by Linda Highland
Testimony to KSDE November 14, 2023
SEL is billed as programs that build emotional well-being and teach anti-bullying/anti-suicide programs. However, SEL acts like a trojan horse to smuggle topics into the schools with parents unaware that their children are being exposed to discussions on race, gender, sex, drugs, pornographic books, religious beliefs, sharing circles, being surveyed, and much more.
The Kansas Communities That Care (KCTC) is just one example of a survey that has been widely used in Kansas schools from its inception in 1994 as a tool for collecting data and receiving grants. How much federal grant money does KDADS receive for you to administer the KCTC to students in 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grades with hour long survey questions like:
“Have you ever seriously thought about killing yourself?”
“Have you ever made a plan about how you would kill yourself?”
“Have you ever tried to kill yourself?”
In 2012 when SEL began in Kansas schools, it was also the year that suicide among our youth became the second leading cause of death, according to KDHE. Before 2011 it was not ranked as a category of leading causes. SEL is not preventing suicides.
The questions go on in the KCTC survey to introduce and normalize students to all forms of drugs and bad behaviors. The unreliable data collected from the KCTC survey along with a Youth Risk Behavior Survey Surveillance System from the CDC, and the Family Engagement Survey (yes students are asked to report on family life) are used to make Climate Measures reports on students and their school.
The SEL curriculum is being taught to mold and groom minds of children at the most impressionable age to be compliant with SEL norms that give more attention to harmful behaviors and death than to healthy lifestyles. CASEL has moved SEL to become more radicalized with its transformative agenda.