Philosophy of Feelings (Social-Emotional Learning: Part II)

Philosophically, our nation’s public education system eradicated the notion of equality and replaced it with equity. It’s a fatal belief that has been abused by the profession and leads to cyclical underachievement. Ideologically, schools mutated from educational institutions to social services. Instead of filling kitchen tables with homework, schools are filling them with groceries. Instead of teaching students how to read or multiply, schools are teaching them how to regulate their feelings. Instead of providing field trips and assemblies, schools are providing dental, vision, and pediatric healthcare. Instead of training teachers how to manage their classrooms, schools are training them how to build relationships. To put it more succinctly: the public school system was overtaken by a fantastical belief that educational and behavioral outcomes were rooted in emotional well-being and relationships rather than classroom management and quality instruction. Authority, consequences, and accountability have been replaced with diplomacy, empathy, and condonation. The notions that unwanted behavior and academic stagnation were the results of a lack of student effort, self-control, or discipline have been replaced with the belief that those challenges arise from social inequities, trauma, and poor student-teacher relationships. However well intended, the effects of the public school system’s philosophical shift were pernicious at first but are now malignant if not intentionally malevolent. Social-emotional learning doctrines are not only counterproductive to education, but they are also a lethal disservice to our students and a societal abandonment of the American Dream.

The philosophical change from equality to equity was catalyzed by an understanding that our students have different lived experiences. Some have idealistic backgrounds while others have challenging circumstances that familiarize them with the tragedies of abuse, neglect, poverty, hunger, racism, and bigotry – collectively understood as trauma. It is an understanding that there is inherent inequality among students in resources, opportunities, representation, privilege, and care. To enact justice, then, it was determined that educational doctrine should seek to relieve the unequal burden experienced by specific groups of students and communities by allocating supplies and capital, creating opportunities, and dismantling or enacting policies necessary to place each student at the same theoretical starting line in the game of life. In essence, equity in social-emotional learning is an acceptance of the notion that because students have different experiences, they will have different needs to achieve success. Put another way: equity is an attempt to create student equality at school through unequal means.

Social-emotional learning’s philosophical reorientation of the public school system is deeply interwoven with a more profound ideological mutation: the very definition of what a school is and does. Where educational institutions once held the primary mission of intellectual formation and academic instruction, a new paradigm has emerged, redefining the school’s role to that of a holistic center for social services. This ideology posits that a student’s readiness to learn is inextricably linked to their emotional state, their personal circumstances, and their relationship with the teacher. Consequently, the school's purview expanded to encompass every conceivable barrier to a student's learning: nutritional or healthcare deficits, physical and mental trauma, and societal inequities to name a few. The underlying professional belief created through social-emotional learning became that cognitive development could not occur effectively until all other external and internal needs were met by the school system. This shifted the core objective from transmitting knowledge and skills to ensuring mental, emotional, and physical health. In that new ideological landscape, the school's role transformed from an institution of learning into a comprehensive provider of social services, blurring its distinct identity and re-prioritizing social intervention over academic achievement.

This wholesale redefinition of the school's purpose inevitably dismantled the very structures necessary for traditional academic achievement. Under our modern social-emotional learning framework, the concepts of authority, consequences, and accountability were fundamentally reinterpreted, and ultimately, eradicated from the profession. If student struggles were primarily understood as manifestations of trauma, social inequity, or a lack of positive relationships, then the traditional responses of discipline, grading, or even retention were viewed as counterproductive — harmful even.

This shift ushered in an era where diplomacy, empathy, and condonation became the public school system’s exclusive response to challenges that once warranted firm boundaries and clear repercussions. The professional fear of re-traumatizing a student or exacerbating perceived inequities paralyzed the system's ability to demand effort or enforce standards. Consequently, the mechanisms that once motivated students towards personal responsibility and academic excellence — the understanding that actions have consequences, that effort yields results, and that mastery is required for advancement — were systematically destroyed. It is that abandonment of accountability that has created a self-perpetuating cycle of underachievement where authentic learning outcomes become perpetually elusive.

Public education has collapsed under the weight of a deluded conviction: educational and behavioral outcomes are primarily contingent on a student's emotional state, their social circumstances, and their relationships with teachers rather than effective classroom management and quality instruction. The very mechanisms that drive excellence – authority, consequences, and accountability – have been destroyed. The inconvenient truth that student struggles might stem from a lack of effort, self-control, or discipline has been aggressively purged, leaving the notion of accountability as abstract and meaningless. The catastrophic end-result of social-emotional learning and its transformation of the American public education system is that children become young adults without any skills. They can’t read, they can’t write, and they still add single digit numbers with their fingers. We kept them emotionally safe throughout their academic careers, but what the fuck did we teach them? What skills do they have? How are our students going to become police officers, business owners, or nurses – to pursue their dreams and experience genuine freedom – if we didn’t even teach them how to read?