The Liberty Sentinel | by Rhonda Thomas – May 6, 2025
Truth in Education
In today’s classrooms, education is no longer simply about teaching children how to read, write, or calculate. Under the influence of powerful international forces like the United Nations (UN) and its educational arm, UNESCO, the very definition of education, has been radically transformed. Guided by frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), education now seeks to reshape students’ identities, emotions, and allegiances. The goal is clear: to produce a new kind of human being — a “global citizen” whose loyalty to traditional values, family, and faith is replaced by loyalty to a global ideological community and evolving social norms.
Enlightenment Seeds and the Rise of Humanism
The roots of Social Emotional learning (SEL) can be traced back to the Enlightenment, when man began to replace God as the ultimate source of truth. Thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau promoted the idea that children were born good, and that moral development came through self-exploration, not divine instruction. This was the soil from which secular humanism grew – a belief system that elevates human potential above God’s authority.
Historical Foundations of the Global Education Agenda
In 1899, John Dewey, the Marxist father of progressive education, published the pamphlet, The School and Society, which argued that schools should focus less on academics and more on shaping adaptable, socially conscious individuals. Dewey strongly advocated for collectivism and socialism, believing education was essential in fostering communal values and collective social responsibility. He saw education as a tool to transform America by ushering in a “new social order” rooted in these socialist ideals. In the 1940s, Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist and the intellectual godfather of SEL theory, developed a behavioral control method known as Unfreeze – Change – Refreeze. This model enabled institutions to manipulate group behaviors and emotions effectively, making it ideal not only for transforming student conduct but also their core belief systems. After World War II, this vision expanded globally through UNESCO under Julian Huxley’s leadership, who famously declared that education must lay the groundwork for a “single world culture.” Figures like Robert Muller further advanced these goals by designing the World Core Curriculum, which explicitly combined spiritual humanism, planetary citizenship, and education aimed at preparing students for global governance.
Into this fertile ground, in 1959, came Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose Transcendental Meditation (TM) promised to “unfold the full potential of the mind.” TM was introduced into education systems under the “scientific consciousness development” banner, fitting perfectly into Dewey’s vision of experiential learning and UNESCO’s call for spiritualized global citizens. Later, figures like Daniel Goleman, the creator of SEL promoted it to cultivate emotional intelligence in students, further embedding emotional conditioning into the heart of modern education. Goleman worked closely with the Fetzer Institute, which was born from New Age thought by millionaire John Fetzer. Fetzer was influenced by Alice Bailey, who started the Luciferian Publishing Company. It is now known as the Lucis Trust.
The Emergence of the SDGs
By 2015, the UN’s vision matured into formal policy with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among these, SDG 4.7 mandates that education must promote global citizenship, sustainable development, gender equality, and appreciation for diverse lifestyles. However, achieving these external goals requires more than teaching facts; it demands inner transformation, reshaping how children view themselves and the world.
The Emotional Manipulation and Activism in the Classroom
This emotional and behavioral molding leads to the creation of activists who are emotionally tethered to a deceptive global agenda at the expense of individual thought, critical reasoning, and healthy emotional development. They are taught to see global activism as a moral obligation tied to their personal worth and a false definition of “emotional maturity”. The false definition makes emotional maturity about compliance with society’s emotional norms. The true definition is about faithfulness to truth, rightly governing one’s emotions accordingly.
The Mental Harm of an Unstable Identity
Using dishonest emotional development programs like SEL to promote identity fluidity is deeply harmful to our children’s mental health. Rather than fostering genuine resilience, SEL in its post-modern form deliberately destabilizes children’s sense of self by encouraging continuous questioning of their most fundamental traits, including their biological sex, cultural heritage, and moral beliefs. Children whose emotional and cognitive frameworks are still under construction, are especially vulnerable to confusion, anxiety, and emotional dependency when told that their identity is endlessly malleable and socially
negotiable. This negates the concept of integrity. Instead of building strong, independent individuals who can think critically and withstand adversity, these programs cultivate emotional fragility, self-doubt, and an unnatural attachment to external validation. In the name of “equity” and “global citizenship,” the education system is trading the mental and spiritual health of a generation for ideological conformity, and the cost to children’s well-being, confidence, and long-term emotional stability is incalculable.
Identity Fluidity as a Tool for Global Conformity
In the UN’s educational model, it is essential for children’s identities to be fluid because fixed, deeply rooted identities, such as national loyalty, religious conviction, traditional family values, or distinct cultural heritages are viewed as obstacles to achieving a unified global society, which can be easily controlled by a few. SEL plays a critical role in this process by encouraging children to see identity as flexible, evolving, and primarily relational, tied to the broader goals of equity, sustainability, and planetary solidarity. Therefore, it fosters emotional attachments to global values, defined by unelected, unaccountable individuals. Schools gradually dissolve fixed points of moral and cultural reference, making students more receptive to changing norms, international ideologies, and collective action campaigns. A malleable Identity thus becomes a necessary psychological condition for dismantling traditional structures of belonging and replacing them with a new allegiance to global frameworks. In this model, personal stability, rootedness, and independent moral formation are seen not as virtues to be protected, but as barriers to be deconstructed in the name of global progress.
A clear historical parallel to this approach can be found in China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when the Communist Party deliberately targeted the youngest children, even four-year-olds, to sever traditional ties to family, culture, and faith. Through programs like the “Little Red Guards,” children were indoctrinated to betray parents and elders who clung to “old customs,” including religious practices and loyalty to Chinese cultural traditions. By reshaping identities in early childhood, the regime was able to erase deep personal roots and replace them with absolute loyalty to the Party and Maoist ideology.
