Social-emotional learning will soon become spiritual-ethical learning, and the public school systems will decide whose spiritual and ethical beliefs to teach.
For families that care about raising their children with the moral and religious values of their own faith tradition, questions about which spiritual and ethical teachings should be taught prompt even more speculation about whether so-called social-emotional learning (SEL) should be taught in public education at all.
As the theory adopts spiritual and ethical dimensions, it will amount to state-sanctioned religion.
What Is SEL, and How Has It Changed?
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is a mental-health framework that has woven itself into the very fabric of our education system.
Standards, assessments, curricula, and even college and career readiness standards have been altered to teach, measure, and track students’ adoption of SEL’s five core competencies — put forth by its standard-bearer, the Collaborative for Academic Social Emotional Learning (CASEL).
Since its birth in 1994 at the Fetzer Institute and up until 2020, CASEL’s definition of social-emotional learning and its competencies have relatively stayed the same.
It described SEL as “the process through which children acquire the skills to recognize and manage emotions, develop caring and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, and handle challenging situations effectively.”
In 2020, amid the chaos of the global pandemic and racial riots, CASEL quietly updated that definition and its five core competencies. Its new definition of Transformative SEL and adjusted competencies reflect the view that so-called social and emotional learning needs
