Tuesday, July 19, 2022

After a Texas school shooting, conservatives blamed ‘woke’ programs once approved by Republicans

This ongoing story out of the Mansfield Independent School District located south of Fort Worth, Texas, illustrates the nonsense involved in the fight against this community's very legitimate fears of school violence. It manifests as a conservative backlash against socioemotional learning (SEL)—motivated by a political action committee—that Republicans once supported as a response to mass shootings.

As stated herein, back in 2018, this was not at all "a liberal takeover of the suburban school system, but [was established] at the urging of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Trump administration." It was a reform that gave the appearance of responsiveness to school violence without having to legislate on gun reform.  

And now, this much-needed reform of SEL in our schools is getting viewed as an entry point to allegedly harmful, "woke" ideologies that, apparently, some of these Mansfield parents fear even more than guns.

If these parents really understood both SEL and Critical Race Theory (CRT), they would understand the extremism of their own views. Not only is CRT NOT taught in our schools, but if it were, it would work positively to deflate and minimize inter- and intra-personal conflict because of the intellectual understandings and tools it would provide. It helps students to have an educated analysis of power dynamics in society, and how they can exercise their own agency to help make the world a better place. 

I should know. I teach CRT and students' main reaction over many years of teaching it is feeling like they've been denied this knowledge. Pretty much without exception, students tell me that they wonder why they have to go to college to first learn this when it could have been ever so helpful earlier on in their lives. Teachers are the quickest to make such statements and how they could have been better teachers had they learned these things earlier.

The best part of this piece is learning about the Social Emotional Learning Alliance for Texas. A cursory look at their website speaks volumes of how SEL can and should be beneficial to all.

Trauma and Grief Resources

School Safety and Crisis (from NASP)  

All of this is so unfortunate. In a societal context where so many, including children, have experienced so much loss and tragedy, may Mansfield ISD be a testament to how outsized racial fears can impede much-needed, life-saving policies and practices. I hope that parents and school board members are able to better effectively and intelligently anticipate and challenge the work of political action committees that seek little more than to sow fear and division.

-Angela Valenzuela

After a Texas school shooting, conservatives blamed ‘woke’ programs once approved by Republicans 

In 2018, GOP politicians promoted social and emotional education as a tool to stop mass shootings. Now some conservative activists are arguing those programs are not a solution to school violence, but a cause.



This spring, thousands of residents in the Mansfield Independent School District received political mailers that blamed a recent school shooting on “woke” school policies, inflaming partisan divides ahead of a heated school board election.Illustration by NBC News; Zerb Mellish; NYT via Redux; AP

July 18, 2022, 7:00 AM CDT / Updated July 18, 2022, 2:07 PM CDT

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