Governing emotions: citizenship, neuroscience and the education of youth

Abstract

Schools are one of many sites to incorporate emotional literacy into their institutional agenda in recent years. Alongside broader changes in social, economic and political practice, schools have welcomed emotional education as a necessary element in the training of young people. In 2007, the government introduced Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) to secondary schools across England and Wales. The aim of the programme is to integrate emotional literacy into the secondary school curriculum, following the successful implementation of SEAL at primary level. In this paper, I argue that rather than being about the encouragement of happy, content or well-adjusted individuals, it is, more crucially, about a new form of citizenship. Forms of self-government predicated on emotional management have been made possible since the widespread popularisation of neuroscientific understandings of emotions. By tracing the transposition of these ideas from popular brain science to education policy and finally to the curricula delivered via SEAL, I suggest that educating emotions has become central to the way citizenship is currently being defined for young people. By bringing together recent insights from geographies of education, emotion and citizenship, I suggest that the relationship between governmentality, education and youth requires closer critical attention.

The Paradoxes of Socio-Emotional Programmes in School : Young people’s perspectives and public health discourses

“…One central finding is that socioemotional programmes are not neutral -on the contrary, they bring specific norms and regulations into the school (Bartholdsson, Gustafsson-Lundberg, and Hultin, 2014a;Dahlstedt, Fejes and Schönning, 2011;Ecclestone and Hayes, 2009;Gagen, 2013;Gillies, 2011). The present dissertation's positioning of students as social actors implies acknowledging that students can reproduce, transform and give new meanings to the discourses and practices incorporated into such programmes (cf.…”

“…Instead, it has a long tradition in the schools that can be traced back to the introduction of compulsory schooling and the comprehensive school [In Swedish: enhetsskolan] (Gagen, 2013;Sandin, 2010). 5 The Swedish comprehensive school was based on the argument that fostering democratic citizens is the 'leading mission of the school' (Hultin, 2015, p. 69; see also Sandin, 2010).…”

New Kinds of (Ab)normal?: Public Pedagogies, Affect, and Youth Mental Health in the Digital Age

“…Across a range of disciplines there is a growing critique of the ways in which "expert solutions" to emotional distress are permeating formal and informal pedagogic sites in calls for alternative, critical practice and cultural frameworks (Ecclestone and Goodley 2016;Gagen 2015;Wiener 2005). In this regard, our focus on public pedagogy offers a useful way of connecting different debates about the impacts, intentions and transformations of digital mental health technologies in different contexts.…”

“…In formal pedagogical sites, Gagen (2015) argues that the growth of emotional literacy programmes in UK schools is problematic because vocabularies of mental health are articulated through discourses of neuroscience and brain dysfunction. Experiences of distress, effects of inequality and uncertainty for contemporary subjects become framed in terms of neuroselfhood where learning about oneself is mediated through a molecular gaze on the brain and psychological dysfunction (Rose and Abi-Rached 2013).…”

Youth organizations and the reproduction of nationalism in Britain: the role of Urdd Gobaith Cymru

“…As individuals and as broader populations, young people are encouraged to act in particular ways, through direct guidance and, importantly, self-regulation (Foucault, 2002(Foucault, [1970Merriman 2005;Gagen, 2015). Particular mechanisms have been used to achieve these goals.…”