Civic education and emotions

What is it all about?
For a long time, both politics and civic education have hardly dealt with emotions, but recently they have become a central concept in the debate in both fields. Everyone is suddenly talking about the relationship between politics and emotions. It's about political fears, anger and despair, hatred and envy. The choice of these descriptive terms alone shows that, despite their not inconsiderable popularity in political contexts, emotions are by no means celebrated, but are still perceived as pathological phenomena. Nevertheless, emotions suddenly seem to have taken on a not inconsiderable significance. Fear or hatred - so the impression arises - have the power to repeatedly bring people onto the streets and change the political party structure in the long term. So it's no wonder that civic education is also being called onto the scene in this context to address this new (?) dimension of political perception and debate, or in short: to get a grip on it. But how can the relationship between education and emotions be described? How competent is civic education to adequately address the issues raised here and what strategies are promising in this context?

Literature for further reading:

Arnold, Rolf (2005): Die emotionale Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit. Beiträge zu einer emotionspädagogischen Erwachsenenbildung, Baltmannsweiler.

Besand, Anja/ Overwien, Bernd/ Zorn, Peter (Hrsg.) (2019): Politische Bildung mit Gefühl, Bonn.

Besand, Anja (2016): Zum Verhältnis von Emotionalität und Professionalität in der politischen Bildung. In: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Hrsg.): Ideologien der Ungleichwertigkeit. Berlin, S. 77-83. online verfügbar

Brauer, Juliane/ Lücke, Martin (Hrsg.) (2013): Emotionen, Geschichte und historisches Lernen. Geschichtsdidaktische und geschichtskulturelle Perspektiven, Göttingen. Datenbankeintrag der Transferstelle politische Bildung online verfügbar

Breit, Gotthard (2016): Mit Leidenschaft und Augendmaß zugleich. Zum Spannungsverhältnis von Rationalität und Emotionalität im Politikunterricht, Schwalbach/Ts.

Holzapfel, Günther (2018): Gefühle als Erkenntnisinstanz. In: Zeitschrift Junge.Kirche. Schwerpunktheft Politik und Gefühl. H. 3, S. 46-47.

Oeftering, Tonio/ Uhl, Herbert (2017): Emotionen und politisches Lernen. In: Lange, Dirk/ V. Reinhardt (Hrsg.): Konzeptionen, Strategien und Inhaltsfelder Politischer Bildung. Basiswissen politische Bildung: Handbuch für den sozialwissenschaftlichen Unterricht. Bd. 1, Baltmannsweiler, S. 560-575.

Petri, Annette (2018): Emotionssensiber Politikunterricht. Konsequenzen aus der Emotionsforschung für Theorie und Praxis politischer Bildung, Frankfurt/M.

Schröder, Achim (2017): Emotionalisierung der Politik und Autoritarismus. Herausforderungen für die gegenwärtige politische Bildung. online verfügbar

Weber-Stein, Florian (2017): Die affektive Dimension des hermeneutischen Zirkels: Emotionale Bedingungsfaktoren der politischen Werturteilsbildung. In: zeitschrift für didaktik der gesellschaftswissenschaften, 7. Jg., H. 1, S. 54-73.

Self-assessment tasks

Question 1: Why does civic education in Germany have so many problems engaging with emotions?

Question 2: Using emotions as a starting point for civic education processes is relatively easy to imagine - but can the generation of certain emotions also be the goal of educational processes? Which emotions could possibly be considered here and how can they be encouraged? Or what dangers arise in this context?

Question 3: The Beutelsbach Consensus warns us in civic education not to overwhelm learners in the development of their own judgments. What is the relationship between this warning and the demand to take emotions seriously in educational processes and what would a defense strategy against the accusation of overwhelming look like?

Question 4: In your opinion, what would emotion-sensitive civic education look like? Outline a project idea!