Sexual Identity, Fluidity, and Emotional Instability
A key aspect of promoting fluid identity under the UN’s educational framework is the deliberate encouragement of sexual identity fluidity from an early age. Within the broader push for “inclusion” and “equity” under SDG 4.7 and reinforced through SEL-aligned teaching practices, children are taught that sexual identity is not a fixed biological reality but a personal, evolving choice. This aligns perfectly with the UN’s goal of dissolving traditional identity anchors, particularly those tied to religious teachings, family structures, and cultural norms. This dismantles binary and stable understandings of biological gender and sexuality by framing sexual identity as an ongoing personal journey rather than a biological truth. Global education models foster a psychological environment in which self-perception is detached from inherited moral frameworks. This strategy cultivates an internal sense of personal instability, making young people more dependent on external “guidance” from institutions, experts, and global frameworks. Sexual identity fluidity thus becomes an issue of personal freedom, and a powerful tool for reorienting children’s allegiance away from parents, faith, and culture toward an evolving, international standard and understanding of humanity.
SEL As a Mechanism for Identity Rejection
SEL is a primary mechanism to accomplish this goal by directly embedding identity exploration into the curriculum, which teaches children to reject their true identity. Lessons and activities normalize the idea that identity, particularly gender and sexuality, is changeable, and that affirming all variations of identity is an emotional requirement for being a good, compassionate person. Students are guided through reflective exercises that tie moral goodness to the acceptance of gender fluidity, diversity of sexual orientation, and evolving definitions of self. In doing so, SEL does not teach about these issues factually or neutrally; it emotionally rewards students for embracing fluidity and frames stability as either outdated or exclusionary. Instead of helping children build confidence in who they are, SEL encourages them to live in a state of perpetual self-rejection in the guise of self-redefinition, closely tied to the evolving standards of global social justice. SEL marketed itself as a positive therapeutic education methodology. It did this by hijacking the language of traditional morality and emotional care, while quietly redefining both.
A Shift to Transformative SEL
Beginning around 2020, the field of SEL underwent a deliberate transformation into what is now known as Transformative SEL. CASEL, the Collaboration of Academic Social and Emotional Learning, revised its frameworks to position SEL explicitly as a vehicle for advancing social justice, equity, and identity activism. Emotional learning became a means of teaching students based on the Marxist/Communist framework of critically analyzing systems of “oppression,” including traditional family roles, religious beliefs, and binary sexual identities. In this model, emotional development is not solely about personal well-being but about deconstructing inherited beliefs and replacing them with globalist norms. SEL is a tool for remaking children’s identities in service of global ideological conformity.
A Biblical Call to True Education and Emotional Integrity
Using SEL and related emotional training in this way is devastating. Real emotional development should help children become resilient, confident, and morally grounded individuals rooted in truth, family, and faith. True education should strengthen a child’s internal compass, not dismantle it. Children deserve to know that their worth is not based on conforming to global ideologies versus their intrinsic dignity as human beings made in the image of God. They deserve the freedom to grow into adulthood anchored in truth, not tossed about by the ever-changing winds of political fashion.
The Psychological Consequences of Globalist Indoctrination
If education is not reclaimed to protect children’s hearts, minds, and souls, an entire generation of emotionally fractured young people—cut off from their heritage, their faith, and even their own biological reality—all in the name of a false promise of “global unity.” What is being achieved is not unity, but a profound and tragic loss of authentic identity.
The Expansion of SEL into Medicine, Law, and Business
Today, nearly all counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and related professionals are required to be familiar with SEL frameworks and their related mental/behavioral health philosophies. Organizations like the American Psychological Association (APA), the American School Counselor Association (ASCA), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and the American Public Health Association (APHA) promote the SEL framework as mental/behavioral health treatment and prevention. SEL principles are now integrated into behavior/mental health training under broader terms like “trauma-informed care,” “equity-centered practice,” “culturally responsive therapy,” and “social justice counseling”. These frameworks tie behavioral health directly to a child’s or client’s ability to “adapt to” and “accept” evolving societal norms, including unstable identities around gender, race, and sexuality. This constitutes compliance and obedience. As a result, many behavioral and mental health professionals today are not simply treating emotional distress in the traditional sense, and subtly reinforce SEL-based models of identity, emotional conformity, and activism as “healing.” This shift means that parents seeking traditional emotional support for their children may unknowingly encounter therapeutic models that view the questioning and deconstruction of fixed identity, rather than the affirmation of natural development, as psychologically healthy. (Keep in mind that SEL and the globalists’ definition of “psychologically healthy” is unquestioning obedience.)
The Redefinition of Mental Health and Healing
The integration of SEL-based training is fundamentally anti-Biblical because it redefines the very nature of human identity, morality, and healing apart from God’s truth. Scripture teaches that human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), male and female, with intrinsic worth, fixed biological identity, and an unchangeable moral law written on their hearts (Romans 2:15). Biblical counseling points individuals toward repentance, renewal through Christ, and the sanctification of emotions and desires under God’s authority. In contrast, SEL and modern therapeutic frameworks encourage children to look inward, trusting their feelings as the higher authority, and reinventing themselves based on shifting social norms.
This emotion-centered model elevates self-creation over God’s creation, feelings over truth, and personal identity fluidity over the stability of our design. Furthermore, SEL-based therapy often affirms sin as authentic identity, promoting practices and lifestyles the Bible clearly defines as outside of God’s will (Romans 1:24-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11). In doing so, it subtly but powerfully replaces the Biblical model of healing, rooted in repentance, restoration, and truth, with a secular model rooted in self-worship, relativism, and emotional conformity to a broken world system.