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(Re)sourcing the Character and Resilience Manifesto:

Suppressions and slippages of (re)presentation and selective affectivities

Erica Burman

Erica.burman@manchster.ac.uk

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Abstract

This paper offers a critical discursive reading of the 2014 Character & Resilience Manifesto (hereafter

the Manifesto), focusing on the sources and legitimation strategies supporting its claims. As an All

Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility document, the Manifesto traces both old and new

discursive tropes framing policy strategy on education and social care, extending into current

political agendas around mental health and wellbeing and even child safeguarding and

securitisation. While the Manifesto’s supposed evidence-based claims draw extensively on a

specifically commissioned literature review undertaken by Gutman and Schoon (2013), problems are

identified with how this is represented in the Manifesto, including significant omissions and

slippages within Gutman and Schoon's text and between this and the Manifesto. Analysis highlights

exaggerations of the claims made in Gutman and Schoon's review in the Manifesto, while important

conceptual clarifications (between resilience and coping, and the non-generalisability of resilience)

are overlooked. Commentators’ cautions over the evaluation and comparability of current

programmes also fail to appear. Beyond such asymmetries, a common narrative identified across

both texts reformulates emotions away from their 'soft', culturally feminised, associations to

become ‘hard and ‘tough’, and abstracted from relationship and (sociopolitical) context. Clearly such

gendering of emotions can be situated in relation to wider discourses of feminisation, alongside

others de-emphasising classed and racialised inequalities. Overall, the Manifesto performs its own

rhetoric, manifesting its own buoyancy to resist critical engagement and further the contemporary

moral doctrine of inciting voluntarist optimistic subjects, devoid of attention to class, gender or

racialised inequalities.

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Introduction. Social policy Interest in character and resilience spans British government

administrations, while such tropes connect individual with national and transnational economic,

environmental and political insecurities. Notwithstanding its geographical, contextual and socio-

ecological origins, resilience features strongly in neoliberal economic policies that emphasise

individual, rather than state, activity and responsibility (Henderson and Denny, 2015; Klein, 2016).

Such discourses also indicate particular constructions of affective or emotional subjectivities (Hroch,

2013; Illouz, 2013). This article addresses traces the construction of notions of character and

resilience in policy, focusing on a specific document, the UK government Character & Resilience

Manifesto (hereafter the Manifesto), which was launched by an All Party Parliamentary Group

(APPG) in February 2014. Analysis here focuses primarily on evaluating the tenability of the claims

made in the Manifesto by interrogating the extent to which these are sustained by its cited source

materials. Discursive strategies supporting its claims are analysed, reflecting on when and whether

these are based on academic or other kinds of ‘evidence’ claims. Alongside focusing on its

construction, I discuss the politics of emotions exercised in the legitimation and persuasion

strategies mobilised in this policy document. Since emotions feature as topic and process, final

comments situate this analysis within wider (classed, gendered and generational) national and

transnational narratives on social dynamics and relationships.

The critique that follows is not primarily concerned with evaluating the scientific adequacy (or

otherwise) of concepts such as resilience but rather traces the trajectory of justificatory claims made

for these. Relevant educational and psychological literature is analysed in the service of assessing

how this is presented in the citation and reiteration practices of the Manifesto. Hence I am not

evaluating the truth claims of these concepts, but rather the truth effects of the mobilisation of

these claims as they inform the construction of this policy text. Explicit documentary sources

supporting the Manifesto’s claims are read alongside wider sociocultural resources forming its

conditions of possibility (Foucault, 1970, 1983), whilst also attending to how such re-presentations

perform those very policies advocated. This article, then, interrogates the Manifesto as a key

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exemplar disclosing wider social-political parameters of social regulation and resistance at play

within such policies (Burman, 2017a, Burman et al., 2017). Its apparent displacement in late 2017

(George, 2017; UK Government, 2017) - far from making this analysis redundant - invites

interrogation of how apparently different policy orientations coexist or transition to other (old or

new) agendas. Analytical frameworks used include discursive (including Foucauldian) approaches as

applied to critical and educational psychology and governmentality (Ball and Olmedo, 2013; Ball,

2013; Bourke and Lidstone, 2015; Parker, 2014a), and sociolinguistic approaches to policy and media

analysis (Fairclough, 1989, 2001; Kress and Hodge, 1993).

Situating the Manifesto

The Manifesto discloses the worldview and corresponding politics of a particular political moment. It

was launched during the administration of the Conservative-led coalition government that followed

New Labour, warranting policy demarcations both generally in the reconfiguration of individual-

social relations and as well as public order and security agendas. Continuities of concern are

identifiable across different political administrations that reflect wider (international) engagement

with child wellbeing and mental health, as well as neoliberal models of active citizenship

accompanying a reduced welfare state. Overt disjunctures therefore hide continuities common to

the wider moves towards neoliberalism, austerity politics and the financialisation of the poor

(Roberts, 2015). The New Labour discourse of Every Child Matters was concerned with raising

standards but subtly shifted the discourse around poverty to social exclusion (Fairclough, 2001). As

discussed below, the Manifesto further shifts the discourse from inequality to social (im)mobility.

