November 11, 2025 • 42 mins
On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Priscilla West, researcher for the Government Accountability Institute and a chapter chair of Moms for Liberty, joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to unveil how diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, disguised as "social emotional learning," are sold to schools as "education" and explain how concerned parents can fight back against the collectivism controlling classrooms across the U.S.
You can find West's book The New Face of Woke Education here.
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You can find West's book The New Face of Woke Education here.
If you care about combating the corrupt media that continue to inflict devastating damage, please give a gift to help The Federalist do the real journalism America needs.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at the Federalist.
At your experience, Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge. As always,
you can email the show at radio at the Federalist
dot com, follow us on exit FDR LST. Make sure
(00:37):
to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and of course
to the premium version of our website as well. Our
guest today is Priscilla West, education researcher with the Government
Accountability Institute an author of the compelling new book The
Face of Woke Education. Priscilla, thank you so much for
joining us in this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Good morning, Matt, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
This is a very compelling book because I think you know,
those who follow the issue particularly a public education and
really the failure of public education on so many fronts.
You know, we all understand equity, diversity, equity and inclusion.
We've been bombarded with that from the left. We've been
(01:26):
bombarded with, you know, anti racism, We've been bombarded with
critical race theory, all of these concepts. Now for some
time we've also been hearing about social emotional learning, and
that's what your book is truly all about. But let's
(01:46):
begin there. What is social emotional learning and is it
just one of these latest terms from the left to
try to disguise indoctrination with a you know, a social
emotional learning style terminology.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Right. Yes, it is the method by which a lot
of this indoctrination is taking place. It is meant to
teach emotional management. You hear a lot about empathy and
kindness here in Florida. It's resilience education. So all of
(02:30):
these fall under an umbrella of social emotional learning, which
we like to joke in the office that the name
the acronym was clinically designed to lull people into a
deep sleep. It doesn't sound very exciting at all social
emotional learning, but it is everywhere. When I came to
(02:52):
work for Peter Schweitzer, I expected to be doing working
on an expose about Schweitzer style cronyism and corruption around
ed tech. And while there is plenty of that, as
we dug into the mountains of education, literature and academic
(03:14):
research and meeting minutes, what we found to me was
even more shocking than standard corruption. It's that psychology was
embedded into everything children do in education these days, So
it wasn't a focus on test scores or proficiencies. It's
(03:38):
more about monitoring their viewpoints and world views. And it's
not what's up.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I was going to say, Is this the same kind
of thing or is it from the same tree as
trauma informed care, trauma informed education that kind of thing?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yes, exactly, these are these are all branches of the
same vine. It's it's less about emotional management and more
about enforcing conformity.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, this all like everything else that the left and
doctrination camp has brought American education over the last few decades.
In particular, it all has a very big brother feel
to it. You mentioned the notion of social emotional learning,
you know that just kind of passes over the ear
(04:34):
pass right, passes over the brain. But I think the
I find it interesting that the acronym for it is sell.
Which is this from your book and from everything that
I know about it, this looks like a huge cell
job by the leftist you know, educational industrial complex.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
It is. They've been it for over thirty years. The
NGO that got it launched and got it into our
schools is one called CASTLE, which is the collaborative for Academic, Social,
and Emotional Learning. It started at the Yale Child Study
Center and it is now headquartered in Chicago. But they
(05:21):
have managed to make it what they call systemic. They
openly call for it to be systemic. It's in schools,
it's in the curricula, it's in the extracurriculars, it's in
the clubs. If you go to the YMCA, you're probably
going to get a little SEL in your summer camp.
It is absolutely everywhere. So I like to think of
(05:43):
SEL as an operating system and the apps are all
of the things that the parents are in an uproar
about the critical race theory, the gender ideology, the anti fascism.
You could plug whatever ideology you wanted into this system,
but it is overwhelmingly collectivist.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's amazing to me that we haven't had and I know,
over the last few years in this country we've kind
of had a you know, a pushback at a lot
of different levels. But as you know, this thing remains
in what forty eight forty nine states. I'm curious what
(06:30):
state has rejected this so far. And we're talking about
a lot of money. The taxpayers are pouring into this thing,
are we not?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
It is billions if you really go back and look
at where it started. It is built into common Core.
It's built into the learning standards, the benchmarks and common
Core in a very subtle manner. And it's also built
into the education data systems if you go back that
(07:01):
far with it, the two the two really were developed
in parallel. Common Core nationalized the testing, and SEL embedded
the psychology into the testing so as well into the billions.
And it basically launders ideology into academics, I guess is
(07:28):
a good way of putting it. It's tracking the kids'
psychological traits alongside their academics, their attendance, and their behavior.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It sounds so nefarious, it sounds so Clockwork Orange style.
If you will, I mean too. There are a few
books that you can enter into this, few classic novels,
including Orwell's Brave New World. That's what immediately comes to mind.
Clockwork Orange, the re engineering of the individual, and a
(08:00):
Brave New World, of course from Eldus Huxley comes to mind.
You mentioned in your book or You described this as
a toxic brew of psychology and sustainability promoted by an
alliance of billionaires, politicians, and consultants at the expense of
true education. I guess let's start with the billionaires promoting this.
(08:26):
Who's involved and why did they decide to get involved?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Well, the usual cast of characters. It's Carnegie, Rockefeller, and
Bill Gates, among many others. But Warren Buffett was a
big player, particularly his son Peter Buffett and his wife Jennifer.
They were very involved with early Castle, getting it into
(08:54):
major city school districts Boston, Chicago as they came in.
Jennifer Buffett's foundation, called the Novo Foundation, was writing big
checks to districts to sign on to implement SEL. But
it's funny you mentioned Huxley. I could have this wrong,
(09:15):
but when you said that, it reminded me. I believe
Huxley was an original head of UNESCO. Is that right?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I'm not sure about that, but that's interesting to me. Yes,
he or.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
His brother possibly, I've forgotten the exact connection. But and
an avowed eugenicist, so interesting, interesting person to head up UNESCO.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, a guy who certainly enjoyed LSD too, as I
understand it, took it on his deathbed. So that's the
that's the kind of perhaps that's the kind of you
know thinking that's involved in all of this. And you
look at this, uh you know, Smorgas Board of Socialism
(09:59):
collect Activism, and that's it makes you wonder exactly who's
thinking this stuff up. You say, this goes back thirty
years or so. I'm curious how much the whole battle
over education during George W. Bush's time in office, the
no Child Left Behind mantra that was going on, Then
(10:22):
how much did that create the pathways for broad and
common Core and then ultimately Social Emotional Learning and all
of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, each administration has done its part to lay the
groundwork here. It definitely does not fall along partisan lines.
