A Post-Colonial Critique of SEL Interventions for Latiné Youth

• In Event: Educational Justice: Latinx Teachers and Youth

Abstract

SEL interventions, which derive from and reinforce whiteness and the priorities of Western hegemony in US schools, de-politicize dispositions like ‘grit’ and ‘resiliency’ which are commonly elevated in SEL curricula and discourses in US schools. SEL contributes to a cycle of pathologized trauma in which hegemonic discourses, educational policies, and white, Western epistemologies and pedagogies negatively construct Latiné youth as traumatized by their home and community rather than focusing on trauma experienced from systems and institutional spaces. Furthermore, the ‘efficacy’ of SEL interventions hinges on the colonial project of the American school and neoliberal notions of the individual’s responsibility to achieve ‘academic success’ and ‘upward mobility’ regardless of systemic or institutional oppressions. The authors illustrate how these phenomena incubate the disabling and traumatizing conditions which SEL interventions ostensibly exist to correct. The authors reframe Latiné students’ emotions and social knowledge as critical navigational tools and pathways to decolonial re-politicization.

Authors

• Jose Ortiz, SUNY Cortland

• Chelsea Stinson, Binghamton University