About YTL
Born in a time of change.
After the Iron Curtain fell, young people in Hungary suddenly faced new dangers: drugs, HIV/AIDS, broken homes and more. Teachers trained under communism had no tools for this.
In 1994 Hungary’s national AIDS coordinator asked us to help. Together with educators, the police and the church, we wrote Youth at the Threshold of Life. The Hungarian Ministry of Education accredited it as official teacher training.
Since then YTL has trained thousands of educators and reached hundreds of thousands of students. Today it is used in 62 countries, including the United States.
- 1994YTL is created at the request of Hungary’s national AIDS coordinator.
- 2000sAccredited by the Hungarian Ministry of Education for teacher training.
- 25 years23 national symposiums train over 8,000 Hungarian educators.
- TodayUsed in 62 countries. Close to half a million students reached in Hungary alone.
- 2021New English edition of all three volumes.
- 2024YTL Lite: a short six-lesson version for busy classrooms.
Our approach
Values you can teach with confidence.
Give reasons, not only rules
Instead of “Don’t do that!”, YTL helps students see why, and shows them what to do instead.
Teachers teach by example
No classroom is truly value-neutral. Students learn from who we are as much as from what we say.
Ready to teach
Each lesson plan has goals, discussion questions and activities, so you can use it with little preparation.
Go deeper
The philosophy behind YTL
Short summaries. The full essay is in the Introduction to Volume 1.
In the Colosseum: what young people face
Picture society as an arena. Leaders sit in the best seats, the media watches from the side, and parents cheer from the stands. The children are in the arena, facing the lions: drugs, depression, broken families, online pressure. Our job is to get them ready.
The steps of fatalism
When the need for love and belonging goes unmet, young people can slide from disappointment to disillusionment, then to isolation, confusion, giving up, and finally harm. YTL gives adults a safe way to talk about these things before it gets that far.
Why value-neutral teaching does not work
Neutrality leaves young people without guidance. It is also a value in itself, so it cannot be truly neutral. Adults always pass on values by how they live. And “all truth is relative” is a claim that defeats itself.
Can I really teach this?
Many teachers worry they are not good enough examples. You do not have to be perfect. The principles in YTL, like the Golden Rule, work for students no matter their background.