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.