Hol
Well-known
In classrooms across America, something strange is happening.
Kids can’t read, can’t multiply, can’t tell you who fought in the Civil War — but they can tell you how they feel, how they rank on the “resilience scale,” and how to “reflect on their privilege.”
Welcome to what author Priscilla West calls the new face of woke education.
In her blistering new book, The New Face of Woke Education, West tears into the multi-billion-dollar social-emotional learning (SEL) industry — a movement she says is “weaponize[ing] empathy, using emotional appeals to smuggle radical ideology into classrooms under colorful banners of compassion.”
The pitch sounds harmless: teach kids to manage feelings, build empathy, improve focus. But West, like New York Post opinion writer Wai Wah Chin, sees something darker — a system that rewires how kids think while tracking their every thought.
Chin paints the scene like an Orwell novel: “Swap Big Brother for big program, the telescreen for the iPad and the Ministry of Truth for the SEL dashboard.”
Mood-tracking apps. “Circle-time confessions.” Teachers trained as unlicensed therapists. Kids as test subjects for data dashboards that “measure and track today’s children with a precision that would impress George Orwell himself,” West writes.
The numbers are staggering — 49 states backing it, 83% of schools using it, and a market pushing $10 billion. Giants like CASEL, Panorama Education, and Imagine Learning are cashing in. And while parents think their kids are learning kindness, West argues they’re being nudged toward ideological compliance.
Once it was “Be kind and respectful.” Now it’s “Interrogate your complicity in systemic oppression.”
Once it was “Share your toys.” Now it’s “Reflect on your power and privilege.”
thedrilldown.com
Kids can’t read, can’t multiply, can’t tell you who fought in the Civil War — but they can tell you how they feel, how they rank on the “resilience scale,” and how to “reflect on their privilege.”
Welcome to what author Priscilla West calls the new face of woke education.
In her blistering new book, The New Face of Woke Education, West tears into the multi-billion-dollar social-emotional learning (SEL) industry — a movement she says is “weaponize[ing] empathy, using emotional appeals to smuggle radical ideology into classrooms under colorful banners of compassion.”
The pitch sounds harmless: teach kids to manage feelings, build empathy, improve focus. But West, like New York Post opinion writer Wai Wah Chin, sees something darker — a system that rewires how kids think while tracking their every thought.
Chin paints the scene like an Orwell novel: “Swap Big Brother for big program, the telescreen for the iPad and the Ministry of Truth for the SEL dashboard.”
Mood-tracking apps. “Circle-time confessions.” Teachers trained as unlicensed therapists. Kids as test subjects for data dashboards that “measure and track today’s children with a precision that would impress George Orwell himself,” West writes.
The numbers are staggering — 49 states backing it, 83% of schools using it, and a market pushing $10 billion. Giants like CASEL, Panorama Education, and Imagine Learning are cashing in. And while parents think their kids are learning kindness, West argues they’re being nudged toward ideological compliance.
Once it was “Be kind and respectful.” Now it’s “Interrogate your complicity in systemic oppression.”
Once it was “Share your toys.” Now it’s “Reflect on your power and privilege.”
The New Face of Woke Education: How Priscilla West Says Big SEL Turned Compassion into Control
Kids can’t read, can’t multiply, can’t tell you who fought in the Civil War — but they can tell you how they feel, how they rank on the “resilience scale,” and how to “reflect on their privilege.”
thedrilldown.com
