A Broken System (Unwarranted Student Promotion: Conclusion)
Social-emotional learning theories have destroyed the public education system through an unwritten and unencumbered policy of unwarranted, unjustified, and counter-productive student promotion to higher grade levels. It is a national problem responsible for illiterate classroom terrorists, meaningless teaching careers, and the eradication of accountability on all stakeholders. These negative phenomena will continue to plague the public education system until social-emotional learning theories are modified or eliminated.
When students are promoted to higher grade levels without academic justification, student engagement falls and unwanted behaviors increase. Stuck in class and unable to participate meaningfully with the curriculum, students resort to classroom terrorism for stimulus. As teachers have been indoctrinated with social-emotional learning theories that compel educators to build relationships, show empathy, and provide emotional safety, they do not have the managerial skills necessary to succeed in classrooms filled with students unjustly promoted. Furthermore, since students are promoted without merit, teachers rarely get to spend adequate time within their own grade-level content, adding to a sense of career emptiness and a lack of fulfillment. When students are promoted outside their comprehension and when teachers rarely teach their content due to remediation of rudimentary skills, accountability is lost on all parties and academic achievement becomes meaningless. Instead of acting as institutions of learning, schools become another arm of the Department of Social Services.
The most tragic consequence, though, is that students are exiting their own education or graduating from the system functionally illiterate. When students do not have foundational skills like literacy and numeracy, they cannot rationally experience genuine freedom. When our students are lacking fundamental skills required to navigate society in an autonomous way, they cannot rationally lift themselves from their circumstances through pursuit of their own interests and dreams. The true consequences of social-emotional learning theories and unwarranted student promotion are to increase injustice, increase inequities, and to abandon the societal promise of the American Dream.
