Social Emotional Learning Archives

The Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Joe Biden awarded K-12 schools $100,113,942 in grants aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts since 2021, a new report says.

The DOJ divvied up at least 30 grants that explicitly mentioned DEI or stated an intention to improve outcomes for a specific demographic group. Many more included topics of restorative justice and social emotional learning, according to Parents Defending Education (PDE). A total of 102 grants involving such topics were sent to 946 school districts in 36 states, representing about 3,235,414 students.

Nearly $2 million went to the Minnesota Department of Education to “create safe learning environments where practices of anti-racism and anti-oppression are embedded,” PDE said. The award said the Minnesota department was committed to “supporting LGBTQ inclusion” within all school districts.

Many of the grants mirrored this promise, specifically naming LGBT and nonwhite students as their intended targets.

Pennsylvania State University received $1,785,773 as part of an anti-bullying campaign to help K-12 schools “provide an opportunity to meaningfully advance equity in violence prevention for communities historically underserved, marginalized, adversely affected by inequality, and disproportionately impacted by crime, violence, and victimization (People of Color (POC), women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ community),” according to the grant document.

The Milwaukee Public Schools was awarded $986,757 for a project meant to “promote racial equity” and “dismantle institutionalized barriers,” documents show. Another program implemented in Pennsylvania school districts received $1,688,668 from the DOJ to teach students “community policing, trauma informed conflict emphasizing racial/historical and intergenerational trauma, impacts of social media on conflict and conflict escalation and management, anti-bias education, restorative practices.”

DEI is being uprooted in many states as governors move to ban such programs. Major companies like Walmart and several universities are also moving to end their employee and student DEI trainings and race-based admission and hiring decisions.

A report released after Texas banned the programs said that schools with DEI policies did not improve learning outcomes for their target groups. Another report said that DEI policies made people much more likely to agree with racist statements from Adolf Hitler.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Contributor.

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I’m a proud product of Catholic education. I had Sisters of St Joseph for grammar school, Xavarian Brothers for high school, and Jesuits for college (Boston College). I went off the reservation for graduate school (Syracuse), but the die had been set.

I attribute my skills and interest in Critical Thinking to the fine teachers I had.

Attentive readers of my commentaries are well aware that I have been extensively involved with the K-12 education business, for both public and private schools. IMO both need to be preserved, which means that both need fixing.

The main (of several) threat to the public school system is that anti-American Left-wing ideology is taking over the curriculum in almost every subject area, but especially in Science and History.

The fix for this starts with Conservative organizations (e.g., Heritage & AEI) paying a LOT more attention to the curricula. Although they typically say that education is a top priority, curricula have been largely ignored. Not surprisingly, the Left is aggressively taking full advantage of this shameful neglect.

Additionally, State Education Superintendents (and State Boards of Education) also need to give the curricula a lot more attention. This business of giving deference to education administrators who oversee curricula, is toxic nonsense — as many of those people are a major part of the problem. This deference has led to multiple bad outcomes, like the purposefully deceptive Social Emotional Learning (SEL) scam.

This is just a bit of background, as this commentary is about Catholic Schools.

K-12 Catholic schools used to be successful as many parents strongly wanted to have their children taught Judeo-Christian standards, and were willing to pay for this. However, times have changed (in many ways) — but most Catholic schools are still relying on this archaic model.

Another outdated part of the Old Model is that the default solution to every financial challenge is to have another fund-raiser (rather than do things differently to prevent the financial problem).

Just one example of how times have changed is that the number of Catholics attending weekly Mass has dropped precipitously over the last few decades. It stands to reason that when parents are less attached to Judeo-Christian standards, their interest in having their kids be taught Judeo-Christian standards will also decrease.

Considering that the cost of K-12 Catholic schools can be substantial, the question is: will these parents be willing to pay a premium cost for what is (in effect) a public school plus a religion class? The answer for many parents is NO.

The good news here is that COVID has provided the solution!

For the first time, parents had the opportunity to look over the shoulders of their children to see what they were being taught. Two problems quickly became apparent:

their children are being told WHAT to think rather than HOW to think, and
the WHAT part is largely Left-Wing, atheistic, and anti-American.

The result of this is that there has been an unprecedented increase in Home-Schooling.

However, very few parents want to home-school their children, as (to do it right) this requires an enormous amount of time, effort, and competence on their part. Further, their child would largely miss out on the positive social benefits of interacting with other classmates, as well as lose out on extra-curricular activities. (E.g., I was the editor of my high school’s weekly Newspaper which was a fabulous experience.)

The light bulb should go on at Catholic (and other private) schools: that this new set of needs should be the basis for a New Model. They should be loudly telling parents:

their children will be taught HOW to think (i.e., Critical Thinking skills), and
their children will be given a Judeo-Christian, pro-American, classic education.

As a refresher, here are some of the MANY benefits of being a Critical Thinker… If you can’t intuitively see the merits of this New Model, then look at how a real-world example has been a resounding success — at a relatively low cost besides!

The Bottom Line here is that (since times have changed rather radically) Catholic Schools need to be aware that they must adopt the New Model. The slow learners will suffer the fate of those who laboriously put all their memories on VHS tapes.

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?

Tag Archive for: Social Emotional Learning

Jaryn Crouson