I believe No Child Left Behind took the testing to
the state level, and then common Core came in with
Obama and took it up to.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The national level.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
But yeah, there's really no interruption in the trajector. It's
been one hundred years. If you really want to go
back to the beginning of what social emotional learning is accomplishing,
it actually goes back much further and has some origins
in the New Age and the occult believe it or not.
(11:18):
But we didn't want to go that far with the book,
we took it back to thirty years with the more
recent history and the rise of SEL, because this is
really turbocharged what they're doing, particularly with the introduction of
the cloud based education technology.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, let's talk about that. What is the cloud based technology?
You know, this this apparatus for I think they call
it values transmission. Ah, yes, what is all of that?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, much of education these days is taking place on screens,
as you know, and as much as parents may complain
and wish their kids weren't on screens, quite as much
we're always warned to limit screen time for many reasons,
many well studied and proven reasons. Nonetheless, the schools continue
(12:15):
to place laptops into the hands of small children and
base all of the lessons on cloud based software. So
it differs a lot. In a really red areas, it'll
be a little more subtle the SCL how it's built
(12:37):
into the software. But in blue areas you'll have very
explicit promotion of the SCL software SEL coursework, sl activities.
But the major publishers, all of the major publishers say
quite openly that they have built SEL into everything they
do so and they all produce cloud based learn software
(13:00):
which is quote unquote personalized learning. So you've you've got
major corporations, global corporations assessing children to track their progress
along these learning frameworks. This is kind of what led
me down this path was looking at learning frameworks. I
(13:23):
started to notice that every single one of them had
psychological measures built in alongside with the academics. I found
that a little strange. I started looking at which NGOs
created the learning frameworks and which public private partnerships that
these NGOs are part of. So you have you have
(13:48):
the private corporations influencing learning frameworks, embedding the things that
they want to know about their future workers essentially and
transmitting it straight to children's eyeballs. I don't even think
a lot of teachers know that the SEL is embedded
(14:08):
in there, say their social studies curriculum, but it's there.
It's embedded into everything. It's hard to find an education
option or framework that does not include the social emotional
learning surveillance.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
It is a circular bit of business, isn't it. Because
you have these tech companies very much invested in social
emotional learning and these frameworks that you talk about, But
at the end of the day, aren't they making a
good deal of money off of the next generation education
(14:51):
with all of these screens, all of this technology.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
They're making money selling the software, they're making money selling
the hardware. They're making money using the student data to
train their AI models. That is that is a big
part of this. So without students consent, they are using
(15:16):
everything students do every clique to learn how kids think,
what they think, and that can be good. Obviously, you know,
using the fact that little Johnny loves baseball to taylor
his algebra lesson, it's great, right, I don't think anybody
(15:36):
would I would disagree with that, but using it to
tailor his character education in ways that parents can't see.
It's a little different. The adaptive feedback. You're feeding back
everything the children do into the algorithm, into the software,
and it's affecting what the child sees next. So even
(15:57):
even in testing in a lot of places, assessments are
also adaptive. So just being able to say, look at
your child's test, what was the test, what questions were asked,
how did you do you? You can't even look at that
anymore because even assessments in some places are adaptive.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Should social media influencers register like lobbyists the Watchdout on
Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps
unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how
it affects your wallet. Some in Congress are proposing that
paid social media influencers publicly disclose who they represent, especially
if they're being paid by foreign countries for their causes.
(16:41):
Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Be informed.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Check out the watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well, first and foremost, you know, as you note, this
is really an evasive thing that is going on, and
at the very least parents should have the ability as
they used to have, to be able to monitor what's
going on, you know, in the classroom. I think that's
(17:14):
why we had ultimately the rejection of a lot of
this stuff in our schools and the backlash that came.
It came out of COVID when everything was remote learning
at that point in so many places, and certainly in
the early portions of the pandemic, that's what we saw.
(17:36):
But parents had the opportunity to stand over the shoulder
of their kids while teachers were teaching this stuff to them.
How much did that set the groundwork? And what did
these industries, this educational industrial complex tied to social emotional learning.
(17:59):
How much did they respond to all of that?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Right, Well, the corporate software is not getting informed consent.
The parents don't know that these these aren't just learning platforms,
they are data mining systems. So the parents during COVID
they got to see a little bit, but in general, yeah,
they don't know what's being tracked or how it is
(18:24):
a cessed. You know, some of the frameworks talk about
grit measuring grit. I remember when my kids were in school,
their elementary school had a big campaign about you can't
have the grit, you can't have the pearl without the grit,
which sounded great. I didn't think much about it. Come
to find out all these years later, that was social
(18:45):
emotional learning. And now you have people like Zuckerberg, I
believe it was his learning framework at his charter schools.
They measure something called zest, the child's zest. Yeah, I mean,
what data do you gather from a child to determine
their zest level? Right?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
And all of this data is stored in corporate servers,
they're academics. There's psychometrics, they're biometrics. Sometimes there's what's called
affective data, how they feel while they're reading it. It's
really bottomless. And yes, I don't think parents have any idea.
