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Board hearing includes a heated exchange over social-emotional learning and its origins
Summary
A board member criticized aspects of social-emotional learning (SEL), linking it in historical remarks to broader "global education" themes; other members pushed back and said SEL practices are targeted, teachable skills such as metacognition and trauma-informed practices.
During the strategic-plan discussion, one board member delivered an extended critique of social-emotional learning (SEL), linking it to historical movements and raising concerns about underlying influences. The member said historical materials referenced Alice Bailey and theosophy and asserted the Michigan statute permitting restorative practices had led to tiered discipline models.
"The global education system is rooted in theosophy... Alice Bailey ... the curriculum she created and published is called social emotional learning," the board member said in a sustained monologue. Other members responded by distinguishing classroom SEL instruction (naming emotions, teaching metacognition and self-regulation) from therapy and by urging measurable, school-appropriate implementations.
Administrators and other board members emphasized that SEL-related goals in the plan were intended as teachable skills — for example, students learning vocabulary for emotions and strategies to anticipate and manage dysregulation — and that trauma-informed practices and staff training are part of a broader, phased professional-development program.
Board members asked Hanover and district staff to clarify how subjective aims (inclusion, belonging, self-regulation) would be measured and to provide baseline survey data and sampling methodology so the board could evaluate objectives and avoid survey-echo chambers.
