Despite the growing demand for S.E.L., some worry that asking teachers to address feelings takes valuable time from academics. Vital subjects like science, history, art and music “are already starved for oxygen,” Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning education policy group in Washington, wrote in an email. “It’s easy to recognize the importance of S.E.L. skills. It’s much harder to identify and implement curricular interventions that have a measurable effect on them. Thus ‘what works’ tends to be defined as ‘what I like’ or ‘what I believe works.’”
Right - because so many other reformer pipe dreams, from the small schools initiative to Common Core, have been proven interventions with a measurable effect.
These are the goals of social and emotional learning:
To advance the science and practice of S.E.L., researchers at Yale established the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning in 1994; under the leadership of Roger P. Weissberg, it moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996.Drawing on decades of research, the group set forth what it described as the five goals of S.E.L. for students:•Self-awareness: The ability to reflect on one’s own feelings and thoughts.•Self-management (or self-control): The ability to control one’s own thoughts and behavior.•Social awareness: The ability to empathize with others, recognize social cues and adapt to various situations.•Relationship skills: The ability to communicate, make friends, manage disagreements, recognize peer pressure and cooperate.•Responsible decision making: The ability to make healthy choices about one’s own behavior while weighing consequences for others.
You can see why so many corporate deformers wouldn't much like this kind of thing.
How many deformers are able "to make healthy choices about one’s own behavior while weighing consequences for others?"
From Bill Gates to Michael Bloomberg to Andrew Cuomo to Joel Klein to Arne Duncan to John King to Michelle Rhee to David Coleman, I see a group of people who like imposing their own agendas and ideologies on others without a care about "weighing the consequences for others."
Look at the above group and ask yourself how many are able "to empathize with others, recognize social cues and adapt to various situations?"
As for "the ability to reflect on one’s own feelings and thoughts," we all know what David Coleman so famously said: No one gives a shit what anybody else thinks or feels, they only care if they can get the market analysis done by Monday.
No wonder deformer shills like Pondiscio see social and emotional learning as a threat.
It goes at the very core of the flawed corporate deformer model - emotionally and spiritually-stunted people imposing their own ideologies and agendas on the country without any accountability for results.