I know I didn't when.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
You Yeah, when I think about these terms of course
that are is the zest and grit, grit in particular,
is that the kind of thing that I remember. You know,
I'm old enough to remember a great show on CBS
sitcom many many years ago, the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
And in the Mary Tyler Moore Show, when she comes
(19:49):
in to apply for the job as a young woman,
she has to apply for the job Lou Grant, the
producer of the w j N News, this local news
station in Minneapolis, and uh, you know, she's she's quiet
at first, and then she starts to assert herself. And
at the end of this kind of speech, then Lou
(20:15):
Grant played by Ed Asner, says, you've got grit, and
then he says, I hate grit. So it makes me
wonder how grit is defined. How do we know how grit,
how zella's or zest is is defined in these systems
(20:39):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I don't exactly know how grit is defined. No, I
do know how where they where? They snuck it in
in the common the original common Core state standards. It
was a part of the Math standard that opened children
up to psychometric testing and assessment with the use of
(21:02):
a little word persevere. Persevere it said. The Math standard
said the students should be able to solve questions and
persevere What was it, something about persevere in solving them
And you know, it went by largely unnoticed. It seemed like, oh,
we're just talking a little bit about soft skills. But
that little word included in that National Learning Standard open
(21:25):
children up to all of this. Hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Interesting. Our guest today is Priscilla West, education researcher with
the Government Accountability Institute and author of the compelling new book,
The New Face of Woke Education. That New Face is, well,
it's all about social emotional learning. As innocuous as that sounds,
(21:50):
there is something very nefarious tied into that. These things
are so embedded, are they not, Priscilla, in in everything
that we do in modern education. And a lot of
private schools have this stuff too, and it's not just
the public schools. How would you ever go about removing
(22:13):
this indoctrination from our schools?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
You're right, it is absolutely pervasive. It's in just about
every type of education. We think we have all these choices,
but sel is really woven throughout most of them. I
don't have all the answers about how we get rid
of it, but it certainly involves parents being able to
recognize what's happening. So that is why I wrote the
(22:42):
book to equip not just parents, but educators themselves. Teachers
often don't know that it's embedded, and legislators, especially if
it's if your child's education sounds a lot like kindness
and resiliency. If graduation rates are ninety nine percent, but
(23:02):
reading proficiency rates are forty percent. Dig deeper and what
where are the resources going? Where is the energy going?
And can you even define it? Are they measuring things
like grit and zest? Is it all about quote unquote
school climate or can the children? Are the children actually
(23:26):
gaining academic skills?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I want to
get to that in just a moment. But you mentioned
all of these catch terms, and of course they catch
the heart of the parent that wants the very best
for their child. They want their child to be in
you know, these so called safe environments. They want them
to be places. This is the language of the left,
(23:49):
of course, they want them to be places of belonging,
all of these sorts of words kindness. And let me
give you another example of that. Talking to you from
the des Moines metro area, des Moines, Isle. A couple
of months ago, it was learned that the Des Moines
Public School System had hired now two years ago, not
(24:13):
only in a legal immigrant to serve as their superintendent
of education, but an illegal immigrant who had a long
rap sheet and criminal convictions for some very serious crimes.
That was truly a black eye on the des Moines
School System and the people that hired this individual. But
(24:38):
I think it exposed something else. It exposed this push,
particularly in inner city school districts, to be full representative
of the DEI diversity, equity inclusion marketplace and to bring
those people in to serve the people who pushed this stuff,
(25:00):
to serve their school districts where emotional learning and inclusive
and equitable learning become a priority to actual learning to
be you know, productive citizens and good citizens in our society.
Moving forward. And I remember one of the terms that
(25:22):
came out of that when it was first announced that
Ice had arrested this guy. His name was, his name
is Ian Roberts. He is facing deportation. Yeah. And at
the time, the school board president a chairwoman who was
running for Senate as a pretty far left Democrat. I
(25:43):
think she was an assistant for Michelle Obama at one point.
I remember her saying, listen, we don't know everything why
this happened, but I think we should take a cue
from Ian Roberts, our superintendent, who has in books and
led a whole educational philosophy on what he called radical empathy.
(26:08):
And I thought to myself at the time, these folks
are absolutely captured, and they are captured at the absolute
detriment of school children. And it's not just des Moines,
it's across the country. What do you think as these
kinds of stories play out, and not necessarily as dramatic
as Ice picking up your superintendent for being an a
(26:30):
legal immigrant with the you know, as an ex con,
but you know, this sort of educational leader leading our children,
our teachers, our schools.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, so much of this in education is coming from
or founded by these funded by rather these foundations and
these NGOs, and they are all steam ahead on equity.
DEI might be dead on the surface layers, but it
is fully embedded in all of this. This is how
(27:10):
DEI goes underground, particularly again with software, but it's it
is in. I believe eighty three percent of the schools
and ninety percent of our students are affected by SEL.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
And I think you said forty nine states, but all
fifty states have at least an SEL statewide standard for
pre K. So but you know, I'm a chapter chair
in Moms for Liberty, and when I got involved in this,
it felt like whack a mole. We've got were grassroots organization,
(27:49):
and all of our chapters all over the country are
kind of doing their own thing. All we all have
parental rights as the focus. But it really felt like
whack a mole. One chapter would be fighting this particular
curriculum or trying to get this resource out of their school,
or this poster that this teacher used, and it was,
you know, every time, a year long fight or more
(28:10):
to get rid of this textbook or that program, and
then another one would pop up right behind it with
the same sorts of things. Embedded. So all of this
just keeps rebranding and it keeps parents off guard, and
we're always playing defense. So it just started to seem
to me that we've got to step back and learn
(28:32):
to recognize just the broader patterns all of this psychology
embedded in what should be academics and overall, where's it
coming from. It's all tied to the UN. Basically, it's global.
So as long as the UN and the World Economic
(28:54):
Forum corporations which are partnered are all pushing sustainable development
and essentially collectivism, that is where that has really become
the root of all this. It started in the US
with Castle, but it has gone global, and all of
the corporations involved in providing the software and the learning
(29:15):
materials for our kids are one hundred percent bought in.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
It sounds like we are, through our schools, raising and
educating the next generation of people who will ultimately enslave us.
That is to say, they will have this kind of
indoctrinated leftist learning and all of the things that we
(29:43):
have really taken for granted in our republic will go.
And it won't be you know, a battle in the street.
It will go without resistance because that's where the left
has I think smartly understood for a long time. And
(30:04):
if you're going to win long term, you're going to
have to change the system of education in America.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
That is correct. They came to us with empathy and
self awareness lessons, they embedded them into everything, and then
they changed, moved the goalposts, they politicized everything, and now
it's all about power and oppression, critical theory, identity politics.
(30:33):
And yes, they are creating a generation raised this way
and often their parents, the parents don't even know. It's
a wedge between the children and the parents are creating
a red guard.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Mm hmm. Well, social emotional learning and all of this
stuff was sold to us. Cell was sold to us
as a way to ring up, you know, test scores,
to bring up academic accomplishments, because at the time there
was grave concern, as it still remains today, that we
(31:11):
were falling way behind the industrialized world in terms of
our academic skills in our kids, and so this was
sold as a way to lift up the bar. It
has failed to do that. As we take a look
at the National report Card and the Nation's report Card,
(31:33):
all of these by every measure, it seems to me.