This paper therefore traces how this double shift comes to take place: while the New Labour

formulation of Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) i moved from privileging the

economic discourse through which structural conditions could be held to account towards the social

consequences of poor lifestyle choices, the Manifesto returns to economics while retaining a focus

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on individualised ‘choice’ and responsibility. In this sense, the Manifesto continues logic present

within earlier SEAL policies, albeit intensifying this.

As indicated, the Manifesto was the outcome of an APPG on Social Mobility. It was launched in

partnership with ‘CentreForum’, a libdem ‘think tank’. The third party promoting the Manifesto was

Character Counts, ‘an independent centre that promotes, designs and evaluates public policy

interventions that build character’ (Manifesto, 3) also linked with the cross-party thinktank Demos.

While this UK organisation Character Counts, should not be confused with Character Counts! (sic), a

US organisation (https://charactercounts.org/program-overview/), the similarity of name reflects

how the current revival of character education discourse borrows heavily from US models and

programmes (Allen and Bull, this volume).

Beyond the ‘nudge economics’ associated with the Behavioural Insights Team (set up by Tony Blair

but continuing under subsequent governments, Jones et al., 2013; Pykett 2012a), the turn to

character and resilience in the UK can be understood as indicating an explicitly pedagogical approach

within policy that combines questions of ethics with behaviour, academic achievement with wealth-

creation, and focuses on the modification and regulation of individuals. Further, as reflected in the

composition of its authorship, the Manifesto exemplifies a neoliberal politics that cedes state power

to business and advisory bodies, comprising new actors such as businesses and philanthropists (Allen

and Bull, this volume) as also another instance of ‘consultocracy’ (Gunter and Mills, 2017).

As a policy document, the ‘Manifesto’ carries further weight as an ‘All Party’ document transcending

party political divisions. It therefore not only speaks from a consensus position, but implies that it

speaks to one. Such assumed consensus risks naturalising particular definitions of socio-political

problems, as also understandings of whose problem they are, alongside also overlooking gaps and

contradictions in argumentation. In addition to the official stamp of political authority, the Manifesto

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both bases its claims on psychological research and reports examples of 'successful' school and

community projects, so combining the discourse of scientific expertise with that of ‘commonsense’

provided by nongovernmental and civil society organisations.

This article focuses on the Manifesto, evaluating its claims by tracing citations and (re)iterations of

other texts. Specifically, the Manifesto refers to a ‘Summit’ (consultation) event that informs its

claims, and also extensively references the government-commissioned review of evidence in the

area conducted by Gutman and Schoon (2013) (hereafter G&S) entitled The impact of non-cognitive

skills on outcomes for young people.ii Methodologically, my analysis includes both structural and

interactional features (what Fairclough, 2001, terms - after Foucault - ‘order of discourse’ and

semiotic, interdiscursive and sociopolitical analysis), to identify both omissions and slippages within

G&S’s text, but also between G&S and the Manifesto. I highlight how claims made in G&S are

exaggerated within the Manifesto, while G&S’ conceptual and empirical clarifications - and some

significant cautionary comments - are overlooked.

Analytical approach

The analysis here draws on a range of discursive approaches, informed in particular by Foucauldian

approaches attending to power/knowledge relations (Ball, 2013; Burman, 2016; Burman, 2017a;

Foucault, 1970, 1983), alongside a feminist intersectional sensibility (Cho et al., 2013; Hill Collins and

Bilge, 2016) to the ways gender, class and racialisation - among other mutually configuring social

positions - appear or disappear within the text. Debates on psychologisation and neoliberalism (De

Vos et al., 2010; Parker, 2014a,b) show how these moderate or interact with claims around societal

or, alternatively, individual responsibility or causation. The focus on legitimation strategies draws on

critical discourse analytic (CDA) approaches (Fairclough, 1989; 2001; Wodak, 2004) as applied, for

example, by Reyes (2011) in four ways: (1) Attending to forms of emotion either topicalised or

presumed by the text, alongside their socio-political (and especially gendered and classed)

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associations; (2) Analysing how children figure within configurations of hypothetical futures,

whether as future citizens or as economic actors in the service of state - rather than individual,

familial or community - security and wellbeing (Burman, 2012; Lister, 2003). Gendered, classed and

generational considerations are seen to resolve into (3) privileging of particular modes of rationality

that favour quantitative scientific measurement and also, notwithstanding the overt recognition of

feelings or emotions, privilege some (more adaptive, compliant) emotions over others. All this occurs

alongside mobilisation of (4) various ‘voices’ of authority accorded authentic or persuasive powers.

