Editor’s note: This is the seventh in a multi-part series on How Your School Board Vote Affects Oregon Schools an OAA Voter Education Project

Social-emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing the self-awareness, self-control, and interpersonal skills known as “soft skills” traditionally associated with conflict resolution and character education. It has evolved from being considered “wishy-washy” to being an integral part of educating the whole child.

The roots of SEL are as old as ancient Greece. Plato wrote about education in The Republic, proposing a holistic curriculum that requires a balance of training in physical education, the arts, math, science, character, and moral judgment. In 1988 an article in Scientific American featured a pilot program called the Comer School Development Program centered on James Comer’s speculation that the contrast between a child’s experiences at home and those in school deeply affects the child’s psychosocial development and that shapes their academic achievement. When the pilot showed promise in two poor, low-achieving, predominately African American elementary schools in New Haven, Connecticut, the movement took off with the pilot as the hub of SEL.

Social emotional learning and emotional skills was the subject of several studies and the focus of organizations such as CASEL (Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning). Then under new leadership the group's influence grew all the way to supporters of SEL in congress in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, through H.R. 2437, the Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning Act of 2011.

Preparing children to be responsible, productive, and caring citizens is a timeless pursuit that are goals of education. How best to do this in our school system is a relatively recent and still evolving area of study and practice, and it's the main question the SEL movement seeks to answer.

Oregon’s initiation goes back to 2015 when parents first got a look at the Common Core curriculum asking grades K-3 their feelings about their mother when asked to do a chore, and third-graders were asked to write opinion pieces. From that point, SEL has been viewed as suspect. Described as the process through which we learn to recognize and manage emotions, care about others, make good decisions, behave ethically and responsibly, develop positive relationships, and avoid negative behaviors, it has never materialized as such.

That same year the Comprehensive Sexual Education Act was passed requiring recognition of a child’s sexuality of choice as affirmation of their identity. Schools were weaving social and emotional development into various parts of the school day intermixing it with identity, which became gender identity in 2021.

Where SEL appeared to be an important step in a child’s development, suddenly turned and became a nightmare after almost two years of lockouts to structured schooling. By the time students returned to classrooms, the legislature had defunded resource officers, and adopted equity practices that allowed destructive organizations under the name of “inclusion” to infiltrate schools. The ugly head of “comprehensive sexuality education” emerged in the form of Rape Culture that empowered girls to show up to school half naked.

The true benefits of SEL were buried when in 2016, the State Board of Education approved the Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) creating standards by combining the Human Sexuality Education Law (2009), the Healthy Teen Relationship Act (2012), the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Law (2015), and taking advantage of other laws. It replaced the model of abstinence-only education, and didn’t recognize a belief system forcing an opt-out method as the only option for parents. However, in order to graduate, the student is still expected to know sexual education. The Board claims “the standards do not promote sexuality or impose a set of values, but they do admit they empower students to recognize, communicate, and advocate for their own health and boundaries.”

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

John Oakley Beahrs, retired psychiatry professor stated in testimony that HB 2023 (2019) mandated coercive indoctrination into identity politics under the false guise of liberal education. It “replaces actual history with indoctrination that grossly alters it, and coercively mandates instructing in but one viewpoint – one that’s favored in today’s Oregon, but neither universal nor necessarily in the public interest. In other words, LGBTQ figures are featured because of their sexual preference and gender identity, not their relation to the subject being taught. Because the subject matter is part of every subject, the law implies parents cannot opt their children out.”

Some say parents piggybacked on the inflammatory debate over critical race theory making SEL the next controversial concept. Conservatives are saying it is just another effort to indoctrinate kids with liberal ideology. What they see is an attack against children from all sides. Diversity has confused young students to the extent that SEL has lost its way. The controversy has centered on social-emotional “screeners” being used to guide school-wide programs sponsoring Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs, using schools to promote a LGBTQIA+ agenda while identifying students who are ripe for transitioning.

Every school district wades through a deluge of social-emotional curricula to find one that works. The activation of parents across the state is going to be demanding on school boards to dig into what they are adopting and not depend on the state or district administrators for the end-all answers.

Oregon Abigail Adams Voter Education Project lists the candidates and those responding to the survey on their website.


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2023-05-03 11:43:07

Last Update: 2023-05-02 18:51:35