If it was designed to lift academic achievement, it has
abjectly failed. Is that what you found in your research?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
It has? I think it's just redirected to focus. You know,
everything has an opportunity cost. If you spend what should
be academic time in circle time sharing about your feelings
and who might have marginalized to you. You are not
studying algebra.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, you definitely, you definitely are not. Here's a I
think an interesting part of this, as has been noted
in your book and and those who are you know
like you tracking this s e l slips into classrooms
with confusing tools and routines you just mentioned it, like
(32:26):
circle time confessions, resilient circles, feelings check ins, and goal
setting sessions that sound warm and wholesome but are more
therapy than education. What is this garbage? Circle time confessions?
Why are the why do the kids have to confess
(32:49):
anything in a circle, let alone in a school?
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh? Yes, that the you in the UN says that
circle time must be confidential for for the sharing to
be more authentic. Yeah, so teachers. Teachers are essentially being
asked to act as therapists, which they are not trained
to do. And in the case is where it's only
(33:13):
happening through software and not the teachers, then there is
no informed consent children children's data should not be pulled
by corporate software. And no matter how much a school says, oh,
we are FURBA compliant, that's meaningless because FERBA was amended
(33:34):
in twenty eleven to essentially undermine parents. Parents can no
longer protect their children's data from any company, any private
company that is designated as an authorized representative of the school.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Why is that? That is astounding? And I think that
would be astounding to most Americans. Why do they have
that level of protection to be this invasive in the
lives of our children and our families.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
It's interesting. And when that happened in twenty eleven, there
were lawsuits. The ACLU was screaming about it, alarms were raised,
but the Department of Education actually amended FURPA, which it
is argued that they don't have the authority to do.
But the lawsuit was dismissed, not on merits, but on standing.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
On standing. Yeah, so that's the first and foremost thing.
You mentioned the how and you have provided the light
on this subject. I should say that the section I
read about the circle time confessions and resilient circles and
all that stuff is from a great op ed about
(34:51):
this book in particular and about sel in general that
was published just maybe a week or so ago in
the New York Post. You can find it there. But yeah,
I think the first step has to be consent of
(35:12):
the parents of the guardians. They need to know what
is going on. They need to have the ability to
audit this stuff, and they need to have the ability
to say no. So I'm curious, are there any is
there a legal movement out there? If this was based
on standing, it must mean that there have to be
(35:34):
actual victims of this, and of course there are victims
across the country of this. If a parent influenced or
affected by this, if they would take a lawsuit, you
think that would change the dynamic in the litigation.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I would certainly love to see a lawsuit over this.
There was a recent case. I might get the name wrong.
It think it was my mood the tailor. Sure, so
that that one, you know, I wonder if that couldn't
be applied here. If you there really is a strong
case there's a religious thread running through social emotional learning.
(36:17):
So I'm not sure how directly it could be applied,
but the early Buddhist origins, the New Age spiritualism built in,
perhaps perhaps there's something there. I'm not I'm not a lawyer,
but parents definitely need to be given the opportunity to
(36:39):
I would say it should be an opt in. Actually
I was about to say give the opportunity to opt out,
but this should really be an opt in. You should
be fully informed of what these what data these systems
are collecting, and what's being done with the data, any
possible harms that could come from these systems using your
child's data. There's many opportunity to out.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, it's amazing to me, Priscilla, that we have that
opt out option in so many things in our lives,
from you know, being bombarded with ads and messages from
some cell phone company, you know, a smartphone company, to
our health networks. Yet this is about as basic a
(37:24):
need for opting out that you can imagine, and we
have had politicians, lawmakers who won't allow that. That's just
amazing to me.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
That's right. It's kind of you've got the combination of
these public private partnerships in education, which the private partners
get all of this done. And then the public partners
come in and fund it and mandate it. With that,
combined with the opacity of it all and Furba being
(37:59):
essentially gutted, there really isn't a lot of recourse, and
you've got a captive audience. Children have to use all
of this software, and they have to do the SEL
lessons whatever their teacher puts in front of them, and
they're told to keep it in the circle M So
parents are in the dark.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
It's interesting to me. There was a story recently, some
good reporting, I must say, in Wisconsin where they had
found teachers being able to keep their licenses. We're talking
about hundreds of teachers involved in either sexual assault, sexual
(38:40):
abuses of children, or grooming. All of this stuff has
really raised the concern of groomers and pedophiles in our
school systems. Do you believe that this social emotional learn
name the whole inclusion doctrine. Do you think that has
(39:06):
raised not just the academic dangers, but the psychological and
physical dangers to our children.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
I do. I think it really lays the groundwork all
of this. I call it weaponized empathy. If a child
is told repeatedly that words are being non inclusive can
cause harm. So you know, you end up with the
furries in the bathroom, or you end up with biological
(39:39):
males in the girl's bathroom because the child is told
not to say anything that would be harmful. So certainly
we have seen that. And if speech, we've seen a
rise in violence. If speech is seen as harm or
as violence, then you know, you could actually justify your
(40:03):
violence as self defense. And I think that's the mindset
that's getting into a lot of these kids.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yes, it's getting into a lot of society. That's what
we have seen from I think from the leftist Marxist
movement in America in assassination culture. Have some very interesting
studies from Rutgers in partnership with a research firm earlier
this year showing that fifty five percent of those who
(40:32):
identify as left leaning believe that some level it's justifiable
to assassinate the president, President Trump or cabinet members and
those sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Well, you had in twenty nineteen, Castle, the organization that
defined sel that invented it from whole cloth and defined it.
They changed the definition in twenty nineteen to explicitly push
identity politics activism. So you know, and you've got you
in publications about social justice. Sel for Social Justice, so
(41:09):
it's they're not hiding it.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
So final question, and I often ask it as we
end these conversations about important topics, the question is where
do we go from here?
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Well, I don't have the answers, but as I said,
I wrote the book to inform parents and to open
eyes about what's really happening. I think that is that's
the first step, is equipping parents and educators to dig deeper.
We kept it really short, concise, because we want this knowledge,
(41:49):
this understanding, this bigger picture to really be widespread. So
we want you to read it, stay awake while you're
reading it. Very short, so buy it, share it, and
give a copy to your favorite teacher or school board member,
even give it to your legislator, because this has got
(42:10):
to be tackled en mass.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Nothing more important, obviously than the future of our children,
which is the future of this republic. Thanks to my
guest today, Briscilla West, education researcher with the Government Accountability
Institute and author of the New Face of Woke Education,
you've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at The Federalist. We'll
(42:39):
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom,
anxious for the fray.
