Reading the ‘happy child’: Normative discourse in wellbeing education

Abstract

This chapter offers a reading of recent policy documents and research around children’s wellbeing and happiness.1 In the last decade educational initiatives have been introduced to address the perceived wellbeing needs of children and young people. These include Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning in the UK context2 and Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies in the US.3 This chapter aims to explore the relationship between ideas about childhood and education and to examine how these ideas have shaped these educational interventions. Changing expectations of education are explored through an analysis of the implications of placing the responsibility for children’s happiness with schools. The perception that children and young people’s wellbeing needs to be addressed within the context of the school is considered through discussions of educational values and the role of the teacher. Conceptualizations of children’s wellbeing are analysed and the appropriateness of government devised interventions to tackle perceived emotional deficits and dysfunctions are debated. In particular this chapter is concerned with how recent wellbeing interventions position the child, the teacher and the school in particular discourses of normalized emotional and social interactions, with the result of pathologizing and marginalizing those who do not conform (both children and teachers).