Is It Time to Retire Social and Emotional Learning? — Minding The Campus

President Trump is determined to repair American education. He has started out with bold moves, including the demolition of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) ideology, the elimination of men from women’s sports, and taking steps against campus anti-Semitism. Yet much remains to be done.

Now that DEI has been called out as a form of educational malpractice, perhaps the time has come to scrutinize another set of initials. SEL stands for “social and emotional learning.” I have grazed the topic several times in the last few years as something that the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and Minding the Campus might take up because it lives in the same neighborhood as several dubious ideas we have critiqued. Schools that are eager to teach young children about racial inequities, for example, appear to have a special fondness for SEL. Schools that treat little boys as greatly in need of acquiring the poise of little girls also seem to have an affinity to SEL.

SEL seeks to instill kindness, empathy, and attention to the needs of others. It would make responsible, thoughtful, and self-controlled models of virtue out of the nation’s fledglings. Who would object?

Three years ago, NAS Fellow John Sailer—now at Manhattan Institute—took up the topic in an essay, The Real Meaning of “Social and Emotional Learning,” and a policy brief. These were a promising start, but our pursuit of the demon DEI soon drew us away from the imp SEL. But my interest was rekindled by the attention that the venerable EducationWeek has recently devoted to the topic. On February 13, EducationWeek is hosting a “K-12 Essentials Forum,” Social-Emotional Learning 2025: Examining Priorities and Practices.” The blurb:

Social-emotional learning programs have now been in schools for several years, and in many cases, even longer. They aim to teach kids how to regulate their emotions, empathize with peers, make responsible decisions, and build other life skills. A little more than half of the states have adopted standards for the use of SEL in K-12. But in many places, parents and community members have pushed back against the integration of SEL into district curricula, claiming the programs de-emphasize academics. Even so, growing concerns that kids are struggling to manage their emotions and become independent thinkers and decisionmakers are putting SEL strategies front and center in efforts to address those problems.

[RELATED: “Feelings” Education—It Starts in Ed School]

This follows EducationWeek’s “Special Report,” Social-Emotional Learning 2025: New Priorities Emerge, which compiled five articles on the topic:

Does Social-Emotional Learning Really Work? Educators Had a Lot to Say

The SEL Skills Google, Microsoft, and Other Top Companies Want Schools to Teach

Are Today’s Students Really Less Independent Than Previous Generations?

Elementary Students Can’t Manage Their Emotions. What Schools Can Do to Help

How Schools Can Teach Students to Manage Their Behavior and Emotions

“Educators Had a Lot to Say” is the subtitle of that first article, and this has the ring of purest truth. Sailer traced the SEL movement to one 1994 Fetzer Institute conference that addressed students who engage in “risky behavior.” And for a concise account of what SEL has been and what it is now, Sailer’s policy brief is the place to go. I will draw on it as needs be, but mostly, I will assume the reader who wants to follow me into this forest will first consult Sailer’s map of the terrain.

My goal is only to provide some reasons why we should care about what goes on in that forest.

A review in the Wall Street Journal of a new book, Plato: A Civic Life by Carol Atack, has an arresting sentence that mentions Plato’s “aristocratic education” in the fifth century BC, including “athletics and pederasty.” Really? Speaking as an anthropologist, I’d say that “social and emotional learning” is a universal part of child development and is everywhere culturally patterned. Sometimes, that patterning looks like what contemporary Americans would rightly call child abuse. But it is always and everywhere a key determinant of the culture as a whole.

One of my major interests as an anthropologist is how American culture shapes the expression of anger.

Long story made short: Before the 1950s, America prized emotional self-control. Those who too readily resorted to expressions of anger were viewed as lacking in a key virtue. Beginning in the post-war years, Americans began to develop not just a lenient view of angry outbursts but an admiring view. The inveterately angry man or woman was increasingly seen not as flawed but as rightly defiant, strong, or heroic. This was a revolution in American culture, but the sort of revolution that passed almost unnoticed. It was submerged into the rise of what sociologists and psychologists called the rise of “expressive individualism,” and it was allied to what Philip Rieff called The Triumph of the Therapeutic. To withhold one’s emotions came to be seen as the path to neurosis. It is better to manifest one’s feelings, and no emotion demands more manifestation than anger.

America is not alone in this cultural elevation of anger. Historically and anthropologically, many tribes and peoples have prized anger as a resource, but like fire—to which it is often compared—anger is a resource that has to be handled with care. It can destroy marriages, families, friends, the civil order, and the general peace.  Sometimes, it is controlled by directing it to an external enemy or kept within bounds by a traditional feud. Children can be brought to hate the enemy—Hamas seems to do an effective job at that.

What about Americans?

We are finally back at SEL. When I wrote A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (2006) I paid some attention to how baby boom parents fostered emotional expressiveness in their children at the cost of emotional self-control. It is pretty easy to draw vivid contrasts between the portraits of child-rearing in nineteenth-century America and the post-WWII generation, between, say, Little Women and The Catcher in the Rye. But it took some time before Americans began to recognize a widespread pattern in children—especially boys—who were so lacking in emotional self-control as to pose a danger to themselves and others.

