I was at the Jan. 9 school board meeting in which teachers were presenting the Social Emotional Learning (SEL) program. This is a program which focuses on kids’ moods and emotions and is started in the early elementary grades. My response to this is not based on my own family. I have no kids or grandkids in school. I only take an interest because I know what education should be.
School is supposed to address academics, not feelings. Young kids don’t know how to verbalize feelings. The teachers presenting this use pictures of happy faces, sad faces and angry faces to help kids identify their feelings. This program encourages kids to focus on their moods and is not a good way to teach them to relate to their world.
Teachers are not mental health therapists and are not in a position to evaluate the child’s interaction with piers or family members. This is an invasion of privacy. For example, if you ask a boy whether he prefers the company of boys or girls, he will not give the question any thought. He might say he likes boys because they are more fun to play with, and the teacher could steer that conversation into homosexual thought. If he says he likes girls, the teacher could suggest he might be a girl. This kind of conversation provides the teacher the opportunity to label the child and to impose his/her values on the student.
Perhaps teachers could argue that they want to build a child’s character. There are better ways to do that, such as reading stories of heroes from history. Let the child assign his own value to what he learns and how he interacts with others.
