Why educate? This question has been considered throughout history and around the world. Many reasons and rationales have been proposed. Some are overlapping, while others are competing. Considering why to educate is important for considering how to educate: that is, what policies, curriculum, and pedagogy to use, in relation to purposes. This chapter discusses some of the major frameworks underpinning various educational practices that have taken place historically and today. The aim is to elaborate ethical frameworks as they relate to justifications for educational practices, before giving some examples to clarify and demonstrate how choices among frameworks make a difference in relation to practice. Additionally, the chapter considers some of the noteworthy limitations of each.

Sadness and fear are usually considered as basic emotions. In society and in education, they are normally cast as undesirable, but also as partly unavoidable. This chapter examines sadness, fear, and anxiety in society and education. It argues that these feelings should not be judged as simply negative, devoid of value or positive function. On the other hand, they should be critically considered and explored, rather than simply accepted, in education and society. Neither good nor bad in themselves, feelings of sadness, fear, and anxiety can be righteous, functional, and normal, and interrelated with critical understanding. Yet they can also be problematic and pathological in other cases.

This introductory chapter introduces the topics of the book and its main purposes in light of past scholarship. It emphasises how people hold contrasting perspectives and assumptions about the place of emotions in human social life. These contrasting orientations unfold into different approaches to educating emotions, and for how teachers should treat students, in relation to their emotional experiences and expressions. It first examines some possible assumptions that readers may have about the role of emotions in education. These assumptions are examples of contrasting perspectives about emotions and education. These are (1) that education does not particularly involve emotions, and (2) that emotions are a part of education, but this is non-controversial, with a consensus on the topic established. The chapter explores these assumptions and challenges them. The last section of the chapter explains the goals of this book, and gives an overview of the main contents of the chapters that follow.

In education and society, resilience and mindfulness are valued more for their instrumental benefits, than for their moral value. They both assist specifically with the evasion of what are seen as negative and harmful emotions, and with the related development of positive emotions and behaviours, for functioning in schools and in society. Yet while resilience and mindfulness are regarded as educational assets today, there are also problematic aspects of their promotion and cultivation in schools and society. Additionally, these qualities can be cultivated for good or ill use, as with other emotional virtues explored here. This chapter examines each of these traits in turn, tracing from philosophical, psychological, and political perspectives how they are framed in relation to emotional virtues, and approached within education and society. As with the emotional virtues explored here thus far, resilience and mindfulness may be useful for the emotional development of young people, but there are also limitations to promoting them, particularly in relation to education for social justice.

This chapter focuses on the emotional virtue of gratitude in society and education. First, it explores major understandings of gratitude prevalent in philosophy and psychology that elaborate what gratitude is, and why it is called for. The practices encouraged for cultivating feelings of gratitude by psychologists and educators will also be discussed. Then the chapter will turn to critical views of gratitude that question its moral value, its psychological utility, and its place in education. While teaching feelings of gratitude in the classroom may not necessarily be harmful, there are risks and challenges that should not be overlooked by educators interested in the moral and social development of their students.

Happiness has been a major topic of philosophical and other forms of investigation throughout history. Happiness has often been held as an end and a means to good life. People have generally sought happiness, and happiness is related in common and academic discourse to progress, success, and value. However, not all traditions prize happiness, and the definition of happiness and its implications for social life and education are contested. How to measure it, whether one can measure it, and how to know it when you see it, are some puzzles psychologists and philosophers (among others) grapple with. This chapter gives a brief history of the concept of happiness alongside other concepts, of eudemonia and well-being, from philosophical orientations, in psychology, and from the perspective of the politics of emotions. It traces how these views have shaped educational aims and strategies. The analysis here emphasises the need for consideration of more critical approaches to happiness as an educational aim, despite the praise of happiness as a good in itself in much of western philosophy and psychology.