This requires a pause. Billy the Kid (William H. Bonney, 1859-1881) has always been with us. The feral male, often a killer, is a fixture of human society, ours not an exception. Ideally, he is sent off to fight and die in wars, or he is brought under the strict control of those who can manage his reckless appetites.  But he is never the social norm. He is what happens when the social norms fail. His SEL has typically been that of the fatherless outcast who earns respect in the demimonde and criminal world by his sheer lawlessness.

That Fetzer Institute conference in 1994 was a belated recognition that America was producing too many William H. Bonney wannabes. SEL to be the pedagogical cure. The organization that grew up to promote SEL is the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). The definition that CASEL offers starts out with an orchestral swell:

We define social and emotional learning (SEL) as an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

Who wouldn’t want this? But this is followed by a paragraph that at least some of us might find a little disquieting:

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

“Educational equity?” What does that mean? “Authentic school-family-community partnerships?” as opposed to what? And is the “family” to be seen as a mere coordinate of the “school” and the “community?” Moreover, “community,” being the vaguest of vague terms, who gets to say what its role in this partnership entails?

I could propound a good many more such questions about “trusting and collaborative relationships,” “inequity,” and “safe, healthy, and just communities.” But I trust that you, reader, have already learned what kinds of activist mischief may lurk behind such terminology. These days, a pronoun can be deemed unsafe and unhealthy, and “trust” can be broken by the merest hint of disagreement. One would want to know how far CASEL carries these loaded terms.

You can spend quite a bit of time on CASEL’s website searching for an answer, but you won’t find it. Instead, you will find hundreds of paragraphs that swirl around in a circle, saying the same thing. You can, however, find some indication of how deeply implanted SEL is in the nation’s schools:

Key Takeaways:

• More schools across the United States are incorporating social and emotional learning (SEL) into students’ educational experiences, and nearly all U.S. states have policies that support SEL in schools.
• A greater proportion of K–12 schools are delivering instruction to children about social and emotional competencies. By the 2023–2024 school year, 83 percent of school principals reported that their schools used a SEL curriculum, up from 76 percent in the 2021–2022 school year.
• Forty-nine U.S. states—and the District of Columbia—have at least one supportive policy or condition that actively promotes SEL in schools.

That’s from a September 2024 CASEL report, “Social and Emotional Learning in U.S. Schools.”

I have no way to penetrate this fog, at least not now. But I do have questions I’d like to ask:

• How many of these schools that adopted SEL also teach the 1619 Project?
• How many of these schools that adopted SEL have—or until recently had—DEI programs?
• How many of these schools that adopted SEL have hosted Drag Queen Story Hours or similar classroom visits by queer or transgender activists?
• How many of these schools that adopted SEL have policies allowing or enforcing children to choose their own pronouns?
• How many of these schools that adopted SEL have policies that withhold from students’ parents their children’s preference to be identified as something other than their biological sex?
• How many of these schools that adopted SEL have policies of avoiding disciplinary actions such as suspensions in favor of a “restorative justice” approach?

[RELATED: When the Battle Is Feelings Vs. Facts, Feelings Win on Campus]

If I were to work on this, I’m sure I could come up with additional questions worth asking. But at the moment, I would like to pull the camera far back from SEL and consider another matter.

Right now, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is actively deporting illegal alien criminals, many of whom have been convicted of serious offenses such as murder and rape. These deportations have sparked protests from some Americans who argue that sending these criminals back to their home countries is unjust. This reaction mirrors other troubling events—such as the chorus of Americans who praised Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, as a commendable act. Similar instances aren’t hard to find, perhaps most notably the elevation of career criminal and thug George Floyd to the status of a hero and virtual saint. The riots that followed his death were praised by a fair number of public figures, including members of Congress, as valid expressions of dissent.

I wonder if any of those who praise the lawlessness and the lawbreakers in these cases benefit from an SEL education? The word “lawful” appears on CASEL’s website only once, and that’s in reference to the organization’s determination not to share personal information with third parties. Attention to the need to respect and obey laws does not appear to be a priority or even a concern of CASEL.

Best not to make too much of this. I remember ages and ages ago when my grade school every year invited a police officer to class to give students an unthreatening introduction to the human side of law enforcement. There was also a cop who lived on my street, and I’m sure most of the students in my class knew some of the local constabulary. That didn’t necessarily make us saints, but it may have helped reinforce the idea that we belonged to a society that valued order and respected the men and women who uphold it. I have the impression that these days, a fair segment of our governing class regards the law as an impediment to achieving their ideal of “social justice.”

SEL, its proponents tell us, seeks to “empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.” How does this match the lament for deported murderers and rapists?

My guess is that SEL was introduced with every good intention of steering young people away from William H. Bonney’s option, but somewhere along the way, it lost the thread. It became another way of accommodating that blend of angry self-assertion, social resentment, and demand for privilege that are the characteristics of today’s left.

Is that an unfair suspicion of SEL? Perhaps. Many other factors are at play: the ongoing assault on the two-parent family, the increasing prevalence of fatherless children or those raised by stepfathers, the saturation of children’s time with social media, the decline of unstructured playtime, and the retreat from academic standards that once upheld the idea that knowing stuff is at least as important as feeling stuff. So, the burden of school decline is certainly not all on SEL, but I think it is fair to raise the question of whether SEL is now part of the problem.

Image by Юля Бурмистрова — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 1216580788