The Radical Right Understands That Children Must Be Carefully Taught

It's a bit ironic that, during his speech at the 2021 CPAC Conference, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis touted the "business friendly" environment in his state and railed against "cancel culture." Since then, he's passed the "don't say gay" bill, punished DisneyWorld - the biggest employer in the state - for having LGBTQ-friendly policies, and banned math textbooks from Florida schools. The word hypocrisy is totally inadequate at a moment like this. 

But I'd like to further explore that last one about math textbooks. After mentioning something called Social Emotional Learning, here's what DeSantis said in defense of his actions.

You know, math is about getting the right answer and we want kids to learn to think so they get the right answer. It’s not about how you feel about the problem or to introduce some of these other things.

Reporters at Popular Information and the New York Times were able to identify and review some of the banned textbooks and both came to the same conclusion. None of them contain critical race theory (they hardly even mention race), but most of them incorporated Social Emotional Learning (SEL) into their math lessons. 

The attacks on public schools we've been hearing about have to do with CRT and gender/sexual orientation issues, but for the radical right, SEL has become a major target. It is described as "a trojan horse for indoctrination" and a "vehicle for anti-white racism." Of course, Christopher Rufo has been all over this one.

In a March interview conducted over email, Mr. Rufo stated that while social-emotional learning sounds “positive and uncontroversial” in theory, “in practice, SEL serves as a delivery mechanism for radical pedagogies such as critical race theory and gender deconstructionism.”

“The intention of SEL,” he continued, “is to soften children at an emotional level, reinterpret their normative behavior as an expression of ‘repression,’ ‘whiteness,’ or ‘internalized racism,’ and then rewire their behavior according to the dictates of left-wing ideology.”

So what is SEL? Here is how CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) defines it:

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.

They define five core skills students should develop: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness and relationship building. CASEL also points out that "more than 20 states have adopted K-12 SEL competencies and all 50 have adopted pre-K SEL competencies," which makes sense because research shows that it increases students’ academic performance by 11 percentile points.

With all of that in mind, go back and look at what DeSantis said about math simply being about "getting the right answer." Then take a look at an article by President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Education, Bill Bennett, titled "In Education, Character as Important as Skills." As Bennett points out, character education was fully embraced by this country's founders. Interest in the topic eventually diminished. But it was the Reagan administration that revived the focus and it eventually became a bipartisan movement.

President Reagan began the fiscal race to support character education when he noted the immediate need for character education in schools. President Clinton then acted with urgency when he tripled funding for character education. More recently, President George W. Bush also asked Congress to triple dollars allocated toward character education.

As the idea of character education evolved, one of its offshoots became social emotional learning. An organization that straddled that evolution is actually named the "Center for the 4th and 5th Rs," which promotes the addition of responsibility and respect to "reading, writing, and arithmetic." One has to wonder what they think about the pronouncement by DeSantis that math is simply about getting the right answer.

So why would the radical right abandon Republican hero Ronald Reagan and make enemies of the people who want to teach children about things like self-awareness, social awareness and relationship building? The answer is clear. Any movement based on hate and fear understands that children have to be carefully taught.