INTRODUCTION

The discussions to be carried out in this text start from problematizations caused by recent curricular policies implemented by the Brazilian government in secondary education. In particular, it is the reform of the New High School (NEM- Novo Ensino Médio), through Law nº 13.415/2017, which amended the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education (LDB/9.394/96- Lei de Diretrizes e Bases), and the creation and approval of the text of the High Education Common National Curriculum (BNCC-EM-Base Base Nacional Comum Curricular do Ensino Médio), in 2018, considered a milestone in the centralization of curriculum policies in the country. We are interested, more closely, in thinking about the articulation of these reformist pretensions with market sectors, which were present throughout the process of formulating such documents, through non-governmental organizations linked to large economic conglomerates, and to test the effects of this relationship and the neoliberal interests underlying it in the configuration of the so-called socio-emotional skills, based on the examination of didactic materials aligned with the NEM and the BNCC called: the didactic collections of life projects approved in the National Book and Didactic Material Program (PNLD- Programa Nacional do Livro e do Material Didático) of 2021.

Certainly, curriculum conceptions nuanced by the logic of competences do not emerge from the aforementioned reforms. We can go back to the 1990s and trace evidence of this perspective in the production of the National Curricular Parameters (PCNs- Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais), in the elaboration and application of external educational evaluations, such as the National High School Examination (Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio), the Prova Brasil, among others, articulated to the Assessment System of Basic Education (SAEB- Sistema de Avaliação da Educação Básica), which connects with international assessment instruments such as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). According to ^{Ramos (2008}), the competency-based curriculum assumes that it is possible to redefine the meaning of teaching content to assign a practical meaning to school knowledge, leaving aside disciplinary specificities and betting on verifiable competences in particular situations and tasks that students need to master. Also, according to this author, the competence-based curriculum mobilizes disciplinary contents, when they are necessary to solve a given problem-situation. In this view, there are arguments demanded to support the urgency to modify high school education, considering that this would be marked by an excessive load of disciplines that did not prove to be flexible to the desires and demands of the students. Hence the dissolution of the curricular components into formative itineraries, because, in this way, students could “choose” which paths to follow, considering the particularities of their life projects, to be built during the three years of high school. According to ^{Oliveira (2021}), both the general competences of basic education, according to the BNCC-EM, and the principles of high school education, the curricular proposals for offering this educational stage, and the organization of training itineraries are structured to equip young people student to undertake certain decisions according to their life project.

In the constitution of these juvenile subjectivities, it is convenient to create mechanisms that seek to regulate behaviors and conducts, bearing in mind the need to obtain success in personal and professional life. This includes the so-called socio-emotional skills, also called non-cognitive skills, socio-emotional skills, and emotional intelligence, among other multi-referential forms (^{MAGALHÃES, 2021}). In other words, those who are better able to manage emotions and feelings, to develop those that are more in tune with the interests of the market, have a better chance of increasing their human capital and getting a better job. Similarly, in achieving and selecting appropriate training itineraries, students need to demand socio-emotional skills, as they help in the learning process and, as a corollary, in the implementation of potentially successful training paths. Therefore, there is a growing individualization of complex educational demands and, with that, the student's responsibility for their success or failure - the keynote of neoliberal rationality, marked not only by eminently economic aspects but also by the continuous formation of flexible, adaptive, resilient, mobile and proactive subjectivities.

In the perception of ^{Lemos and Macedo (2019}), the educational policies of multilateral bodies that frame competencies, including socio-emotional ones, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD- Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Econômico), the United Nations (UN), notably by through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as the World Bank, prescribe, for underdeveloped and developing countries, the constitution of actions that seek to form individuals capable of overcoming conflicts of an economic nature, environmental and humanitarian. Taking into account OECD reports, according to Lemos and Macedo (2019), there is the thesis that emotional aspects tend to overlap with social issues. More specifically, it is as if the mentality of the students affected their performance much more than the socioeconomic context. By giving a visible space to work with socio-emotional skills, documents such as the BNCC operate in the sense of engendering subjectivities in tune with such precepts and, with that, ignore the socio-educational inequalities existing in the Brazilian reality. Since, within the scope of these proposals, it is as if each young student could individually design and execute a life plan, despite the idiosyncrasies of each family, social and economic situation.

