Social Media-Emotional Etiquette

Social Media - Emotional Etiquette
An Op-Ed by Scott Sidney

Social media platforms like Facebook give ordinary people opportunities to express their feelings and make arguments public which may not fit within editorial constraints of more traditional publications. These social platforms also endow users with a certain celebrity.

One goal for social media platforms was to encourage civil discourse. Indeed there’s a constant harangue common across all these platforms for users to be polite and respectful.

Within a few days of my making comments to the Cedarburg School District Board and of having a letter to the editor published, I was called a “moron,” “uneducated and uniformed,” and “misinformed” on the Facebook page, “Cedarburg Talks.” One woman said I was mean to her son in an earlier letter to the editor that the News Graphic published. We can only conclude their statements are considered by them valid argument, civil discourse, on point, and respectful.

The comments I made to the school board cited previously failed educational programs suggesting Second Step and Social Emotional Learning as another candidate for failure. My argument in a letter to the editor made a case for defining the problem to be solved, to use due diligence determining the necessity of the program or in considering alternatives.

My position seemed perfectly reasonable which included quotes from respectable sources. One contributor to “Cedarburg Talks” essentially asked whether I cherry-picked my quotes. Yes. I did cherry-pick quotes. It’s an argument, a debate. It’s not presenting a doctoral dissertation.

It’s not requisite for me to make someone else’s point. The use of selective arguments doesn’t invalidate their legitimacy. They lay a case for others to attack not in an ad hominem fashion but with valid, selected arguments of their own.

I discontinued reading the week’s-long discussion that ensued since it isn’t incumbent on me to subject myself to disparaging personal insults. It may be that my detractors presented legitimate arguments of their own which brings me to another point I didn’t raise directly. Should a program be implemented over which many parents object?

We don’t doubt there is unanimity in achieving academic excellence. If Second Step Social Emotional Learning produces academic excellence there is contradictory evidence and little by way of definitive longitudinal controlled studies to show otherwise despite being in use since about 2011. And the District’s most recent scorecard shows excellence in the absence of Social Emotional Learning. It just isn’t an essential element in education. What it is, undeniably, is social emotional engineering; a loose implementation of behavior modification.

It is not proper to impose psychological remodeling on others’ children. Teach Social Emotional Learning to your own children. Leave other parents alone. They’re perfectly capable of instilling proper social cultural mores without resorting to one-size-fits-all proselytizing.

*The Cedarburg School District Board has said the district will continue with the current Second Step curriculum that they have been using for now.