Other companies said they did not want to comment until they had time to review why their books were rejected. to resolve any perceived issues” and said that it was common for publishers to revise materials to meet state standards. In a statement, Savvas said it would “work with the Florida D.O.E. Professor Dohrer said that, despite its importance, social-emotional learning has become wrapped up in a debate about critical race theory, which is generally not taught in K-12 schools but has become an object of alarm among those attacking efforts to teach a more critical history of race in America.Ī page from an eighth-grade pre-algebra textbook includes a short biography of Dorothy Johnson Vaughan, an African American mathematician who led a computing unit for the agency now known as NASA. “We know that the best way to teach that is to combine it with math, social studies, whatever.” Race and Diversity “Are you a nice person to talk to? Are you going to be a good co-worker?” Professor Dohrer added. “If you asked 100 C.E.O.s what skills they want in a new hire, the top five skills are going to be about social-emotional learning - not algebra,” he said. Timothy Dohrer, director of teacher leadership at Northwestern University, called that “shortsighted” and said research showed that incorporating social-emotional learning into texts helped students learn social skills. In June 2021, the Florida Department of Education sent a memo to the publishers of math textbooks, advising them not to include “social-emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching” in their materials. Over the past year, as Republican Party activists increasingly focused on what they call the excesses of progressive education, social-emotional learning came under fire. Sample materials show that their texts tend to include fewer overt references to feelings or emotions, but they do emphasize, in some activities, the importance of a student’s mind-set or attitude toward math. A first-grade textbook from the publisher Savvas Learning Company, formerly known as Pearson K12 Learning, repeatedly refers to the importance of “effortful learning,” “learning together” and having a “growth mind-set.” Throughout the book, cartoon children pop up at the sides of pages to remind students of these ideas:Īccelerate Learning, a Houston-based company, had more elementary math textbooks approved by Florida than any other publisher. The textbooks that Florida rejected are filled with references to character traits like perseverance and cooperation. Some educators worried that the field of social-emotional learning celebrated behaviors associated with white, upper-middle-class culture, and paid too little attention to the kind of grit it takes to grow up in poverty, for example, or to overcome barriers of race, language and class that can make it more difficult for many students to persevere academically.Ĭonservative education experts, on the other hand, often lauded efforts to teach “character,” a concept that overlaps significantly with social-emotional learning. These theories have at times attracted more critique from the left than from the right. Among the most popular are the concept of a “ growth mind-set,” developed by Carol Dweck of Stanford, and the closely related idea of “ grit,” developed by Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania.
Some of the theories linked to social-emotional learning have permeated deep into popular culture and the business world.
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