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.

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.

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.