With an ally in the White House, Moms for Liberty renews its fight against a longtime target
In a small recording studio near Nashville, conservative activist Kelly Schenkoske urged an online audience of parents to scour school district websites for contracts that mention social and emotional learning.
"Social-emotional learning is far more than just kindness," Schenkoske said. "It is a bait and switch."
The bait, according to Schenkoske and other panelists at the recent Moms for Liberty training event, is small shifts in the school day to introduce students to lessons about virtuous qualities like empathy and compassion.
The switch, they said, is to make children sympathetic to what they see as progressive ideas, ranging from open borders and acceptance of homosexuality to gun control, action against climate change and redistribution of wealth.
"You send your child with your value system, your own beliefs, and now they're getting the government's value system installed into them," warned Schenkoske, who hosts a podcast from her California home about education and parent rights.The two-hour training session was the first installment in Moms for Liberty U, an online course meant to drive conservative parent activism in the group's continuing effort to sway local and national education agendas.
That it focused on social and emotional learning illustrates the staying power of conservatives' concerns about schools' role in addressing student well-being. These concerns stretch back years, even as research on the learning shows wide-ranging benefits for students.
Now Moms for Liberty has an ally in the White House, with President Donald Trump painting schools as centers of radical indoctrination and signing executive orders that seek to stamp out teaching about systemic racism and policies supportive of transgender youth.