Autentiškumo etikos trivializavimas Gyvenimo įgūdžių ugdymo programoje
Trivialization of Ethics of Authenticity in the “Education of the Life-Skills” (or, Social-Emotional Learning) Program

Summary/Abstract: The “Education of the life-skills” program launched in the Lithuanian schools this autumn is largely based on the “social-emotional learning” (SEL) curriculum of the US educational system. According to its critics, the SEL is a renewed implementation of the self-esteem movement of the last century and is based on emotivist, and therefore, relativistic understanding of morality. However, Charles Taylor disagrees with the statements about the antimoral nature of the modern emphasis on the relativism of values. He claims such views belong to the particular system of moral views which he calls the “Ethics of Authenticity”. According to Taylor, besides the weaker sides, this ethics has a positive dimension: striving for interpersonal intimacy on the basis of acknowledgment of one’s personal uniqueness. Once this aim is validated, the philosopher believes that it is possible to enter the dialogue with its proponents. However, if one’s uniqueness ceases to be a part of the “horizons of objective meaning”, the “ethics of authenticity” degrades into relativism and atomism. Already one of the first creators of morality based on sentiment Jean Jacques Rousseau, in spite of his theoretical recognition of the moral laws inscribed in human nature, in practice relativized ethics while blaming the society for his failure to keep to the ideal. While demanding tolerance for various “gender identities”, the social-emotional learning program denies the objective mode of human nature, and also, albeit unawares, leads the young persons to ‘atomism’, or isolation. Because, even if the search for gender identity that is incongruent with one’s body is aiming at connection on the basis of respect for one’s uniqueness, the very phenomenon of gender dysphoria is in most cases already rooted in the mental health disturbance that developed prior to the wish to change gender. Because at the basis of psychic-emotional sufferings, there lies the weakened ability to connect with other people, changing one’s gender does improve mental health. The “social-emotional” learning program, then, leads the students in the direction of the destruction of somatic health including fertility, and also to a deeper level of psychic suffering. These facts have been understood by the state medical agencies of several important European countries. Also, the most profound form of personal intimacy in human history – a love between a man and a woman – is neither explored nor offered for reflection for the students. In this way, even if the creators of the program seem to fall in the tradition of the “ethics of authenticity”, the good aim of creating intimate connections between persons via the implementation of this ethics, cannot be achieved by this project. We appeal to the authors of the program to respect the objectivity of the binary nature of humanity and the reality of the longing for love – the most powerful emotion at a young age.

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