It is amazing how school officials are SELLING parents on submitting their children to psychological practices and evaluations in school. Do they receive training on how to sell snake oil?
I wouldn’t let my children participate in any of this Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) which is code for gathering mental health data on your children to build psychological profiles on them!
In Greenland, here’s the sales job they provided to parents from the school counselor:
The school counselor providing mental health services to your children, without telling you that’s what she’s actually doing, is supposed to be exciting?
Here is what is posted on the website:
Kimochis for Mental Health Professionals:
The Kimochis® Feeling Pillows Guide: Activities for Mental Health Professionals to Help Children Process and Regulate Big Feelingselevates the feeling pillows to a therapeutic intervention that provides novel ways to help children ages 5-12* process and regulate BIG emotions.
Created through the collaboration of a clinical psychologist, educational director and Kimochis® co-founder, and tested by child therapists around the country, the 49 activities provided in this guidebook will lead children to:
- Actively communicate feelings with more showing and less talking
- Build the mind-body connection which underlies the belief that ‘feelings fuel behavior’
- Confront hard to have feelings by being physically able to hold, move, sort, hide and throw them around
- Nurture compassion for self and others
*Everyone has feelings and these activities are easily adapted for children of all ages, working one-on-one and in groups. Adults too can benefit from having feelings they can see and touch!
Nothing in her email to parents says anything about mental health services through this “for-profit” vendor. SEL providers need to be clear and honest with parents when it comes to SEL programs they will be using in the classroom. Since when do all children need mental health services through a school counselor? Shouldn’t this be reserved for children who may need extra support in the classroom? With INFORMED consent by parents and guardians ?
If you were to take your child to a Child Psychologist who is trained and educated in the field of Child Psychology, your children would be receiving treatment by a professional that must follow a strict code of ethics. You would know that your child is being treated and assessed on their mental health, and their privacy would be protected.
SEL vendors do not provide privacy protections for children. All you have to do is look at the vendor’s privacy policy, it’s NOT private.
This is not just about their grades or attendance records. This is about their mental health. That data is used to build a psychological profile on your children. Not only will they mine this sensitive data on your kids, but they can also share it too.
The laws that govern your child’s privacy were gutted in 2011 by Presidents Obama. There used to be a provision that included the restriction on sharing student information without parental consent. That is no longer in place for these vendors. You can read about that here.
Fortunately there is one law in place that requires schools to obtain parental consent on mental health assessment and treatment. You can bet the Ed Tech Vendors are NOT happy about this because they will not be able to mine as much data from families who refuse.
Here is the federal law. It’s important that SEL is not part of your child’s program at school without your explicit approval:
Nothing in the notice asks for consent from parents. If you have not consented to have your child participate in this kind of SEL mental health therapy, there are a few things you can do.
1) File a complaint with the New Hampshire Department of Education
2) Check the license of the school counselor, file a complaint with the licensing board
3) Talk to an attorney to see if this is a violation of federal law and file a lawsuit
4) Take all of this to the school board so they know what is going on
You can now see that this kind of mental health treatment in schools is being sold to parents. The problem isn’t about helping to make the classroom more cohesive or promote better behavior, that can be done without the data mining. The problem is that once your child’s mental health data leaves the district, you have no idea where it goes from there.
This program, used by mental health professionals in practice outside the school, may find this to be an effective tool. The difference is, an educated and trained professional in the mental health field would be assessing and treating children who need extra mental health support. They would be required by license, to keep your child’s mental health information private and it wouldn’t take away from time that should be spent on education.
Kimochi references their “five core social and emotional competencies as outlined by the Collaborative for Academic and Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL).” What they don’t tell you is that CASEL no longer supports focusing on academics in the classroom. They talk about that here:
SEL turns public schools into mental health clinics. This shifts focus away from academic excellence, and is sold to you as something “exciting.”
As children get older, this will continue, but more data will be mined. Here is how this snake oil was sold in SAU16 & SAU21.
The mental health of our children is extremely important, but remember these are the same people who locked kids out of school creating a mental health crisis among for many of these children. Now they are tasked with treating your child’s mental health?
The best thing to do is say NO to SEL. No to the assessments OR treatment. DO NOT CONSENT.
School administrators need to go back to making sure the schools are providing a joyful environment. If they can’t provide that, then they shouldn’t be working in the schools. This isn’t rocket science.
For the children who need additional support, that should only be provided by PhD Child Psychologists who must follow a strict code of ethics. Your children need their mental health information protected, and parents need to be told the truth about what is going on with your children.
This email does not provide you with the necessary information, and there is nothing about what will be collected on your children, and shared.