America’s classrooms seem focused lately on just about everything except educating kids: progressive politics, social fads, psychological tinkering, fringe ideologies. Alas, we must add group therapy to that collection of non-academic pursuits: “Circle conversations” are appearing in more and more public schools, and even colleges like UC Berkeley — asking teachers to play the role of therapist, not educator.
The Twitter account Libs of TikTok caught attention when it shared an example of “community circles” at an elementary school in the Austin (Texas) Independent School District, requiring kids to keep anything said there confidential. This is in line with a “restorative justice” initiative in the district that seeks to make the “circle process” a regular part of the school day.
What exactly is this “circle process?” As a University of California Berkeley’s Restorative Justice Center manual describes it, it resembles a religious ritual more than a classroom practice, with opening and closing ceremonies, a centerpiece bearing trinkets or candles and a talking piece — anything from a popsicle stick to personal jewelry. The ritual begins; the “leader” asks prying and probing questions, encouraging the discussions of “difficult or painful events,” as participants pass around the talking piece and share.
The manual recommends discussion of topics such as when participants felt harmed or had themselves perpetrated trauma, how they deal with negative emotions and personal history. A manual for the San Francisco school district encourages teachers to ask questions that are “edgy” and “controversial” and to use prompts that solicit “more intimate exposure.” The idea is to incentivize, reward and encourage self-disclosure, confession and personal vulnerability.
Supposedly, these circles prevent misbehavior by providing emotional support. In reality, they are a clear example of pop psychology leaking into school rooms — an ongoing shift from schools administering academic services to providing emotional support, with the teacher as therapist.
To which the American Enterprise Institute’s Robert Pondiscio asks: “At what point does a school’s concern for its students’ emotional health and well-being, however well-intended, become too personal, too intrusive and too sensitive to be a legitimate function of public school?” Indeed, the circles run afoul of ethical, practical and political concerns.
First, the ethical. The American Psychological Association’s code of ethics discourages counselors and therapists from practicing outside their area of competence. In managing the volatility of human emotions, experience and expertise matter. Teachers have a basic grounding in child psychology, yes, but nowhere near the competence to manage the tenuous scenarios the circles can create. They’re experts in academic instruction; deputizing them into a counseling role far beyond that expertise risks adverse outcomes.
The practical issue: Do they work?
Circle conversations are a key part of an increasingly popular philosophy of discipline that involves “restorative justice,” curbing a school’s dependence on punitive discipline — suspensions, detentions, expulsions. Yet when restorative justice nudges out punitive discipline, misbehavior flourishes; classroom disruptions, bullying and violent behavior all increase.
Meanwhile, as schools phase out suspensions for small infractions, many end up assigning more total days of suspensions; they assign fewer suspensions but for increasingly severe behavior with more days of punishment, so kids wind up spending more days outside the classroom.
Finally, the political. To no one’s surprise, many of the circle topics reach far into left-wing politics. A resource site for Oakland Unified School District has a workshop called “Transforming Whiteness.” The Berkeley manual has questions based on the writings of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin D’Angelo, and it lists “colorblindness” and “invocations of meritocracy” as microaggressions to avoid.
Progressive buzzwords abound across the sites and manuals — intersectionality, equity, social justice and so on, alongside countless activities and questions that center reflection on immutable characteristics.
At best, these circle conversations create a discussion format that gets inappropriately personal for a classroom and bears little-to-no good results, as untrained teachers tinker with the psyches of their students. At worst, they’re a shoo-in for fringe, radical politics. In either case, they don’t belong in the classroom.
Daniel Buck, a teacher, is a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute.