SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING
& MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS
EDUCATION
The Traditional Model of Education is one that has —and continues— dominated the system for a long time and it has been demonstrated that is rooted on an hierarchical and authoritarian structure. According to the Journal of Peace Education, it is an education for control which main purpose is to “produce citizens and workers who were conformist, passive and politically docile”. Schooling systems were the core to prepare workers to the service of the modern bureaucratic, mass production workplace, and to prevail the social order. In that way, discipline and regulation have been the foundation of education and to inculcate those values the shape of its system is an authoritarian one. Additionally, it is a model that is solely based on an academic purpose where learning is taken as teaching the students information and facts. This comes from European culture during the period of the Enlightenment when general laws were based on observation and experiment. The role of the teacher in this type of education is to impart knowledge in diverse academic aereas from mathematics to history, to prepare them for “the real world”. It is a model that includes memorization, testing, textbooks, material practice to evaluate the success of the student. It prioritizes subject content rather than values, skills, feelings, among other things. There is no space for a more humanized education where the student is the center of it, the traditional model focuses on preparing students for the working world.
The Traditional Model

Production workplace
modern bureaucratic
Academic purpose
discipline
authoritarian
subject content
A New Model

Peaceful relationships
Student priority
personal
confidence
safe environment
Self-esteem
Taking into consideration what was stated under the Traditional Model, it is important to reshape our education systems with a New Model where the student is the center of its own education. A model where students are not treated only as empty recipients of knowledge that need to be filled with factual information, but also as human beings. The Journal of Peace Education describes the initiative in England by WMQPEP where they provided children with opportunities to develop their self-esteem and confidence. According to them “it was seen as important for children to learn non‐aggressive approaches to problems as alternative experiences to fighting, and to develop peaceful relationships while creating a safe and peaceful learning environment where the children feel happy and fulfil their potential”. The purpose of a new model has to be to create a safe environment for every participant where they can achieve their full potential. For this to happen, it is important to reshape some practices that have been in the system for so long. As an example, putting the teacher as a boss position when if we change it to a more equal role children can identify more with them and form more meaningful and trusting relationships, or to learn how to read the class environment and put the needs of the class first before the learning outcomes of the material that is being taught. Thus, the students' feelings are first and then the subject content. In the New Education model, the student is the priority and the teaching is not only based on information that will help in the workforce later on in life. Instead, it also supports the student in the emotional and personal aspect.