In Brazil, it is imperative to pay attention to the performance of the Instituto Ayrton Senna (IAS), a non-governmental organization that operates in the field of basic education, through the promotion of studies and research, the advice of teachers and teaching networks and the production of pedagogical material. In 2015, according to ^{Smolka et al (2015}), the IAS, in partnership with the OECD and the Secretary of Education of the State of Rio de Janeiro, developed a kind methodology for assessing the socio-emotional skills of students from the 5th grade of elementary school to 3rd grade of high school. The result of this study calls for a consensus effect regarding the need to consider the development of socio-emotional skills as indispensable for improving schoolchildren's learning. In this sense, it would be possible to improve, train and measure personalities based on specific dimensions and, as a result, work with them in the daily life of the school.

Based on these reflections, this text aims, more specifically, to analyze three didactic collections of the PNLD 2021 Life Project, to study how socio-emotional skills are addressed in such teaching materials and how they reflect the concerns of what we call neoliberal rationality, based on reflections initially raised by ^{Foucault (2008}) and later amplified by ^{Dardot and Laval (2016}).

Although the Life Project is not explicitly demarcated as a mandatory or even elective component in the mainstay of NEM and BNCC-EM, its strong role in these curricular reformulations is perceived. Thus, it was not fortuitous that the PNLD, 2021 edition, was organized to meet the Life Project, through a public notice for the choice of didactic collections to be selected by teachers of the public education network. Thus, several states of the federation have adopted the Life Project as a curricular component in the configuration of the NEM (^{ALVES; OLIVEIRA, 2020}). Furthermore, a search for the term life project combined with high school and BNCC in Google search engines, in November 2021, generated more than five hundred thousand results, which demonstrates the effervescence of this reflection today.

In terms of textual organization, it is worth highlighting how the present study is structured. In addition to this introductory section, the text comprises five more sections: the first reflects on neoliberal rationality and its impacts on the educational field; the second seeks to articulate concepts developed in the previous topic with the advent of the NEM, the BNCC and the Life Project, trying to track the presence of socio-emotional skills in the design of this curricular policy; then, there is a methodological section, in which we expose the data collection process and the analysis procedures undertaken; later, we analyze extracts from three didactic collections of Life Project, based on the reflections initiated in the preceding topics and, finally, the conclusion proposes to provide a closure effect for the discussions listed in this writing.

NEOLIBERAL RATIONALITY

In the course taught by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France, in 1979, published in 2008, in Brazil, with the title The birth of biolithics, the French author starts from the principle that, to understand how people sought, from the eighteenth century, to rationalize the problems concerning governmental practice through phenomena specific to living things such as birth and death rates, migrations and races, among others, it was necessary to take into account the political rationality in which this problem concerning the population coexisted: liberalism. According to Foucault (2008, p. 432), liberalism is not conceived as an ideology, a way for society to present, a theory, but rather as “[...] a principle and method of rationalization that obeys, and it is this and, subsequently, the internal rule of the maximum economy”.

Thinking from this point of view, the author points out that, while the rationalization of the exercise of government proposes to maximize effects and reduce costs, neoliberal rationality calls into question the very reason for the existence of government, understood here as the activity of governing conduct of men. In other words, the government cannot be an end and its maximization must not be a regulating principle. Therefore, in the wake of liberal governmentality, the question is: why do we need a government? Starting from a concept considered new for the 18th and 19th centuries, according to ^{Foucault (2008}), which is the idea of society, one can ask why government becomes necessary, considering the interests of society. The author reminds us that liberal rationality is nuanced under the government of interests and no longer about things and/or territories, as advocated because of state in the 16th century.

