SEL Toolkit

SEL Smart Book

SEL Presentation Slides

Whitepapers

SEL: K-12 Education as New Age Nanny State

The Moral and Religious Roots of Social and Emotional Learning

The Unexamined Rise of Therapeutic Education

Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

A Review of the literature on social and emotional learning for students ages 3-8

Just as emotions themselves are often messy and hard to define, certainly SEL is just as difficult to pinpoint. Explaining SEL has been characterized as “trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”

SEL is unquestionably a part of your student’s daily school experience, whether they are in Kindergarten or a senior in high school.  And it largely flies under the radar.

How can a parent identify an issue and advocate for their child if simple definition of the issue seems too elusive?  And perhaps that’s the whole point.  When you visit  CASEL.org, you’ll find a veritable word salad that numbs the reader into thinking it says something high-minded that perhaps only “mental health experts” will understand.  Parents are intelligent, know their children better than any mental health worker, and can adeptly navigate the SEL word salads with but a little practice.

This “True or False Quiz” for Parents, Grandparents, and concerned citizens will test your knowledge about SEL in plain language – no decoder ring required! – and in the process, you may be able to nail some Jell-O to the wall.  Good luck!

SEL Quiz

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1. School guidance counselors are a good source of support and information for your child if they are feeling depressed.

2 / 13

2. SEL fills a critical needs gap that was not being filled by schools before 2015.

3 / 13

3. SEL is research-backed, evidence-based science.

4 / 13

4. SEL is relatively new, within the last 5 years.

5 / 13

5. SEL is only present in curriculum.

6 / 13

6. Schools implement SEL because they feel it is in the best interest of students.

7 / 13

7. SEL is not a political agenda or an ideology.

8 / 13

8. SEL is largely promoted by school districts based on community needs.

9 / 13

9. SEL will make your child a more inclusive part of your family.

10 / 13

10. SEL will bring up our youngest generations to be the emotionally-regulated, well-balanced leaders of tomorrow.

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11. SEL promotes mental health in students.

12 / 13

12. SEL is designed to help students process their emotions in a positive way.

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13. SEL was a tool devised by teachers to meet the perceived emotional needs of their students.

Your score is

The average score is 74%

0%

Recommended Reading

Bad Therapy

by Abigail Shrier

Anxious Generation

by Jonathan Haidt

The Coddling of the American Mind

by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

Indoctrinating our Children To Death

by Alex Newman

Related Articles

Recommended Podcasts

New Discourses Podcast

Ep 103: Dr. James Lindsay “WTF is SEL?” Dec 19, 2022

New Discourses Podcast

Ep 98: Dr. James Lindsay “Can We Trust Social Emotional Learning?” Nov 7, 2022

New Discourses Podcast

Ep 92: Dr. James Lindsay “The Dark Truth about Social Emotional Learning August 29, 2022

New Discourses Podcast

Ep 69 Part 6: Dr. James Lindsay “Critical Education: Transformative SEL” March 7, 2022

New Discourses Podcast

Ep 39: Dr. James Lindsay “The SEL Cycle” March 1, 2023

A Time To Stand Podcast

Kelly Schenkoske “Social Emotional Learning – A Closer Look with Dr. Candy Gunther-Brown” Jan 27, 2024

Partner Organizations' SEL Resources

Views From The Left

The Training for the New Democracy

Written by Mary Follett (1918)

“The training for the new democracy must be from the cradle — through nursery, school and play, and on and on through every activity of our life. Citizenship is not to be learned in good government classes or current events courses or lessons in civics. It is to be acquired only through those modes of living and acting which shall teach us how to grow the social consciousness. This should be the object of all day school education, of all night school education, of all our supervised recreation, of all our family life, of our club life, of our civic life. When we change our ideas of the relation of the individual to society, our whole system of education changes. What we want to teach is interdependence, that efficiency waits on discipline, that discipline is obedience to the whole of which I am a part. Discipline has been a word long connected with school life — when we know how to teach _social_ discipline, then we shall know how to “teach school.” The object of education is to fit children into the life of the community [1]. Every cooperative method conceivable, therefore, must be used in our schools for this end. It is at school that children should begin to learn group initiative, group responsibility — in other words social functioning. The group process must be learnt by practice. We should therefore teach subjects which require a working together, we should have group recitations, group investigations, and a gradual plan of self-government. Every child must be shown his place in the life that builds and his relation to all others who are building. All the little daily and hourly experiences of his interrelations must be constantly interpreted to him. Individual competition must, of course, disappear. All must see that the test of success is ability to work with others, not to surpass others.”

What You Can Do...

    1. National Level: Engage your Congressional representatives, Senators and the current administration to stop federal funding of SEL programs, as well as any funding, direct or indirect, to nonprofits which practice SEL.  SEL must cease to be profitable for those who push it.
    2. State Legislatures: Write or call your state representatives and senator, urging them to pass legislation that stop the dissemination of SEL materials via the state Department of Education.  Vist the M4LU Legislative Toolkit for more information on how to do this.
    3. School Districts
      1. Engage with your school board members and superintendent.
      2. Research the SEL program used in your school and highlight its radical agenda and lack of beneficial measurable results.   Utilize the M4LU FOIA Toolkit to conduct official records request if the information is not publicly available. There is already precedent in Fauquier County, Virginia, where a school board voted to remove their SEL programs due to lack of positive results.
      3. If your child attends school where SEL is practiced, take steps to opt out of as many SEL programs as possible, including school surveys and screeners.  Visit the M4LU Opt-Out Toolkit for more information.

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