An Open Letter to the Business Community:
EQuip Our Kids! commends the business community for the historic role they have played in strengthening education in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, during the preceding decade.
Recent events including the COVID-19 pandemic, the related crisis in mental health and renewed activism for racial and economic equity, have exposed the need for a broader and more humane education, one that prepares all students for success in all sectors of the workforce of the future – as well in their personal lives and relationships.
Because improved academic performance by itself will not lead to a workforce or society that is more equitable, resilient, innovative, and adaptable.
What is needed is an education that helps all students acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes to manage their emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions large and small.
In support of this education that can lift all peoples, communities and endeavors, we urge the business community to reprise the role it played for STEM and support the next great leap in education–Social Emotional Learning.
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CORPORATIONS BENEFITED FROM INVESTING IN STEM EDUCATION
In 2011 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued the report The Case for Being Bold, which laid out the reasons businesses in the U.S. should advance STEM education and the benefits they could expect in doing so. That report kicked off a decade of corporate activism and more than a $1 billion in corporate support for STEM education across the country.
As a result, companies benefited from improved candidate pipelines, increased staff diversity and stronger brand recognition in schools and communities. Many students, including minorities, girls and those from low-income communities, benefited from increased resources and programs designed to improve their access to and representation in STEM education and careers.
THE RETURNS OF INVESTING IN SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING
Now is the time for the business community to support the next great leap in education: increasing emotional intelligence through universal and comprehensive social and emotional learning in grades preK – 12.
Increasingly, as the business press reports, businesses are seeking to hire based on an individual’s emotional intelligence, not their academic intelligence or IQ. Emotional intelligence boosts leadership (Society for Human Resource Management), team effectiveness and productivity (Google). The service-profit chain shows that happier employees make for happier customers, which in turn makes shareholders happy through increased revenues, profits and repeat customers (Harvard Business Review).
Diverse companies such as Virgin, Wegmans Food Markets and Salesforce have demonstrated this for years. It’s time for others to follow suit.
In schools, we know that kids can’t excel at rigorous academics when they are hungry. As a country, we invest more than $14 billion annually in school nutrition programs to help kids succeed. By the same measure, we know that kids can’t excel when they are distracted by social and emotional concerns such as anxiety, depression, fear, loneliness, or insecurity. With Social-Emotional Learning we have proven tools to address kids’ concerns, help them focus, and ultimately thrive.
Beyond academics, SEL prepares students to be the lifelong learners and excellent communicators that businesses want and need. SEL helps future workers
- Set goals and work towards achieving them.
- Approach challenges in a positive, optimistic way.
- Respond ethically.
- Navigate inclusive social and collaborative situations with ease.
- Empathize with the feelings of customers, co-workers, and others.
These benefits are available for all students, not just those interested in STEM topics. These benefits can be available to all companies, industries, and communities, not just those with a STEM focus. These benefits are affordable. Social-Emotional Learning requires no dedicated classroom space or expensive technology. What it does require is supporting teachers with the time, resources and training to be who they already strive to be – people willing and able to invest in relationships with students.
THE TIME TO INVEST IN SEL IS NOW
Just like a decade ago with STEM education, what’s lacking today is a broad base of support from businesses calling for SEL education in all schools. For everyone’s sake, SEL needs to be at least as ubiquitous, recognized, and funded as STEM has become. Probably more so.
It needn’t take ten years to see results from investments in SEL education. High school graduates with just a year of exposure to Social-Emotional Learning will be more valuable members of the workforce than those without.
As our country grapples with multiple issues – including partisanship, racism, inequity and mental health – our education system must respond. The response can’t be an education solely of the intellect. It must also be an education of the spirit. As intangible as that might sound, SEL has proven that such an approach delivers the tangible, positive results that we need now as students, workers, employers, and communities.
Now is the time for the business community to lead its members in acting in their own interest and the interests of all. Now is the time for business support of Social-Emotional Learning.
EQuip Our Kids! commends the business community for the historic role they have played in strengthening education in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, during the preceding decade.
Recent events including the COVID-19 pandemic, the related crisis in mental health and renewed activism for racial and economic equity, have exposed the need for a broader and more humane education, one that prepares all students for success in all sectors of the workforce of the future – as well in their personal lives and relationships.
Because improved academic performance by itself will not lead to a workforce or society that is more equitable, resilient, innovative, and adaptable.
What is needed is an education that helps all students acquire and apply the knowledge, skills and attitudes to manage their emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships and make responsible and caring decisions large and small.
In support of this education that can lift all peoples, communities and endeavors, we urge the business community to reprise the role it played for STEM and support the next great leap in education. We ask the Chamber to commission, publish and promote a report calling on business to support universal and comprehensive social and emotional learning (SEL) in preK – 12 education by advocating for this change, lending their expertise, partnering with SEL-supporting institutions and schools, and pursuing market opportunities that simultaneously promote the benefits of this education.