By postulating this genealogy of liberalism, ^{Foucault (2008}) lands in the 20th century and exposes two developments of this rationality that he considers symptomatic: German ordoliberalism and American neoliberalism. Although both share similar criticisms of government policies undertaken during the Second World War, considered excessive from the point of view of State involvement, American neoliberalism presents certain singularities. Also called neoliberalism of the Chicago School, this rationality gained global proportions from the 1970s onwards and seems more appropriate for thinking about the inflections arising from this modus operandi in the context of Brazil and the educational policies currently in vogue.

A key condition for analyzing the context in which neoliberalism erupts in the United States, according to ^{Foucault (2008}), was certainly the criticism made of the New Deal to Keynesianism, planned economies, and the economic and social programs engendered in the post-war period, but not just for that. For Foucault (2008), when recalling the history of that country's independence, it was already possible to see remnants of a liberal way of governing that tended to found the State; moreover, for more than two centuries, liberalism guided American political debates and, finally, the fact that, in the 20th century, the interventionist policies adopted in the US territory have generated a kind of threatening element both for the right and for to the left. Thus, on the right, the specter of a socializing State persisted; on the left, the vertiginous growth of a warlike and imperialist state was frightening.

From this comes the Foucaultian observation according to which American neoliberalism does not present so much as “[...] a political alternative, but let's say that it is a kind of global demand, multiform, ambiguous, anchored to the right and the left” (^{FOUCAULT, 2008}, p. 301). Perhaps this explains why this rationality ended up affecting sectors of society that are not a priori governed by economic factors, such as, in the case in question, the issue of education. As discussed by ^{Dardot and Laval (2016}), neoliberalism goes beyond the political and economic dimension, insofar as it affects the constitution of contemporary subjectivities, greatly interfering with how the subject relates to himself and others through the perspective that generates the financial market and consumption.

One of the main aspects that outline this thesis that neoliberalism permeates the most different social sectors, following the reading of ^{Foucault (2008}), concerns the theory of human capital. In the words of the French thinker: “[...] this theory represents two processes, one of which we could call the incursion of economic analysis into a hitherto unexplored field” (^{FOUCAULT, 2008}, p. 302), continues the author, “[. ..] and, second, from this incursion, the possibility of reinterpreting, in economic terms and strictly economic terms, an entire field that until then could be considered, and was considered, non-economic” (^{FOUCAULT, 2008}, p. 302). In the elaboration of this human capital perspective, idealized by Theodore Shultz and Gary Becker, neoliberal criticisms come into play regarding how classical economics neglected work, which had been reduced only to the time factor, that is, work was situated only in the temporal quantity variable, represented, for example, by working hours and days. There is, according to Foucault (²⁰⁰⁸), another criticism addressed to the conception of work present in Marx's reflections, for whom work is amputated from its human reality in the face of the economic mechanics of capitalism. Work appears, then, in an abstract form and it is necessary to re-elaborate it within the economic analysis.

To this end, neoliberals will focus on the bias of the working subject, not as an object or a relationship of supply and demand in the form of labor power, but as an active economic subject. In other words, considering that people work to be compensated with a salary, which is understood as income, from the point of view of the worker, what is sold is not his labor power, but his income. If an income consists of the product or income of capital, this means that the salary capital represents “[...] the set of all physical and psychological factors that make a person capable of earning this or that salary” (^{FOUCAULT, 2008}, p. 308). In other words, it is human capital, also conceptualized by ^{Foucault (2008}) as a kind of competence, and aptitude responsible for generating income flows. Like all forms of capital, it is necessary to invest to yield. How to invest in this human capital, then? To Foucault (2008), it is possible to improve it from early childhood, so that, in the future, it is possible to generate significant income. The author points out that several variables come into play in the composition of the child's human capital, from the time that parents dedicate to caring for their children, passing through the parents' cultural level and medical care, to educational investments, undertaken not only within the limits of the school institution but having this as a central element.

