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.
“It’s sort of ironic that these groups are throwing social emotional learning under the bus when these are the very things that our kids need now, and they need them now more than ever before,” said Donna Lord Black, who leads the Social Emotional Learning Alliance for Texas, a nonpartisan group that advocates for these programs in schools.