Changing the Subject: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Emotional Well-being and Social Justice Seminar 2—perspectives from International Politics

Introduction I have been asked to speak today about some new developments in ‘critical pedagogy’, particularly around the education of hope and its relationship to social justice. Before doing so, however, I would like to situate this paper in the framework set out by Cummings in the summary paper of the first seminar in this series. The paper highlights four types of ‘interventions’ now being taken, by the state and a whole range of non-state organisations, to promote emotional well-being in education: (1) urgent interventions for those with special needs of care, (2) the general promotion of positive attitudes and attributes in schools and universities, (3) extra support for emotional damage and stress, and (4) the systematic teaching of subjects that will be useful in developing emotional competence and management, especially to ‘prepare them for the rapid change and uncertainty of modern life’ (Cummings 2009: 3-4). This typology clearly covers a wide range of formal educational practices, from ‘nurture groups’ and ‘buddy schemes’ to positive psychology, ‘stress workshops’, and the writing of new university curricula for ‘lifelong learning’. It also includes other sorts of educational interventions that I have seen or been engaged with more internationally, such as liberal humanities education in the United States and (what I consider to be) a very well-financed and very ideologically-driven movement to institutionalise ‘civic education’ and ‘critical thinking’ in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. i