Cultivating of the person in the new millennium

Abstract

The article focuses on the contemporary issues of upbringing and socialization, in connection with the introduction of social-emotional learning (SEL) abroad and in Russia. SEL is analyzed in its historical context and its relation to the humanistic paradigm. While  problematisating SEL  one finds that the most important meanings of programs in relation to education can be defined as dependence on one’s internal experience, a turn towards subjectiveness (as the condition for “practices of the Self”), and as the motivational transition to empathy, love and morality, and that they all that is achieved through the use of contemplative practices that make ‘slow down’, ‘stop’, ‘silence’ and create conditions for the development of empathy and love. In the philosophical analysis of the context of modern education, the effects that pose risks to the educational opportunities of SEL are revealed. Among such I regard the replacement of “upbringing” by “learning” as a symptomatic phenomenon, and I link the latter with educational policies in the world that are influenced by a neo-liberalist mentality oriented towards an economic approach in understanding humans.