This, ^{Resende (2021}) considers that we live in a knowledge society, which implies constant and lifelong training and this is intricate with the business logic, by recommending profit, supply, sale, credit, debt, and the search for the market regime as a place of truth. In the author's voice, “[...] school education, in this social model, is configured as a business education that embodies practices and produces individuals who correlate with the business way of life” (^{RESENDE, 2021}, p. 197). More specifically, we can consider that the individual, to develop his human capital, sees education as a driving force in the process of investment in himself, to create conditions to compete with others in a rationality responsible for advocating competition in all dimensions of social life. ^{Dardot and Laval (2016}) remind us that neoliberalism imposes on each of us a normal according to which it is necessary to adapt to a universe of generalized competition, which is ordered by the government of the market that due to its dynamics, shows unstable, changeable and uncertain. For this reason, it is convenient to engender subjectivities in tune with this rationality. There is, in the wake of ^{Foucault (2008}), the constitution of the entrepreneur of himself, being his capital, his producer, and his source of income. As ^{Ciervo (2019}, p. 61) emphasizes, we can understand that “[...] they are individual-company that mobilize all dimensions of their subjectivity at the service of capital, including and above all, emotions”.

Thus, ^{Foucault (2008}) reiterates that the self-entrepreneur denotes a new facet for the homo economics of classical economics who no longer identifies as the man of exchange, but rather as the man of consumption. This consumption man, according to Foucault (²⁰⁰⁸), as he consumes, also produces satisfaction. According to Foucault (²⁰⁰⁸, p. 311), “[...] Consumption should be considered as a business activity through which the individual, using a certain amount of capital at his disposal, will produce something that will be his satisfaction”. As a corollary of this new configuration, there is the emergence of individualist subjectivities, centered on investment in oneself, displaced from robust collective movements and, to a certain extent, depoliticized in the regimes that lead them, since they are passive and integrated into the business modus operandi.

^{Laval (2004}) argues that the school in neoliberal molds is at the service of market demands and the aegis of the pedagogy of competences aims to fulfill this function, as it cuts out, within the scope of school contents, those that are best in tune with the interests of the market, marked by pragmatism and the rapid applicability of certain knowledge in resolving practical issues. We can see a similar position in ^{Resende (2018}) when he argues that the role of the school is restricted to providing conditions for young people to enter the competitive society whose employability is conditioned to an idea of continuous training as if employment depended only on training individuals. In other words, there is the construction of true wills for which success or failure in entering the world of work is connected with the efforts of each one in achieving their human capital framed under the prism of permanent training.

In addition to these implications of neoliberal rationality in the sphere of education, ^{Gadelha and Mota (2016}) compile a series of other impacts, summarized as follows: a) the generalization of the practice of ranking in situations of educational and professional evaluations and in selection processes leads to the building a competitive and, ultimately, meritocratic and excluding culture, as there is not room for everyone; b) the cooling off of entrepreneurial pedagogies, by centralizing the domain of skills and abilities required under the signs of effectiveness, high performance, efficiency and flexibility; c) the dissemination of permanent evaluation practices, the measurement of results, the achievement of goals, in a clear transposition of management methods from the private initiative to public school management; d) the deterritorialization of the education-training pair that leaves the school environment for formations anchored in business and capitalist logic; e) the enthronement of business aspirations in the elaboration of public policies, to be considered as innovative, attractive and devoid of an ideological and/or political component, through non-profit associations, but allied to large economic conglomerates, the so-called think tanks; f) as a consequence of the previous item, more and more international multilateral organizations have been promoting teaching and teacher training programs based on neoliberal logic, so that, at a global level, education is linked to financial capitalism and the market. From this conjunction of factors, we can think about the emergence of conditions of possibility for the emergence of socio-emotional competences in curriculum policies, as we will see in the following section.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS IN TIMES OF NEM, BNCC-EM, AND LIFE PROJECT