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at the Federalist.
At your experience, Shirpa on today's quest for Knowledge. As always,
you can email the show at radio at the Federalist
dot com, follow us on exit FDR LST. Make sure
(00:37):
to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and of course
to the premium version of our website as well. Our
guest today is Priscilla West, education researcher with the Government
Accountability Institute an author of the compelling new book The
Face of Woke Education. Priscilla, thank you so much for
joining us in this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Good morning, Matt, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
This is a very compelling book because I think you know,
those who follow the issue particularly a public education and
really the failure of public education on so many fronts.
You know, we all understand equity, diversity, equity and inclusion.
We've been bombarded with that from the left. We've been
(01:26):
bombarded with, you know, anti racism, We've been bombarded with
critical race theory, all of these concepts. Now for some
time we've also been hearing about social emotional learning, and
that's what your book is truly all about. But let's
(01:46):
begin there. What is social emotional learning and is it
just one of these latest terms from the left to
try to disguise indoctrination with a you know, a social
emotional learning style terminology.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Right. Yes, it is the method by which a lot
of this indoctrination is taking place. It is meant to
teach emotional management. You hear a lot about empathy and
kindness here in Florida. It's resilience education. So all of
(02:30):
these fall under an umbrella of social emotional learning, which
we like to joke in the office that the name
the acronym was clinically designed to lull people into a
deep sleep. It doesn't sound very exciting at all social
emotional learning, but it is everywhere. When I came to
(02:52):
work for Peter Schweitzer, I expected to be doing working
on an expose about Schweitzer style cronyism and corruption around
ed tech. And while there is plenty of that, as
we dug into the mountains of education, literature and academic
(03:14):
research and meeting minutes, what we found to me was
even more shocking than standard corruption. It's that psychology was
embedded into everything children do in education these days, So
it wasn't a focus on test scores or proficiencies. It's
(03:38):
more about monitoring their viewpoints and world views. And it's
not what's up.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I was going to say, Is this the same kind
of thing or is it from the same tree as
trauma informed care, trauma informed education that kind of thing?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yes, exactly, these are these are all branches of the
same vine. It's it's less about emotional management and more
about enforcing conformity.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, this all like everything else that the left and
doctrination camp has brought American education over the last few decades.
In particular, it all has a very big brother feel
to it. You mentioned the notion of social emotional learning,
you know that just kind of passes over the ear
(04:34):
pass right, passes over the brain. But I think the
I find it interesting that the acronym for it is sell.
Which is this from your book and from everything that
I know about it, this looks like a huge cell
job by the leftist you know, educational industrial complex.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
It is. They've been it for over thirty years. The
NGO that got it launched and got it into our
schools is one called CASTLE, which is the collaborative for Academic, Social,
and Emotional Learning. It started at the Yale Child Study
Center and it is now headquartered in Chicago. But they
(05:21):
have managed to make it what they call systemic. They
openly call for it to be systemic. It's in schools,
it's in the curricula, it's in the extracurriculars, it's in
the clubs. If you go to the YMCA, you're probably
going to get a little SEL in your summer camp.
It is absolutely everywhere. So I like to think of
(05:43):
SEL as an operating system and the apps are all
of the things that the parents are in an uproar
about the critical race theory, the gender ideology, the anti fascism.
You could plug whatever ideology you wanted into this system,
but it is overwhelmingly collectivist.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
It's amazing to me that we haven't had and I know,
over the last few years in this country we've kind
of had a you know, a pushback at a lot
of different levels. But as you know, this thing remains
in what forty eight forty nine states. I'm curious what
(06:30):
state has rejected this so far. And we're talking about
a lot of money. The taxpayers are pouring into this thing,
are we not?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
It is billions if you really go back and look
at where it started. It is built into common Core.
It's built into the learning standards, the benchmarks and common
Core in a very subtle manner. And it's also built
into the education data systems if you go back that
(07:01):
far with it, the two the two really were developed
in parallel. Common Core nationalized the testing, and SEL embedded
the psychology into the testing so as well into the billions.
And it basically launders ideology into academics, I guess is
(07:28):
a good way of putting it. It's tracking the kids'
psychological traits alongside their academics, their attendance, and their behavior.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
It sounds so nefarious, it sounds so Clockwork Orange style.
If you will, I mean too. There are a few
books that you can enter into this, few classic novels,
including Orwell's Brave New World. That's what immediately comes to mind.
Clockwork Orange, the re engineering of the individual, and a
(08:00):
Brave New World, of course from Eldus Huxley comes to mind.
You mentioned in your book or You described this as
a toxic brew of psychology and sustainability promoted by an
alliance of billionaires, politicians, and consultants at the expense of
true education. I guess let's start with the billionaires promoting this.
(08:26):
Who's involved and why did they decide to get involved?
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Well, the usual cast of characters. It's Carnegie, Rockefeller, and
Bill Gates, among many others. But Warren Buffett was a
big player, particularly his son Peter Buffett and his wife Jennifer.
They were very involved with early Castle, getting it into
(08:54):
major city school districts Boston, Chicago as they came in.
Jennifer Buffett's foundation, called the Novo Foundation, was writing big
checks to districts to sign on to implement SEL. But
it's funny you mentioned Huxley. I could have this wrong,
(09:15):
but when you said that, it reminded me. I believe
Huxley was an original head of UNESCO. Is that right?
Speaker 1 (09:25):
I'm not sure about that, but that's interesting to me. Yes,
he or.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
His brother possibly, I've forgotten the exact connection. But and
an avowed eugenicist, so interesting, interesting person to head up UNESCO.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, a guy who certainly enjoyed LSD too, as I
understand it, took it on his deathbed. So that's the
that's the kind of perhaps that's the kind of you
know thinking that's involved in all of this. And you
look at this, uh you know, Smorgas Board of Socialism
(09:59):
collect Activism, and that's it makes you wonder exactly who's
thinking this stuff up. You say, this goes back thirty
years or so. I'm curious how much the whole battle
over education during George W. Bush's time in office, the
no Child Left Behind mantra that was going on, Then
(10:22):
how much did that create the pathways for broad and
common Core and then ultimately Social Emotional Learning and all
of this stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, each administration has done its part to lay the
groundwork here. It definitely does not fall along partisan lines.
