check out just for further investigation and study on your own, check out the CASEL website. It's just C A S E L .org. They have a social and emotional learning playlist there. Also, if you go to the ThinkTV PBS YouTube channel, you can find the social and emotional learning playlist that I recommended. All those videos that I quoted from. Another great resource is the book, Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier. It has a lot included in it about social and emotional learning, and then also the book that I recommended earlier in this podcast, the Queering of the American Child by Logan Lancing.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode, but if you have found this content beneficial, ask that you would just push it out to others who you know that it would benefit, because we want to get the word out about what's really going on with social and emotional learning and what Christians should be doing about it. Also, ask that you would like and subscribe to this content so you don't miss any future episodes and that you would invest a few seconds it takes to rate and review this content. If you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that question by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast. As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is the same as always. Then, no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care, find yourselves that you would trust that God is working all things together for your good. By using all things to conform you more into the image of His Son. I'll see you next time.