The Right Is Passing Bills That Ban the Teaching of Empathy and Care in Schools
The Right Is Passing Bills That Ban the Teaching of Empathy and Care in Schools
Opponents of social and emotional learning liken increasing emotional intelligence to a left-wing Trojan Horse.
While most failed, the bills rely on talking points developed by right-wing SEL opponents who liken lessons meant to increase students’ emotional intelligence — teaching them skills like empathy, collaborative problem-solving and emotional self-regulation — to a Trojan Horse for left-wing ideologies of race, gender and sexuality.
I mean, they're not completely wrong. Learning empathy and cooperation does lead to people being loving and accepting, two things authoritarians loathe.
Right wingers suck. They should under no circumstances be allowed to have positions of power or decision making.
Especially over children!
There is extremism in all views. I have no issues with sane people on the right. It's just unfortunate that the majority of that party seems to not have many of those anymore.
There is a clear and pervasive difference in the way extremism manifests in the Right vs Left, and both sides are not the same..
You ought to read this section from a blog post I published today that pertains to this very subject.
Highlights:
In a study evaluating Left-Wing and Right-Wing domestic extremism between 1994 and 2020, there was one fatality as the result of Left-Wing extremism, versus 329 fatalities resulting from Far Right extremism in that 25 year period. [5]
The Far-Right movement is the oldest and most deadly form of domestic terrorism in the United States, and ... the Far-Right is responsible for 98% of extremist murders in the U.S. [24] Furthermore, for nearly every year since 2011, Far-Right terrorist attacks/plots have accounted for over half of all terror attacks/plots in the United States. [21]
In the U.S., Right-Wing extremism was responsible for two-thirds of all failed, foiled, or successful terror attacks in 2019, and was responsible for 90% of attacks in the first half of 2020 alone. [21] Since 2013, Far-Right extremism has been responsible for more terror attacks/plots than the Left-Wing, ethnonationalism, or religiously motivated attacks/plots. [21]
Again, this is from this article I have written and you can follow the citations. I have ads turned off and don't benefit in any way from this blog.
This sounds good on paper, but the specifics don't really hold up. The right wing in the US in 2023 is pretty thoroughly vile. I'm not aware of any issues offhand where they have the right idea. They're certainly wrong on a lot of things.
- LGBT rights
- Women's rights
- Minority rights
- Climate Change
- Voting rights
- Freedom of expression (they're trying to ban books, drag shows, and use the government to address their whole "people downvote right wing votes" problem)
- Should government provide any services
- Should the government exist at all
- Should we have democracy
Slightly more contentiously you have
- Abortion rights
- Gun control. (Their stance seems to be 'Do nothing' or maybe 'Put more guns into the mix'. Neither of which seems to be helping. Pair with the whole "refuse to study the problem" thing and it's a bad take, imo)
- Policing. Their stance seems to largely be "leave it as-is" but it has numerous problems. Solutions range from reform (if you're feeling "centrist") to more radical approaches.
- Their tax policies are stupid. I don't have the energy to go into detail but
- they tend to create more debt by cutting taxes on the wealthy, without the general populace getting anything for it - Debt to build infrastructure, for example, at least gets you infrastructure.
- also wars. A generation of war in the middle east for dubious reasons
- they don't want to fund the IRS to enforce current laws, even though that's a net profit for the government
- the wealthy have enough money. giving them tax cuts is stupid and ineffective.
And more specific things like
- Net neutrality
- Should your ISP be required to have clear billing
I can't speak to the right wing outside the us in any detail, but Brexit was a tremendous self-pwn in the UK.
This is just off the top of my head.
Also remember that time they poisoned a generation of children in Flint, Michigan, and nothing much came of it? If we had a left wing like we have a right wing, people would have hanged for that. I mean, it's not too late to hang people for that, I guess, but it seems unlikely.
There isn't really a radical left in the US. There might be a handful of people who say somewhat left-wing stuff like "Nationalize internet infrastructure" (I'm for it), but they don't have any political power to speak of
Don't do that. There is no equivalent article to this.
(Warning: Might be coded by German extremism culture)
Right-wing extremists burn immigrants. Left-wing extremists burn cars. The latter is worse, because it could be my car while I don't own any immigrants.
(from the Cangaroo Chronicles)
I'd like to put these people in a room, strapped down and with their eyes forced open Clockwork Orange style with Mister Rogers playing nonstop.
Hey, now. That's sounds pretty WOKE to me.
And never let them out.
Protect The Children by banning Books and Empathy!
Their base are getting old and they need to replenish their ranks.
Well, naturally. With the cons, cruelty is the point. Can't have any of that empathy or care mucking up that goal.
Pretty sure the Myanmar military takes boys away at a very young age to train them up in a manner which eliminates emotional ties to their families, or indeed society. Hence their willingness to kill unarmed civilians.
The British public school system (private schools) was similarly designed to silo boys from their families, in the future service of the Empire.
An important step on the path to create more "GOP-Jugend".
Empathy is not a conservative trait. Pretending to have empathy when it benefits them is common conservative behavior, though.
Use great caution when dealing with conservatives. They simply do not value the lives of others the way normal people do.
It's really fucking amazing how we're going to end up with the absolute fucking dumbest people running our education departments... I can't stand this place most of the time... And yes right wingers I wish I could leave, but I can't.
Also, lemmy, really not a fan of the diarrhea brown highlighting going on with my comments lol
Jennifer McWilliams, a former Indiana elementary school teacher who now works as an educational consultant, for example, told a Parents Defending Education webinar aimed at conservatives that “I like to tell people that critical race theory is the ideology, but social emotional learning is the delivery system of that ideology into our education system.”
This seemed like typical conservative paranoia until I got to this part of the article:
As the authors, psychology professor Lacey Hilliard and doctoral student Matthew Attaya, write, “SEL interventions have taken a race and culturally-neutral approach to teaching social and emotional competencies to students.” This, they explain, is well-intentioned. At the same time, “when SEL lessons are taught without acknowledging larger socio-political contexts, school communities may ignore prejudice, discrimination and racism that many students experience and that all students observe.”
This makes it pretty clear the suspicions of these conservatives are entirely valid. Teaching empathy and communication skills to kids is great and I fully support it, but teaching them how to interpret social interactions in the context of socio-political history seems like teaching them what to think, rather than how to think. That does sound like political indoctrination to me, and I absolutely do not support it.
Cue downvoting from a bunch of people who simply agree with the views being indoctrinated and don't give a damn about anyone who disagrees.
TIL acknowledging that racism exists is "indoctrination"
Yeah, better not teach kids how to recognize systemic racism, why it is bad and how to not participate in it as much as possible. That's teaching them what to think. And we wouldn't want to teach kids to that racism is bad. We want to teach kids how to think about whether or not racism is bad.
...teaching them how to interpret social interactions in the context of socio-political history seems like teaching them what to think, rather than how to think. That does sound like political indoctrination to me...
Understanding history and how it applies to modern expressions of empathy is not "political".
Empathy is simply not a conservative trait. It's difficult for conservatives to understand it without experiencing it. For that reason, your position on it being "political" indicates to me you may be conservative.
teaching them how to interpret social interactions in the context of socio-political history seems like teaching them what to think, rather than how to think.
Right, because socio-political history is clearly not an important context for the real life situations that people experience.
Also, nice job preemptively dismissing those who disagree with you.