This chapter explores vulnerability, courage, and grit in turn, considering their relationship to one another and to the task of educating for emotional virtues and for social justice. Resilience and mindfulness in education are often recommended to make vulnerable or at-risk youth less vulnerable, to mental or emotional disturbance, poor academic achievement, drop out, and related concerns. Yet this chapter argues that there is a bright side to vulnerability, and good reason to question common conflations of it with entirely negative experiences and feelings. There can be a positive role for particular kinds of experiences of vulnerability, generally within communities, and particularly in education. On the other hand, courage is normally prized in society, and has been promoted in education. However, to be understood as a virtue, courage must be tempered, so that it is not reckless, careless, or brash. Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance.

Philosophers throughout history have pondered the relationship between emotions, rationality, and morality, and their implications for education. This chapter presents an overview of basic points and issues of contention within and across philosophical perspectives related to these topics. It considers particularly deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics, care ethics and other relational views, and existentialism. A significant part of the chapter explores virtue ethics, as virtue ethics is seen to philosophically undergird the majority of morally-oriented social and emotional learning and character education approaches in western societies . The role in virtue ethics of emotions in moral and social life overlaps in some cases with those found in the social sciences, as well as those seen within some eastern traditions. Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism will also be discussed here. The chapter thus summarises major insights and points of debate across philosophies related to educating emotions.

This chapter explores competing perspectives and appraisals of anger in society and in education. It highlights the possibility of accepting and productively using moral anger, in contradiction to the prevalent approach of many educational psychologists and philosophers who are basically against anger. The chapter starts with a discussion of views admonishing against anger, from philosophy and psychology, before exploring their limitations, alongside more tolerant approaches to anger. It then considers the potential productive value of exploring anger in education.

This chapter examines major views of caring, compassion, and related emotional virtues, fleshing out divergences and convergences across traditions and disciplines, and exploring different understandings of their significance for education. In this chapter, views on these topics are organised in relation to their orientation toward the ‘empathy-altruism’ thesis. The empathy-altruism thesis generally contends that empathy, sympathy, compassion and the like can lead to emotional experiences of fellow feeling and positive relationality toward others, altruistic motivation, and benevolent deeds. It then follows that education should strive to cultivate these other-oriented feelings. Many philosophers, psychologists, and educators support this perspective. However, it faces challenges, also from across fields, among those who focus on the thesis’s limitations and possibly problematic educational implications. When it comes to caring, compassion, and altruism, this chapter shows that while there appears to be a consensus view on the merits of these feelings and related dispositions and actions in education and society, the blanket promotion of these emotional virtues is not altogether unproblematic. In this case, a more critical perspective on the empathy-altruism thesis is defended, as the over-optimistic view of these feelings and dispositions can fail to recognise the risks and challenges that accompany them.

In this text, the role of emotions in education and society has been examined from various perspectives, particularly from psychological, philosophical, and other theoretical and political views. To develop more in-depth understanding about emotions in social life, a number of emotional virtues have also been explored at length. These include basic emotions, like happiness, sadness, and fear; emotional virtues often idealised, such as gratitude and compassion; and more complex emotional and cognitive-based dispositions prized in contemporary education and society, like resilience, grit, and mindfulness. A complicated account has been given, based on an interdisciplinary orientation toward emotional virtues and educating emotions in society. As seen here, the means and ends of educating emotional virtues are not simple and straightforward, given diversity in experiences, identities, and norms around emotional expectations in society. While educational implications have been discussed across chapters, thus far such considerations have been specific to particular emotional domains and contexts. This conclusion elaborates further on a more global perspective on educating emotional virtues in schools and society.

Chapter 2 examines social science approaches to understanding emotions and their educational implications. It explores fields that study human personal and social life empirically, drawing out patterns and relationships that can inform policy and practice, in education and other fields. Its main task is to introduce, and juxtapose with the mainstream, alternative perspectives on educating emotional virtues which have thus far been left off the table, to highlight the insights of the politics of emotions for emotional virtues education. The first section examines psychological views of emotions as applied in education. The methodology and orientation toward emotions in these approaches are explored at length. The second section of this chapter introduces approaches and views related to the politics of educating emotions, which include insights about emotions developed in social psychology, sociology, feminist theory, cultural studies, and related areas.