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this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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I'm kind of mixed on the issue, but probably because I haven't seen what actual, tangible changes banning or implementing SEL looks like. The Wikipedia page looks great and essentially mimics what I try to teach at home:
I assumed teachers are already covering the above as part of their teaching style. Perhaps SEL is a formalization of what teachers are already doing, along with some small curriculum changes to highlight it. IDK.
So my conclusion is that Republicans are trying to turn it into some kind of dog whistle they can use in the next election. Their base already doesn't like CRT (and for good reason imo, but it's not being taught anyway), so they're trying to broaden that to stuff teachers actually do so they can rile up their base. It's stupid and I hope it goes poorly for them; policies should be based on solutions to actual problems, not manufactured problems.
When you see some apparently ridiculous move like this by Republicans to cripple something the government is actually doing well, the answer is almost always profit. More specifically, they have rich donors that want to get richer by privatizing something the people currently get at no/low cost.
Schooling, healthcare, transportation, communications, these are all things people can't really choose to go without. That means if you can eliminate the public option and corner the market, you can set your own price. That's why there's so much demonization of socialized healthcare, public schooling, USPS, etc. They see the potential for a captive market that they can exploit.
How does restricting what teachers can teach benefit privatization of education?
I don't think that's the end game here, I think they want to manipulate schools to produce adults more sympathetic to conservative ideals, and apparently emotional intelligence is antithetical to that. Maybe it's not that organized and they just want to rile up their base with something CRT-like to get a better chance in the elections. I just don't see a lot of profit in demonizing the school system. I guess maybe they're trying to sell textbooks to charter and private schools? I personally think short term and long term elections are the more likely drivers here.
I can see that strategy for healthcare (i.e. pharma) and communications (ISPs, mobile networks, etc). Those can easily be monopolies, and monopolies are good for profit.
Charter schools are a huge Republican initiative
They absolutely are, but I don't think it's to "make rich people richer" argument, but instead to get parents on their side (i.e. we're in favor of freedom of education, meaning parents have more control). That's the short-term election angle, but SEL doesn't really impact that at all.
I personally am in favor of charter schools (my kids attend one) and public schools, and I think we should be making it easier for kids (not adults) to choose between them. That means improving mass transit and perhaps ending school buses so all schools are on a level playing field, both in terms of funding and school access. I think charter schools make public schools better by increasing competition and pushing schools to specialize. We picked our charter school because the admin sucked at our public school, which caused a lot of churn in teachers (many teacher left after 1-2 years), and our charter school didn't have that problem. They've since replaced the admin, but I think that's mostly because parents could take their child elsewhere if they didn't like the school. We intend for our kids to go to the regular public school after they finish at this one (they're in K-6, and they'll move to the public school for 7-12).
However, I absolutely hate the Republican rhetoric around education. They constantly point to public schools as some kind of socialist demon, and that's absolutely not the case.
Every dollar spent on charter schools undermines public education.
That's only true in the short to medium term, and it's usually less impactful than many opponents claim. Longer term, new schools will be built less often, so it all largely comes out in the wash and isn't much different vs new school construction.
One thing that's interesting is that charter schools receive significantly less funding per student on average vs public schools (biased source, but the numbers should be trustworthy). That reduced funding is due to the reduced requirements on charter schools, such as no buses or special needs programs. At least in theory, traditional public and charter schools are on even footing per student. Charter schools also often factor in some level of profit since they're generally run by private orgs, so they tend to be a bit more efficient at dollars spent vs learning outcomes (e.g. our charter school is in a nondescript office building, our public school building is bespoke and takes up ~2x the space per student). Public schools have no such profit motive, so they can be a bit less careful with their budgets. That doesn't directly impact students or taxpayers, but it does show that public schools may have some fat to trim, so the short and medium term impact is often less than you'd otherwise expect for a funding cut.
I think both sides of this argument misrepresent the facts. Charter schools aren't perfect, but they also aren't the drag on public school funding opponents claim.
And also a huge obama initiative and what he is spending all of his time since leaving office doing.
Republicans aren't the only ones doing that. Public-Private partnerships are the exact same thing, and Obama, both Clintons, and Harris are all fully on-board that train. You know the documentary "waiting for superman" about privatizing schools in New York City, you know what Obama was before he was a senator? he was a community organizer, being paid by a non-profit to privatize social services. I don't know what the latest front of the culture wars is, but blaming republicans for privatizing is wantonly ignorant.
And outlets like this happily trot out flame bait, promoting less and less actual listening to the “other side.”
This is how you hand the election to psychofascists who cynically play on fear.
Exactly. The media's role should be to inform in order to dispel that fear, not fan the flames.