Thinking about the appearance of socio-emotional skills in recent curriculum policies implies pondering the assumed conception of the curriculum. For this, we anchor in the perspective of ^{Sacristán (2000}), for whom the practice to which the curriculum refers constitutes a previous reality very well settled and formed by diverse didactic, political, administrative, and economic behaviors, among others, which encompass schemes of rationalities, beliefs, values, and power relations. In this sense, the curriculum, far from being neutral or disinterested, is “[...] the expression of the balance of forces that gravitate over the educational system, at a given moment, while through them the ends of education in school education are achieved” (^{SACRISTÁN, 2000}, p. 17). This Spanish author also emphasizes that the curriculum is a historically configured option that is engendered within a cultural, political, and social fabric and, therefore, carries the tensions, interests, and problems of a given political conjuncture. In Sacristán (2010), we read that, when ordering the curriculum, what should be taught, the time for learning and teaching is regulated, separating what should remain and what needs to be excluded. From this angle, analyzing the adoption of socio-emotional skills by curriculum policies means mapping how a favorable ground was paved for this insertion and not another one in its place.

^{Magalhães (2021}), based on the analysis of the notion of competences in guiding documents of Brazilian education, especially the National Curriculum Guidelines for Technical Professional Education of High School (resolution 06/2012 of CNE/CEB- Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais da Educação Profissional Técnica de Nível Médio) and the National Curriculum Guidelines for High School (CNE/CEB resolution 03/2018- Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais do Ensino Médio (resolução 03/2018 do CNE/CEB), assesses that there is a continuous process of establishing personal skills and the emphasis on developing socio-emotional skills. For Magalhães (2021), since 2011, there has been a real effect around the notion of competences, through global policies undertaken by the OECD and, in the case of Brazil, in partnership with IAS, through public-private partnerships, based on projects, seminars, and reports.

A milestone in this direction was the Education for the 21st Century in 2011Seminar, promoted by the IAS, with the support of the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs of the Presidency of the Republic (SAE- Secretaria de Assuntos Estratégios) and UNESCO. In this event, points out ^{Magalhães (2021}), socio-emotional skills emerge as a curricular innovation through which it is possible to guarantee the academic success of students through the improvement of non-cognitive skills, such as persistence, resilience, attention, and concentration capacity, the ability to postpone rewards, self-esteem, sociability and other attributes that relate to behaviors, emotions, and attitudes. The defense of this seminar, considering the presence of the economist who won the Nobel Prize in 2000, James Heckman, was that emotional competences should be included in the school curriculum. From this perspective, the IAS presents the spokesperson for promoting a curriculum reformulation that could implement such competences at the core of basic education.

To this end, through a partnership between the IAS and the Secretary of Education of the State of Rio de Janeiro, signed in 2013, the increment of a project called Educational Solution aimed at enabling a comprehensive education model that contemplates cognitive skills with socio-emotional skills. According to ^{Chaves, Motta, and Gawryszewski (2020}), such a program is ideologically neutral, technical and supposedly innovative, and apolitical, to introduce new technologies and methodologies, especially for young people from the poorest sections of society, with the promise of ensuring employability in a context of acute crisis of capitalism. Based on an OECD proposal and large-scale assessments such as PISA, this project was colored by the need to bring together the skills required to solve mathematical problems, reading, and science skills, with the possibility of measuring skills of another order.

Based on the data produced by the Educational Solution and trying to expand the scope of the proposal, the IAS, in 2014, held the International Public Policy Forum “Educating for skills in the 21st Century”. The event was attended by ministers and representatives of at least fourteen OECD member countries and international researchers, such as James Heckman. The referrals were compiled in a synthesis report, in which we can highlight, according to ^{Magalhães (2021}), the recognition that socio-emotional skills are a valuable instrument for improving economic, social, and educational indices, as well as reducing social inequalities. Since these are malleable competences, it is possible to explore them through a pedagogical work planned for this purpose and they can also be measured. As noted on the IAS website, in the tab concerning socio-emotional skills “[...] the path is to offer a comprehensive education for all, which is aimed at the full development of students, in the cognitive, socio-emotional, hybrid and cultural spheres, among others, preparing them to make choices based on their life project” (^{INSTITUTO AYRTON SENNA, 2021b}, n.p, emphasis in the original).

