Social-emotional learning should be a core subject in school

With the start of school, anxiety is ratcheting up among schoolchildren, parents and teachers who fear that a raging young man wielding a weapon will evade their school's security fortress. The recent Senate passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which has appropriated $8.5 billion to support school-based mental health programs and community mental health centers, is an excellent start. Although only 4% of school shooters were mentally ill at the time, prevention and treatment of mental illness will reduce the likelihood that a potential shooter will commit mass murder and, importantly, impact all manner of violence in our country.

School shootings are tip of the iceberg, below which lies a 21st-century public health epidemic of violence against self and others, exacerbated by the pandemic. American deaths of despair from suicide, overdose and alcohol toxicity have escalated including a 60% increase in adolescent suicide from 2007 to 2018, and there were a record 1,286 fatal overdoses in Minnesota in 2021. Interpersonal violence directed at partners, children and strangers has jumped the past two years in the U.S., the highest homicide rate in 25 years. Surviving family members suffer in silence due to stigma. The burden of nonfatal violence is incalculable.

As a nurse practitioner providing primary care in the Twin Cities, and mother to a daughter who died by suicide and a son who was bullied in school, I believe that violence in America requires a long-term investment in social-emotional learning (SEL) as a core subject from pre-K through high school graduation in partnership with families and communities. The current assortment of voluntary SEL programs cannot teach the requisite emotional intelligence for preventing violence.

Emotional intelligence, termed EQ, is optimally taught during childhood, when the brain readily remodels in response to new ways of thinking and perceiving. EQ increases awareness of thoughts and feelings to better manage personal distress, empathize by taking the perspective of others, communicate and collaborate effectively, and manage obstacles with forbearance.

To grasp the necessity for social-emotional learning requires an understanding of the psychosocial dynamics underlying aggression. In the case of school shootings, 99% are perpetrated by males. These lonely, alienated men feel like losers in a society that emphasizes competing to win in athleticism, advanced degrees, wealth, power and sexual success. Boys learn that masculinity means suppressing emotional expression except for anger which empowers them. Current or previous bullying at school and shaming by any credible source provokes self-isolation — a breeding ground for destructive emotions, including anger, resentment, fear, self-disgust and sadness. Distorted rumination can emerge precipitating the unstoppable rage that fuels a rampage.

A pattern of losses and perceived failures is common to suicide, fatal substance use, homicide and mass murder. Personal rejection by someone valued, academic difficulties, sexual assault, a disabling physical condition, PTSD and job termination, among myriad adversities, reinforce a person's sense of unworthiness, and even self-hatred. Lost housing, health insurance or child custody amplifies hopelessness. A heritable biology of pessimism and emotional volatility, mental illness and/or substance use disorders compounds adverse life experiences, nature via nurture, to cause a person to grab a gun, noose or pills to extinguish intolerable consciousness. Or to turn on others.

With our tradition of investing in social capital, Minnesota can lead the nation in supporting the flourishing of our hearts and minds. In logarithmic fashion, the more students, teachers, coaches and family members trained in SEL, the greater the possibility of recognizing someone at risk for violence against self — and/or others and intervening in time.