Decision Literacy
How to think clearly, evaluate choices, and understand consequences.
Introduction
Emotional & Social Literacy for Kids is an 18-week curriculum for ages 8–12, built for classroom teachers, homeschool families, caregivers, and after-school leaders. Students move from understanding their own internal signals to engineering their social interfaces — learning how emotions work, how trust is built, and how to resolve conflict as a diagnostic problem across three short sessions per week.
Part of the Literacy for Kids Ecosystem
This curriculum is part of Literacy for Kids, a collection of open-source curricula designed to help children ages 8–12 understand the systems that shape the modern world.
Explore the other literacies
Computer Literacy
How computers work and how to use technology responsibly.
Media Literacy
How to find, interpret, and evaluate information.
Financial Literacy
How money and financial systems affect everyday life.
Civic Literacy
How societies organize themselves and how citizens shape communities.
Emotional & Social LiteracyCurrent curriculum
How emotions, cognition, and social systems shape behavior and relationships.
Legal Literacy
How laws are built, how contracts work, and how disputes get resolved.
Environmental Systems Literacy
How planetary systems work and how human activity interfaces with them.
Health Systems Literacy
How the human body operates as an integrated system of feedback loops.
Core Concepts
The curriculum is organized around mental models that help students transition from being driven by emotional reactivity to intentionally debugging their internal states and navigating social architectures.
Emotions are Telemetry, Not Commands
Students learn that fear, anger, and anxiety are biological data packets — information to read, not directives to obey.
The Amygdala Hijack is a State Machine Change
Students learn to recognize when the brain forces a hard context-switch and how to pause and clear the buffer before responding.
Social Capital is a Ledger
Every interaction is a deposit or a withdrawal. Students learn to manage their trust ledger intentionally.
Conflict is a System Mismatch
Friction rarely stems from malice — it is usually a mismatch in goals or asymmetric information. Students learn to diagnose, not attack.
The Network Effect of Communication
Every signal sent creates ripples. Students analyze communication by how it is decoded by the receiving hardware, not just their own intent.
Curriculum Roadmap
The learning progression moves from internal telemetry and signal debugging through trust networks and game theory, culminating in a real-world protocol design project.
Weeks 1–4
Internal Telemetry
Sensory inputs, processing capacity, and the nervous system
Weeks 5–8
Debugging the Signal Noise
Cognitive distortions, internal narratives, and filtering
Weeks 9–11
Trust, Ledgers & Network Security
Boundary setting, reliability, and social capital
Weeks 12–14
Game Theory in Groups
Social dynamics, cooperation, and asymmetric information
Weeks 15–18
The Social Interface Patch
Conflict resolution and protocol design
Start Teaching Emotional & Social Literacy
Begin with the Welcome page, then review the facilitator guides before Week 1. Sessions are designed as three short meetings per week, each about 20 to 30 minutes.
Found a mistake or have a suggestion? Open an issue on GitHub.