For this non-governmental organization, the approach of socio-emotional skills becomes crucial in achieving comprehensive training for students. Paraphrastically, this discourse present in the IAS materializes in the text of Law nº 13.415/2017 as in the BNCC, considering, based on ^{Macedo's reflections (2019}), that the performance of the third sector in the process of formulation and implementation of these documents was flagrant. According to the author, “[...], as occurred throughout the entire process, the preferred articulation of these subjects continues to be with think thanks foundations linked to the private sector, or what they call the third sector” (^{MACEDO, 2019}, p. 45). In this logic, the general competences of the BNCC for basic education are related, explicitly or surreptitiously, to socio-emotional competences, as the debate implemented in the construction of these reforms was affected by interests arising from global policies. As a few of them and how the IAS takes a stand on them, we can see in competence nº 6 of the Base “Value the diversity of knowledge and cultural experiences and appropriate knowledge and experiences that enable them to understand the relationships of the world of work and make choices aligned with the exercise of citizenship and their life project, with freedom, autonomy, critical awareness and responsibility” (^{BRASIL, 2018}, p. 11). According to the material prepared by the IAS and made available on the website, this competence is linked to the mobilization of socio-emotional skills such as determination, organization, focus, persistence, responsibility, and assertiveness (^{INSTITUTO AYRTON SENNA, 2021b}).

Number 10 is another general competence of the BNCC to be mentioned and, in our view, mimics the aspirations of socio-emotional competences: “Acting personally and collectively with autonomy, responsibility, flexibility, resilience, and determination, making decisions based on ethical, democratic, inclusive, sustainable and solidary principles” (^{BRASIL, 2018}, p. 12). According to the IAS, correspondence with socio-emotional skills occurs because respect, empathy, trust, social initiative, responsibility, and stress tolerance are required, as emotional resilience is needed to engage in decision-making according to the listed principles in the Base.

It is also important to consider the criticism made by ^{Chaves, Motta, and Gawryszewski (2020}) about the election of certain emotional competences to be addressed in the school context. In the authors' perception, there is no questioning about the effect of consensus that rests on the choice of a given competence and not another. As an example, they cite the issue of resilience and will question: why the need to form resilient subjectivities in the face of constant economic crises? Why don't you think about educating young people to adopt a questioning attitude toward the truths of neoliberalism? According to Chaves, Motta, and Gawryszewski (2020), these questions make it clear that the predominance of a given competence represents a political game through which a certain conception of education and a training project based on skills intricate to the functioning of the Marketplace. In the words of the authors: “[...] permeates the school floor [...] the formation of a specific type of human being, tamed, adapted to market instabilities, capable of giving positive responses during adverse situations and covering up the structural elements that give rise to these problems” (^{CHAVES, MOTTA; GAWRYSZEWSKI, 2020}, p. 18).

It is not without pretension that socio-emotional skills appear with more evidence in the so-called life projects, as they are conceived as important elements for the training of students within the curricular reformulations brought about by the NEM. Thus, in item 7 of art. 3 of the NEM Law we observe: “The secondary education curricula must consider the integral formation of the student to adopt a work aimed at the construction of his life project and his formation in the physical, cognitive and socio-emotional aspects” (^{BRASIL, 2017}, n. p.). We noticed, in the linguistic formulation of the text of the law, latent similarities with the excerpt taken from the IAS previously cited here, insofar as comprehensive training includes socio-emotional skills via a life project. In the BNNC-EM, the definition of competence encompasses the emotional aspect, as recorded: “[...] competence is defined as the mobilization of knowledge (concepts and procedures), skills (practical, cognitive and socio-emotional), attitudes and values to resolve complex demands of everyday life, the full exercise of citizenship and the world of work” (^{BRASIL, 2018}, p. 10). Sometimes conceptualized as a competence, sometimes as a skill, the fact is that socio-emotional links are part of this curriculum policy and impose demands on the preparation of didactic materials, teacher training, and work in the classroom.

