Maggie's Farm

When you track the publishing history of the psychologists pushing this and who they in turn cite for support, you inevitably run smack dab into socio-cultural activity theory. A desire in other words to use education to change perspectives and how people think and minimize logic and herald emotion so that political and social transformation become possible. Not only do you get to avoid violence to gain your revolution, you also get to avoid the ballot box. Plus most of the revolutionaries are getting paid by taxpayers.

I have also read Haidt's book and it is his personal desire to have cognition be more of the Oriental view that includes emotion that the Western rational view. He also shows up as involved with some of the positive psychology social and emotional learning programs used with students. In particular PATHS--Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies.

Use education to weaken the rational mind and then assert ed needs to change because the rational mind is not what is in charge. That's how you get social transformation of the prevailing culture.

Village-you are correct in the nature of most people's decision-making, but that does not change the fact that educators have deliberately targeted the capacities of those who would like to be rational. Probably not coincidentally, one of the institutions very active in pushing this view is the College of Education at UVa. See especially Robert Pianta's work.

I know the publicity for the book said Haidt sided with conservatives, but my opinion of that given the book's actual statements is that you ended up with AEI hawking a book that explicitly stated the traditional concept of the mind.

When I talked about the SEL, I was talking in particular about Haidt's work with Mark Greenberg. The idea behind positive psychology is that you can push for socially transformative mindsets via education, and not have a philosophical debate about it. Parents and taxpayers simply will not recognize in time that the definition of what constitutes student achievement has been radically redefined and has nothing to do with knowledge acquisition anymore.

I am not being obstinate to be disagreeable. Haidt's book pushed an agenda that was explicit if it was read cover to cover in Haidt's own words, but it did not make it into the reviews.

I have coined the phrase mind arson to describe what is being foisted in K-12 and higher ed.