Parents Raise Alarm over Gender Ideology and Race Essentialism Pushed in Classrooms Through Social Emotional Learning

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is not the only three-word phrase that has parents concerned; Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is the latest curriculum headache that education experts warn is permeating the American public school system.

SEL purports to teach students social skills that aid their mental health and emotional wellbeing, yet has been criticized as both a tenet of and a euphemism for CRT, which has become a hot button issue among parents, teachers and politicians concerned about the state of the country’s public schools. Educators are teaching gender ideology and race essentialism under the guise of SEL, education experts told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“It’s a game of semantics,” Jennifer McWilliams, a parental rights education consultant, told TheDCNF, characterizing SEL as an umbrella term used to implement left-wing ideas.

“They’re literally training these children to dismantle our country,” McWilliams said. “Critical Race Theory is the ideology, but Social Emotional Learning is the delivery system of the ideology into our K through 12 schools.”

CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.

Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman Fellow In Education at The Heritage Foundation, told TheDCNF that SEL injects concepts “very neatly into somewhat ambiguous topics of social interactions and emotional feelings” through “really nice words” that sound innocuous until you realize what they actually mean.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo echoed this sentiment, explaining to TheDCNF that the language used is often “unobjectionable,” because everyone wants their kids to have good mental health and social skills. But, Rufo said, when you actually look at the materials, SEL uses the same terminology as CRT…. (Excerpt from The Daily Caller and The Pennsylvania Daily Star)