THE METHODOLOGY

This work is characterized as a descriptive-interpretative study, as it is important to describe and interpret the treatment given to socio-emotional skills in Life Project didactic materials. The research technique is documentary in nature which, following ^{Medeiros (2008}), examines materials that have not yet gone through an analytical sieve. In addition, it is an eminently qualitative approach because we observe the phenomenon of socio-emotional skills, without mobilizing numerical data, statistics, and other variables to be controlled. According to ^{Moreira (2011}, p. 49), from a qualitative perspective in the context of teaching, “[...] the researcher daily asks what meanings have the actions and events of teaching, assessment, and curriculum for the individuals who participate in them”.

The corpus comprises the following Life Project didactic collections, which were approved by the PNLD 2021: a) Você no mundo (You in the world), authored by Lais Rosa, Sandro Miner Valentini Junior, and Vanessa Bottasso, published by Editora Moderna; b) (Des)senvolver e (trans)formar: projeto de vida (Develop and (trans)form: project of life), by Itale Cericato, published by Ática; c) Pensar, sentir e agir (Think, feel and act), written by Leo Fraiman, published by FTD. The criteria adopted for the selection of this corpus were: a) the approved collections had been approved in the PNLD; b) they addressed, in a unit, topic, and/or subsection, socio-emotional skills; c) that were available for download.

The data analysis process followed the following route: a) we accessed the 2021 Life Project Digital Guide and consulted the adopted collections; b) we looked for a version of the collections in PDF (Portable Document Format) on the publishers' websites so that we could analyze the material more accurately; c) we collected, in all, a total of ten collections on these sites; d) we carefully read the summary of all of them; d) we identified a total of seven collections that somehow emphasize socio-emotional skills; d) we did a second screening and, for the study within the limits of this text, we selected three collections; e) we made a selection of fragments from these collections, considering the approach of the mentioned competences, to be analyzed in the following section.

DATA ANALYSIS

We divide this topic into three parts. In each of them, there is an analysis of one of the didactic collections that are the focus of this study. The order follows the one presented in the methodology section. Initially, we make a brief description of the structure of the collections and then we analyze some fragments that, in our view, summarize how socio-emotional skills are present in such teaching materials.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Throughout this article, we pursue the objective of analyzing Life Project didactic collections, approved in the PNLD 2021, investigating the treatment given to socio-emotional skills and how they connect with the aspirations of neoliberal rationality. The examination of three didactic collections allowed us to verify that socio-emotional competences find a prominent place in the mainstay of these didactic materials, whether appearing as a chapter or as a topic within a larger unit. The term socio-emotional competence is not always used; however, when we look more closely, we see that the logic of this umbrella term is present, see the exploration of the Big Five and emotional intelligence.

The treatment given to such competences includes the mention of certain motivating texts and the continuous presence of exercises and questions in which students are impelled to reflect on feelings and the way they deal with them to exercise self-knowledge and a process of subjectivation. When we associate these competences in/from the collections with the functioning of neoliberal rationality, we can consider that there is a direct relationship because young people are oriented to regulate their emotions, improving their human capital, and, as a corollary, building their project with based on what is desirable at the core of rationality nuanced by competition, individuality, resilience and autonomy. The quest for well-being, arising from mastering the terrain of emotions, is not free of markers that cool down a cost-benefit, effort-reward calculation. This greatly enhances the entrepreneur's constitution of himself, as postulated by ^{Foucault (2008}), as it highlights the incessant concern for individual investors to generate future gains.

Finally, we agree with ^{Chaves, Motta, and Gawryszewski (2020}), when they point out that, in this task of problematizing socio-emotional skills, there is no attempt to assess whether, in effect, this approach has produced effective results in improving teaching and learning, but suspending the effect of neutrality that characterize educational projects like this one. It is in this direction that we are situated in this text. As we have seen throughout the study, the interests that underlie the adoption of socio-emotional skills represent the desires of institutions linked to the private sector and, based on this, they try to insert the logic of administration of the competitive market in the mainstay of the public school, to produce a curriculum policy in clear synergy with neoliberalism within the scope of recent secondary education reformulations. Denaturalizing this issue is not easy, but it is necessary, especially if we want to strengthen the integrity of the school. This was done within the confines of this text and others yet to come. May this restlessness grow stronger every day.