I believe No Child Left Behind took the testing to
the state level, and then common Core came in with
Obama and took it up to.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The national level.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
But yeah, there's really no interruption in the trajector. It's
been one hundred years. If you really want to go
back to the beginning of what social emotional learning is accomplishing,
it actually goes back much further and has some origins
in the New Age and the occult believe it or not.
(11:18):
But we didn't want to go that far with the book,
we took it back to thirty years with the more
recent history and the rise of SEL, because this is
really turbocharged what they're doing, particularly with the introduction of
the cloud based education technology.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, let's talk about that. What is the cloud based technology?
You know, this this apparatus for I think they call
it values transmission. Ah, yes, what is all of that?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, much of education these days is taking place on screens,
as you know, and as much as parents may complain
and wish their kids weren't on screens, quite as much
we're always warned to limit screen time for many reasons,
many well studied and proven reasons. Nonetheless, the schools continue
(12:15):
to place laptops into the hands of small children and
base all of the lessons on cloud based software. So
it differs a lot. In a really red areas, it'll
be a little more subtle the SCL how it's built
(12:37):
into the software. But in blue areas you'll have very
explicit promotion of the SCL software SEL coursework, sl activities.
But the major publishers, all of the major publishers say
quite openly that they have built SEL into everything they
do so and they all produce cloud based learn software
(13:00):
which is quote unquote personalized learning. So you've you've got
major corporations, global corporations assessing children to track their progress
along these learning frameworks. This is kind of what led
me down this path was looking at learning frameworks. I
(13:23):
started to notice that every single one of them had
psychological measures built in alongside with the academics. I found
that a little strange. I started looking at which NGOs
created the learning frameworks and which public private partnerships that
these NGOs are part of. So you have you have
(13:48):
the private corporations influencing learning frameworks, embedding the things that
they want to know about their future workers essentially and
transmitting it straight to children's eyeballs. I don't even think
a lot of teachers know that the SEL is embedded
(14:08):
in there, say their social studies curriculum, but it's there.
It's embedded into everything. It's hard to find an education
option or framework that does not include the social emotional
learning surveillance.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
It is a circular bit of business, isn't it. Because
you have these tech companies very much invested in social
emotional learning and these frameworks that you talk about, But
at the end of the day, aren't they making a
good deal of money off of the next generation education
(14:51):
with all of these screens, all of this technology.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
They're making money selling the software, they're making money selling
the hardware. They're making money using the student data to
train their AI models. That is that is a big
part of this. So without students consent, they are using
(15:16):
everything students do every clique to learn how kids think,
what they think, and that can be good. Obviously, you know,
using the fact that little Johnny loves baseball to taylor
his algebra lesson, it's great, right, I don't think anybody
(15:36):
would I would disagree with that, but using it to
tailor his character education in ways that parents can't see.
It's a little different. The adaptive feedback. You're feeding back
everything the children do into the algorithm, into the software,
and it's affecting what the child sees next. So even
(15:57):
even in testing in a lot of places, assessments are
also adaptive. So just being able to say, look at
your child's test, what was the test, what questions were asked,
how did you do you? You can't even look at that
anymore because even assessments in some places are adaptive.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Should social media influencers register like lobbyists the Watchdout on
Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps
unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how
it affects your wallet. Some in Congress are proposing that
paid social media influencers publicly disclose who they represent, especially
if they're being paid by foreign countries for their causes.
(16:41):
Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Be informed.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Check out the watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well, first and foremost, you know, as you note, this
is really an evasive thing that is going on, and
at the very least parents should have the ability as
they used to have, to be able to monitor what's
going on, you know, in the classroom. I think that's
(17:14):
why we had ultimately the rejection of a lot of
this stuff in our schools and the backlash that came.
It came out of COVID when everything was remote learning
at that point in so many places, and certainly in
the early portions of the pandemic, that's what we saw.
(17:36):
But parents had the opportunity to stand over the shoulder
of their kids while teachers were teaching this stuff to them.
How much did that set the groundwork? And what did
these industries, this educational industrial complex tied to social emotional learning.
(17:59):
How much did they respond to all of that?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Right, Well, the corporate software is not getting informed consent.
The parents don't know that these these aren't just learning platforms,
they are data mining systems. So the parents during COVID
they got to see a little bit, but in general, yeah,
they don't know what's being tracked or how it is
(18:24):
a cessed. You know, some of the frameworks talk about
grit measuring grit. I remember when my kids were in school,
their elementary school had a big campaign about you can't
have the grit, you can't have the pearl without the grit,
which sounded great. I didn't think much about it. Come
to find out all these years later, that was social
(18:45):
emotional learning. And now you have people like Zuckerberg, I
believe it was his learning framework at his charter schools.
They measure something called zest, the child's zest. Yeah, I mean,
what data do you gather from a child to determine
their zest level? Right?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
And all of this data is stored in corporate servers,
they're academics. There's psychometrics, they're biometrics. Sometimes there's what's called
affective data, how they feel while they're reading it. It's
really bottomless. And yes, I don't think parents have any idea.
I know I didn't when.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
You Yeah, when I think about these terms of course
that are is the zest and grit, grit in particular,
is that the kind of thing that I remember. You know,
I'm old enough to remember a great show on CBS
sitcom many many years ago, the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
And in the Mary Tyler Moore Show, when she comes
(19:49):
in to apply for the job as a young woman,
she has to apply for the job Lou Grant, the
producer of the w j N News, this local news
station in Minneapolis, and uh, you know, she's she's quiet
at first, and then she starts to assert herself. And
at the end of this kind of speech, then Lou
(20:15):
Grant played by Ed Asner, says, you've got grit, and
then he says, I hate grit. So it makes me
wonder how grit is defined. How do we know how grit,
how zella's or zest is is defined in these systems
(20:39):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I don't exactly know how grit is defined. No, I
do know how where they where? They snuck it in
in the common the original common Core state standards. It
was a part of the Math standard that opened children
up to psychometric testing and assessment with the use of
(21:02):
a little word persevere. Persevere it said. The Math standard
said the students should be able to solve questions and
persevere What was it, something about persevere in solving them
And you know, it went by largely unnoticed. It seemed like, oh,
we're just talking a little bit about soft skills. But
that little word included in that National Learning Standard open
(21:25):
children up to all of this. Hmm.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Interesting. Our guest today is Priscilla West, education researcher with
the Government Accountability Institute and author of the compelling new book,
The New Face of Woke Education. That New Face is, well,
it's all about social emotional learning. As innocuous as that sounds,
(21:50):
there is something very nefarious tied into that. These things
are so embedded, are they not, Priscilla, in in everything
that we do in modern education. And a lot of
private schools have this stuff too, and it's not just
the public schools. How would you ever go about removing
(22:13):
this indoctrination from our schools?
