Abstract

The chapter collects some recent discussions about the link between emotions and education and more specifically about emotional education models that contribute to positive psychology and emotional intelligence. This relationship is approached from the basic assumption that-beyond its physiological component-emotions are essentially social and cultural phenomena, and therefore, analyses that critically address such dimensions are necessary. To begin with, this text places the field of education in the context of the mutations typical of contemporary capitalism, in which the progressive consolidation of neoliberal educational policies and the presence of forms of governmentality that include what Foucault called technologies of the self. In this sense, it is argued that neoliberal capitalism-seeking to make emotions profitable in the field of education-has begun to establish a discourse that is oriented to affirm the need to educate emotions. In its second part, the text presents some central aspects of the emotional education proposals most widely disseminated in Latin America, as well as a review of its main questions and criticisms. Such an exercise of assessment and critical discussion is considered central to projecting the necessary pedagogical work on affectivities. Finally, some conditions in Chilean public educational policy are reviewed in terms of the opportunities and challenges that it offers as a scenario of relevant transformations in the work on affections and learning, in a highly segregated, privatized educational system governed by policies of accountability, while pointing out the need to advance in theoretical and applied developments that account for new ways of approaching affections in education.