Toddlers as soul workers: A critical take on emotions and well‐being in early childhood education

In this article, we provide a critical philosophical analysis of contemporary early childhood education practices on emotions and well‐being. We develop our argument against the backdrop of an intensifying preoccupation, since several decades, with the psychological, social and emotional well‐being of pupils and students. Our focus is on one exemplary case: Het Toverbos (The Magical Forest), a Flemish nursery educational method evoking the principles of psychodrama to support the socio‐emotional development of toddlers. Drawing on the work of Italian philosopher Franco Berardi, we explore to what extent Het Toverbos promotes a kind of learning that seemingly prefigures a contemporary work ethic putting to work human affects, communication and creativity. We argue that the method seems to approach toddlers’ emotions, imagination and peer interaction as immaterial resources that can (and should) be mined in the name of their proper development. What seems to be cultivated is a willingness to endlessly reinvent the self and in line with Berardi, we suggest a link with the cultural psychopathologies of our time: panic, depression and burnout. We also explore how the method's permanent imperative to express oneself seems to subject everything to the claim of transparency and knowledgeability, thereby limiting the possibility of the child's ‘otherness’ or ‘newness’. We conclude by situating our Berardian take on these early childhood education practices on emotions and well‐being within the broader pedagogical tradition in which the potentiality engendered by the child's ‘newness’ is emphasised and articulated in various ways.