Speaker 2 (22:18):
You're right, it is absolutely pervasive. It's in just about
every type of education. We think we have all these choices,
but sel is really woven throughout most of them. I
don't have all the answers about how we get rid
of it, but it certainly involves parents being able to
recognize what's happening. So that is why I wrote the
(22:42):
book to equip not just parents, but educators themselves. Teachers
often don't know that it's embedded, and legislators, especially if
it's if your child's education sounds a lot like kindness
and resiliency. If graduation rates are ninety nine percent, but
(23:02):
reading proficiency rates are forty percent. Dig deeper and what
where are the resources going? Where is the energy going?
And can you even define it? Are they measuring things
like grit and zest? Is it all about quote unquote
school climate or can the children? Are the children actually
(23:26):
gaining academic skills?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I want to
get to that in just a moment. But you mentioned
all of these catch terms, and of course they catch
the heart of the parent that wants the very best
for their child. They want their child to be in
you know, these so called safe environments. They want them
to be places. This is the language of the left,
(23:49):
of course, they want them to be places of belonging,
all of these sorts of words kindness. And let me
give you another example of that. Talking to you from
the des Moines metro area, des Moines, Isle. A couple
of months ago, it was learned that the Des Moines
Public School System had hired now two years ago, not
(24:13):
only in a legal immigrant to serve as their superintendent
of education, but an illegal immigrant who had a long
rap sheet and criminal convictions for some very serious crimes.
That was truly a black eye on the des Moines
School System and the people that hired this individual. But
(24:38):
I think it exposed something else. It exposed this push,
particularly in inner city school districts, to be full representative
of the DEI diversity, equity inclusion marketplace and to bring
those people in to serve the people who pushed this stuff,
(25:00):
to serve their school districts where emotional learning and inclusive
and equitable learning become a priority to actual learning to
be you know, productive citizens and good citizens in our society.
Moving forward. And I remember one of the terms that
(25:22):
came out of that when it was first announced that
Ice had arrested this guy. His name was, his name
is Ian Roberts. He is facing deportation. Yeah. And at
the time, the school board president a chairwoman who was
running for Senate as a pretty far left Democrat. I
(25:43):
think she was an assistant for Michelle Obama at one point.
I remember her saying, listen, we don't know everything why
this happened, but I think we should take a cue
from Ian Roberts, our superintendent, who has in books and
led a whole educational philosophy on what he called radical empathy.
(26:08):
And I thought to myself at the time, these folks
are absolutely captured, and they are captured at the absolute
detriment of school children. And it's not just des Moines,
it's across the country. What do you think as these
kinds of stories play out, and not necessarily as dramatic
as Ice picking up your superintendent for being an a
(26:30):
legal immigrant with the you know, as an ex con,
but you know, this sort of educational leader leading our children,
our teachers, our schools.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, so much of this in education is coming from
or founded by these funded by rather these foundations and
these NGOs, and they are all steam ahead on equity.
DEI might be dead on the surface layers, but it
is fully embedded in all of this. This is how
(27:10):
DEI goes underground, particularly again with software, but it's it
is in. I believe eighty three percent of the schools
and ninety percent of our students are affected by SEL.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
And I think you said forty nine states, but all
fifty states have at least an SEL statewide standard for
pre K. So but you know, I'm a chapter chair
in Moms for Liberty, and when I got involved in this,
it felt like whack a mole. We've got were grassroots organization,
(27:49):
and all of our chapters all over the country are
kind of doing their own thing. All we all have
parental rights as the focus. But it really felt like
whack a mole. One chapter would be fighting this particular
curriculum or trying to get this resource out of their school,
or this poster that this teacher used, and it was,
you know, every time, a year long fight or more
(28:10):
to get rid of this textbook or that program, and
then another one would pop up right behind it with
the same sorts of things. Embedded. So all of this
just keeps rebranding and it keeps parents off guard, and
we're always playing defense. So it just started to seem
to me that we've got to step back and learn
(28:32):
to recognize just the broader patterns all of this psychology
embedded in what should be academics and overall, where's it
coming from. It's all tied to the UN. Basically, it's global.
So as long as the UN and the World Economic
(28:54):
Forum corporations which are partnered are all pushing sustainable development
and essentially collectivism, that is where that has really become
the root of all this. It started in the US
with Castle, but it has gone global, and all of
the corporations involved in providing the software and the learning
(29:15):
materials for our kids are one hundred percent bought in.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
It sounds like we are, through our schools, raising and
educating the next generation of people who will ultimately enslave us.
That is to say, they will have this kind of
indoctrinated leftist learning and all of the things that we
(29:43):
have really taken for granted in our republic will go.
And it won't be you know, a battle in the street.
It will go without resistance because that's where the left
has I think smartly understood for a long time. And
(30:04):
if you're going to win long term, you're going to
have to change the system of education in America.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
That is correct. They came to us with empathy and
self awareness lessons, they embedded them into everything, and then
they changed, moved the goalposts, they politicized everything, and now
it's all about power and oppression, critical theory, identity politics.
(30:33):
And yes, they are creating a generation raised this way
and often their parents, the parents don't even know. It's
a wedge between the children and the parents are creating
a red guard.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Mm hmm. Well, social emotional learning and all of this
stuff was sold to us. Cell was sold to us
as a way to ring up, you know, test scores,
to bring up academic accomplishments, because at the time there
was grave concern, as it still remains today, that we
(31:11):
were falling way behind the industrialized world in terms of
our academic skills in our kids, and so this was
sold as a way to lift up the bar. It
has failed to do that. As we take a look
at the National report Card and the Nation's report Card,
(31:33):
all of these by every measure, it seems to me.
If it was designed to lift academic achievement, it has
abjectly failed. Is that what you found in your research?
