(RepublicanInformer.com)- Experts say that a social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum divides children through identity charts, “getting to know you” surveys and classroom contracts.
A curriculum designed by Facing History and Ourselves, a program that partners with more than 100,000 teachers to provide educational resources to address racism, antisemitism, and prejudice at crucial points in history, teaches students about gender, culture, and identity. The curriculum is based on SEL, which teaches pupils social skills for emotional well-being, but has been criticized for setting the basis for CRT in the classroom.
Wai Wah Chin, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told the DCNF that separating children by their group identities and having them judge others or self-judgment is psychologically harmful and nasty. SEL gives teachers strong control and assessment tools. Educators fail to teach academics but want to focus on mind control and manipulation.
The curriculum advises pupils to read “Orientation Day,” about a 17-year-old Chinese American girl who struggles with a “get to know you” exercise. Wang wonders how to tell her friends that she spent two hours in Toys ‘R’ Us “looking for a yellow doll.”
The curriculum asks students to reflect on their unique identities and write how they regard themselves vs. how others do.
Lesson plan: Students must consider what led to their identities.
The curriculum suggests creating a “classroom contract” that empowers pupils to wrestle with different perspectives. Contracts should include “logical repercussions” for teachers who don’t establish classroom community.
Dr. Elana Fishbein, president of No Left Turn In Education, told the DCNF that the exercise aims to teach youngsters to internalize material via an ideological and racial prism. The teacher should guarantee objectivity, keep politics out of the classroom, and enable all opinions to be heard without intimidation or retaliation.
The curriculum spends 230 minutes on “classroom standards and inclusivity.” By day five, students had examined their identities and signed a pact to be welcoming and inclusive all year.
Nicole Solas, the senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, told the DCNF that classes might begin with “get to know you” questions and exercises about kids’ gender, culture, and identity so they can “share their stories” to “feel safer” and “build trust” on the shaky premise that culture, gender, and identities inform learning styles.
Chin told the DCNF that parents should be wary of these introduction sessions at the beginning of the year and that schools that start CRT and SEL early set the year’s controls. Parents need to build networks to know what’s being taught and to have options when local education is damaging.
