| 摘要 | Key Points
Social and emotional learning (SEL) might be a new term, but at its core it represents the educational priorities of character education.
For many Americans, SEL’s roots are deeply enmeshed in moral and religious precepts, and those promoting these as secular skills would do well to recognize and respect that fact.
Specifically, proponents should resist the temptation to centrally manage SEL. Instead, they should embrace the opportunity for local and voluntary communities to align SEL instruction with their moral preferences.
Introduction
A growing number of advocacy groups, educators, and families are concerned that something important is missing from modern public education. They recognize the necessity of students making progress in their math and reading abilities, but they fear that a narrow focus on those subjects has caused schools to neglect other essential aspects of education. In particular, they believe schools can and should play a central role in helping students develop their attitudes and relationships with others and shape their behavior accordingly. This set of skills, beliefs, and behaviors is known as social and emotional learning (SEL). It includes things such as impulse control, self-efficacy, empathy, teamwork, and problem-solving.
The backers of SEL are entirely right that schools need to attend to these broader educational goals, just as they do to specific academic content. As the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development puts it:
I’m generally sympathetic to those advocating for SEL and hope they succeed in their efforts. My concern is that they are likely to fall far short if they fail to acknowledge the moral and religious roots of SEL, do not consider its history and how past efforts have managed to succeed, and attempt to reinvent those past efforts from scratch on a technocratic foundation that is at odds with what allows SEL to be effective.
Let us consider each challenge in turn. “Social and emotional learning” may be a new term, but it represents a set of educational priorities that are as old as education itself. In the past, this has been called character education. Advocates suggest SEL is more than just character education. But it seems to me that the basis of SEL is what we’ve long considered character education.
Indeed, it would appear that advocates, perhaps disliking the moral judgment that the word “character” connotes, wish to downplay SEL’s moral and religious roots and prefer instead to rebrand the concept on a modern and scientific basis. This is a mistake. SEL’s long history has much to teach us about how these efforts succeed. And embracing the moral and religious roots helps the movement avoid reinventing old concepts by stripping them of what many people find appealing and motivational.
Not only is there nothing new about the idea that education ought to emphasize matters of character, but even the way in which these educational goals are classified can be traced back to antiquity. The cardinal virtues, first described by Socrates in The Republic and later incorporated into Christian theology, consist of prudence, courage, temperance, and justice.2 There is nearly a one-to-one correspondence between the cardinal virtues and the core SEL competencies as identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).3 Prudence corresponds to what CASEL calls “responsible decision-making,” which includes identifying and solving problems, reflecting, and ethical responsibility. Courage corresponds to what CASEL calls “self-awareness,” which includes self-confidence and self-efficacy. Temperance corresponds to the SEL core competency “self-management,” which includes impulse control and self-discipline. And justice corresponds to “social awareness” and “relationship skills,” which include empathy, respect for others, and teamwork.
The strong similarity between CASEL’s classification of SEL and the cardinal virtues of Greek and Christian thought is no accident. CASEL has classified SEL in this way because it reflects how we tend to think about these issues, even if the organization is not consciously aware of the similarity. But by effectively renaming the cardinal virtues and detaching them from their origins in moral and religious philosophy, CASEL may be hoping to shed whatever controversies and other baggage come with this historical approach so that it can start fresh with a clean slate.
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