Speaker 2 (31:46):
It has? I think it's just redirected to focus. You know,
everything has an opportunity cost. If you spend what should
be academic time in circle time sharing about your feelings
and who might have marginalized to you. You are not
studying algebra.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah, you definitely, you definitely are not. Here's a I
think an interesting part of this, as has been noted
in your book and and those who are you know
like you tracking this s e l slips into classrooms
with confusing tools and routines you just mentioned it, like
(32:26):
circle time confessions, resilient circles, feelings check ins, and goal
setting sessions that sound warm and wholesome but are more
therapy than education. What is this garbage? Circle time confessions?
Why are the why do the kids have to confess
(32:49):
anything in a circle, let alone in a school?
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh? Yes, that the you in the UN says that
circle time must be confidential for for the sharing to
be more authentic. Yeah, so teachers. Teachers are essentially being
asked to act as therapists, which they are not trained
to do. And in the case is where it's only
(33:13):
happening through software and not the teachers, then there is
no informed consent children children's data should not be pulled
by corporate software. And no matter how much a school says, oh,
we are FURBA compliant, that's meaningless because FERBA was amended
(33:34):
in twenty eleven to essentially undermine parents. Parents can no
longer protect their children's data from any company, any private
company that is designated as an authorized representative of the school.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Why is that? That is astounding? And I think that
would be astounding to most Americans. Why do they have
that level of protection to be this invasive in the
lives of our children and our families.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
It's interesting. And when that happened in twenty eleven, there
were lawsuits. The ACLU was screaming about it, alarms were raised,
but the Department of Education actually amended FURPA, which it
is argued that they don't have the authority to do.
But the lawsuit was dismissed, not on merits, but on standing.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
On standing. Yeah, so that's the first and foremost thing.
You mentioned the how and you have provided the light
on this subject. I should say that the section I
read about the circle time confessions and resilient circles and
all that stuff is from a great op ed about
(34:51):
this book in particular and about sel in general that
was published just maybe a week or so ago in
the New York Post. You can find it there. But yeah,
I think the first step has to be consent of
(35:12):
the parents of the guardians. They need to know what
is going on. They need to have the ability to
audit this stuff, and they need to have the ability
to say no. So I'm curious, are there any is
there a legal movement out there? If this was based
on standing, it must mean that there have to be
(35:34):
actual victims of this, and of course there are victims
across the country of this. If a parent influenced or
affected by this, if they would take a lawsuit, you
think that would change the dynamic in the litigation.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
I would certainly love to see a lawsuit over this.
There was a recent case. I might get the name wrong.
It think it was my mood the tailor. Sure, so
that that one, you know, I wonder if that couldn't
be applied here. If you there really is a strong
case there's a religious thread running through social emotional learning.
(36:17):
So I'm not sure how directly it could be applied,
but the early Buddhist origins, the New Age spiritualism built in,
perhaps perhaps there's something there. I'm not I'm not a lawyer,
but parents definitely need to be given the opportunity to
(36:39):
I would say it should be an opt in. Actually
I was about to say give the opportunity to opt out,
but this should really be an opt in. You should
be fully informed of what these what data these systems
are collecting, and what's being done with the data, any
possible harms that could come from these systems using your
child's data. There's many opportunity to out.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, it's amazing to me, Priscilla, that we have that
opt out option in so many things in our lives,
from you know, being bombarded with ads and messages from
some cell phone company, you know, a smartphone company, to
our health networks. Yet this is about as basic a
(37:24):
need for opting out that you can imagine, and we
have had politicians, lawmakers who won't allow that. That's just
amazing to me.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
That's right. It's kind of you've got the combination of
these public private partnerships in education, which the private partners
get all of this done. And then the public partners
come in and fund it and mandate it. With that,
combined with the opacity of it all and Furba being
(37:59):
essentially gutted, there really isn't a lot of recourse, and
you've got a captive audience. Children have to use all
of this software, and they have to do the SEL
lessons whatever their teacher puts in front of them, and
they're told to keep it in the circle M So
parents are in the dark.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
It's interesting to me. There was a story recently, some
good reporting, I must say, in Wisconsin where they had
found teachers being able to keep their licenses. We're talking
about hundreds of teachers involved in either sexual assault, sexual
(38:40):
abuses of children, or grooming. All of this stuff has
really raised the concern of groomers and pedophiles in our
school systems. Do you believe that this social emotional learn
name the whole inclusion doctrine. Do you think that has
(39:06):
raised not just the academic dangers, but the psychological and
physical dangers to our children.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
I do. I think it really lays the groundwork all
of this. I call it weaponized empathy. If a child
is told repeatedly that words are being non inclusive can
cause harm. So you know, you end up with the
furries in the bathroom, or you end up with biological
(39:39):
males in the girl's bathroom because the child is told
not to say anything that would be harmful. So certainly
we have seen that. And if speech, we've seen a
rise in violence. If speech is seen as harm or
as violence, then you know, you could actually justify your
(40:03):
violence as self defense. And I think that's the mindset
that's getting into a lot of these kids.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Yes, it's getting into a lot of society. That's what
we have seen from I think from the leftist Marxist
movement in America in assassination culture. Have some very interesting
studies from Rutgers in partnership with a research firm earlier
this year showing that fifty five percent of those who
(40:32):
identify as left leaning believe that some level it's justifiable
to assassinate the president, President Trump or cabinet members and
those sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Well, you had in twenty nineteen, Castle, the organization that
defined sel that invented it from whole cloth and defined it.
They changed the definition in twenty nineteen to explicitly push
identity politics activism. So you know, and you've got you
in publications about social justice. Sel for Social Justice, so
(41:09):
it's they're not hiding it.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
So final question, and I often ask it as we
end these conversations about important topics, the question is where
do we go from here?
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Well, I don't have the answers, but as I said,
I wrote the book to inform parents and to open
eyes about what's really happening. I think that is that's
the first step, is equipping parents and educators to dig deeper.
We kept it really short, concise, because we want this knowledge,
(41:49):
this understanding, this bigger picture to really be widespread. So
we want you to read it, stay awake while you're
reading it. Very short, so buy it, share it, and
give a copy to your favorite teacher or school board member,
even give it to your legislator, because this has got
(42:10):
to be tackled en mass.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Nothing more important, obviously than the future of our children,
which is the future of this republic. Thanks to my
guest today, Briscilla West, education researcher with the Government Accountability
Institute and author of the New Face of Woke Education,
you've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at The Federalist. We'll
(42:39):
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom,
anxious for the fray.
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