There鈥檚 a lot of enthusiasm for social and emotional learning. Indeed, district spending on SEL increased by nearly 50 percent between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years. There鈥檚 a crying need for that kind of mentoring and support, especially after the disruptions of the past year and half, and it鈥檚 likely that some of the COVID-19 relief funds鈥攕till largely unspent鈥攚ill get funneled toward this cause.
I get it. As I鈥檝e with Tim Shriver, chair of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), SEL offers a chance to turn the page on the excesses of an accountability era during which it could feel like the humanity was getting squeezed out of schools.
At the same time, though, I鈥檝e long been apprehensive about what gets promoted in the name of SEL. I鈥檝e that SEL must not 鈥渂ecome an excuse to displace content instruction, burden teachers, or justify dubious pedagogy鈥� and that 鈥淚鈥檝e little confidence that schools and systems are equipped to sort the wheat from the chaff鈥� offered up by a 鈥渉ost of vendors, goofballs, and charlatans.鈥�
As it turns out, I鈥檓 not alone in my concerns about what SEL can yield in practice. My colleague Robert Pondiscio, author of , recently penned a on the perils of SEL and the rise of what he terms 鈥渢herapeutic education.鈥� At this moment of fierce debate about community values, parental rights, and civilizational norms鈥攁 debate that SEL makes extraordinarily concrete for teachers and schools鈥擨 thought it worth sharing what he had to say.
Pondiscio points out that 鈥渢he rise over the past decade of the SEL movement represents a sudden and dramatic expansion of schools鈥� mission, growing to encompass monitoring, molding, evaluating, and assessing students鈥� attitudes, values, and beliefs.鈥� Yet, he notes, this has come 鈥渨ithout a full and proper examination of its role or a sufficient discussion about its practices or expectations for its effectiveness.鈥�
While SEL adherents take pains to argue that SEL complements and supports academic learning (a claim that mightily on context, execution, and all those frustrating particulars), Pondiscio fears that schools鈥� approach to SEL risks overburdening teachers with responsibilities they aren鈥檛 trained for, compromising their ability to build academic skills and yielding too much bad 鈥渢herapy.鈥� As he puts it, 鈥淩egardless of good intent, teachers are not mental-health professionals, counselors, or clergy. They should not be asked鈥攏or is there any reason to expect them鈥攖o perform competently in these roles . . . With every new demand or concern placed in the laps of schools and teachers, the likelihood decreases that they will be effective at any of them.鈥�
How did we get here? Pondiscio cites Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes鈥� book, , as a useful discussion of 鈥渉ow ideas and techniques borrowed from popular psychology have aggressively inserted themselves into classroom practice along with the idea that 鈥榚motional well-being, emotional literacy, and emotional competence are some of the most important outcomes of the education system.鈥欌�� This leaves Pondiscio wary. He warns: 鈥淭he tendency to borrow ideas and tactics from therapy carries with it the risk of pathologizing childhood and encouraging educators to view children鈥攑articularly children from disadvantaged subgroups鈥攏ot as capable and resilient individuals but as fragile and traumatized.鈥�
Pondiscio fears that all of this risks turning teachers into therapists at the expense of academic education. After all, he notes, estimates from the Department of Health and Human Services are that 鈥渕ore than two-thirds of U.S. students experience at least one traumatic event before their 16th birthday.鈥� Such definitions suggest that nearly every child is traumatized, sometimes giving the impression that traditional notions of curriculum and instruction should fall by the wayside while schools deal with the endless exigencies of kids in crisis.
It鈥檚 not hard to see evidence of Pondiscio鈥檚 concerns playing out. I鈥檓 reminded of UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz earlier this year of pandemic-induced disruptions, 鈥淚t鈥檚 OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival.鈥� I鈥檓 all for attending to the social and emotional needs of students, but I鈥檓 off the train as soon as SEL turns into an excuse for educational malpractice.
Like I said at the start, I get the promise of SEL. Especially after 20 years of frustration with the more dehumanizing aspects of accountability-driven reform, the Common Core State Standards, and test-based teacher evaluation, it鈥檚 good that we鈥檙e actively focused on the fact that students are children with social and emotional needs. But, in schooling, we have a long tradition of overcorrecting first one way and then the other. Pondiscio has issued a crucial caution that could help attentive school and system leaders find the right balance.
