Social Emotional Learning, PART 1: INTRODUCING THE WHOLE CHILD

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In a nutshell, SEL is latest educational fad teaching students to rely on themselves, their peers, and the progressive culture, not the truths proposed by their faith and their families. Progressive social norms become their moral authority. PRIE opposes the “whole child” concept, including character and ethics education, psychological insights, and group dynamics, training children in consequentialist (moral relativism) moral reasoning.

The current popularity of social-emotional learning (SEL) represents progressive education’s greatest victory in its 100-plus-year campaign to transform our public schools, and, thus, the nature of America itself. Since it began, the mission of progressive education has been to liberate American students from the “shackles of traditional wisdom.” John Dewey and his legion of educationalists saw the elementary and secondary schools as the vehicle to form the New American, one who would be liberated from the prejudices of family, church, and tradition.

In the early 20th century, their ideological victories were largely symbolic. They captured intellectually shallow schools of education, but not the public schools themselves. Those schools were rooted in their communities, reflecting local values and governed by local citizens. Post-World War II, the “in loco parentis” tradition of school gave way to more and more control, first by states and more recently by federal intervention. Input from parents on what was to be learned and how schools were to be conducted gave way to ever larger educational commissions and more distant experts.

Instead of parents’ deciding on the ultimate question of education, “What is most worth knowing?” for our children, the new controllers of public education stepped in. Enter the progressive educators. The term “public” came to mean “secular.” The long-held view of the public schools—not only teaching the core disciplines, but also helping children develop a sense of right and wrong and the good habits to put morality into practice—became the battleground. The wisdom of the past, with its history of wars and bigotry, had to be ignored. Prohibited, too, was any reference to God and organized religion. The only source of moral authority for the secular progressives was and is science and “empirically verifiable knowledge.”

The problem with this plan is that science and the empirical method do not lend themselves well to dealing with the questions of the moral life. The ultimate questions of life, which were once a staple of an education, such as “What is a good person?” “How should I live my life?” and “Is there a God?” cannot be answered by the scientific method. Thus, these questions and issues have been eradicated from our schools.

Into this barren educational landscape entered the

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