So, in addition to reading the Manifesto in relation to its key source texts (especially G&S, 2013),

analysis here is oriented to (the representation of) emotions such that the explicit focus on ‘grit’ and

other features of the resilience repertoire is shown to accompany other societal anxieties. The

concatenation of character (education) with resilience thus performs a double occlusion of the

social: individualising and responsibilising the precarity of current economic and political insecurities

to render them as qualities (traits, characteristics) to be found within (primarily working class)

children whereby, in so doing, that social context disappears. The hypothetical future mobilised

performs an elision between child and societal development to render children as indicators of

economic and social futurity (Burman, 2017b, 2008). Notwithstanding the ‘affective turn’ within

culture and labour (Hochschild, 1983; Morini, 2007), an androcentric model of development (from

dependency and interdependency to autonomy and detachment, Broughton, 1988) is recapitulated.

Corresponding with Clarke’s (2012) discussion of the rhetorical role played by the recourse to lay

knowledge, analysis also attends to modes of expertise mobilised.

Like the speech act (Austin, 1962; Butler, 1997) it names, the Manifesto appears to perform its own

rhetoric by manifesting the buoyancy to parry critical engagement: its text performs bounce-

back-ability. This supports the contemporary neoliberal doctrine of inciting voluntarist optimistic

subjects who are stripped of an analysis that can attend to or explain class, gender or racialised

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inequalities. The next section explores the relations between the psychological and educational

research cited by the Manifesto (including Gutman and Schoon’s commissioned report), the claims

made for it, and how these are presented in the Manifesto policy text.

Sources and resources

I next discuss the main source cited as informing the Manifesto, Gutman and Schoon (2013),

alongside consideration of other sources that this draws upon, including various policy and

methodological frameworks at play (which can be understood as both conceptual and technical

resources). G&S’s document is the main scholarly text cited to support the Manifesto’s claim that

'existing evidence is now sufficiently compelling' (16). The ‘outcomes’ for the ‘non-cognitive skills’

G&S address are educational attainment, employment, health, well-being, engagement,

employability, civic participation, and voting. As a commissioned literature review, G&S’s report

carries the logo of the Education Endowment Fund (EEF) and the Cabinet Office. In turn, the EEF

carries the logos of, and so indicating sponsorship from, not only the Department for Education but

also the Sutton Trustiii and Impetusiv (a Private Equity Company) both of which, it should be noted,

are business-oriented philanthropic funders of educational programmes.

G&S (2013) nest Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) as a part of what they call non-cognitive skills.

Their report opens by defining ‘non-cognitive skills’ as

i SEAL was formulated under the UK Labour government as ‘a comprehensive, whole-school approach to promoting the social and emotional skills that underpin effective learning, positive behaviour, regular attendance, staff effectiveness and the emotional health and well-being of all who learn and work in schools.’ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/social-and-emotional-aspects-of-learning-seal-programme-in-secondary-schools-national-evaluation

ii The review includes 'quasi-experimental and experimental studies published from 1995 through 2013’ (6). The fact that ‘We limit our search to research focused on skills of school-aged children and adolescents' (6) contrasts with the current discourse on early intervention, including the Manifesto’s subscription to this.

iii http://www.suttontrust.com/who-we-are/

iv http://Impetus.pdf.org.uk

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…those attitudes, behaviours, and strategies which facilitate success in school and workplace, such

as motivation, perseverance, and self-control. These factors are termed ’non-cognitive’ as they are

considered to be distinct from the cognitive and academic skills usually measured by tests or

teacher assessments. (1).

So ‘non-cognitive’ is figured as what has been previously considered outside the formal educational

curriculum, albeit that this is

…increasingly considered to be as important as —or even more important than—cognitive skills

and IQ in determining academic and employment outcomes. Indeed, there is now growing

attention from policymakers on how such ‘character’ or ‘soft’ skills can be developed in children

and young people. (1)

Note how ‘character’ and ‘skills’ become treated as equivalent alternatives, notwithstanding their

very different philosophical imaginaries and conceptual features. Later G&S define 'non-cognitive

skills’ as including ‘motivation, confidence, tenacity, trustworthiness, perseverance, and social and

communication skills' (7). Here we might note the absence of explicit mention of 'emotion'. Instead

they orient their discussion around what the psychological literature terms the ‘Big Five’ personality

traitsv - 'Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism

(also called Emotional Stability)' (7).

As others have noted (Ecclestone and Lewis, 2014), SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning)

was a key feature of New Labour educational strategy (as part of a wider emotional literacy agenda,

Burman, 2006, 2009; Emery, 2016). Notwithstanding their similarities, there are some conceptual

distinctions between SEAL and Character and Resilience to be noted. Both G&S (2013) and

Humphrey (2013) (who is also cited by G&S) point out that resilience is arrived at through dealing

with adversity, and so only relates to children exposed to risk. By contrast, SEL and SEAL were

v See https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/big-five-personality-theory/

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designed as a comprehensive, universal school approaches. There are conceptual problems too, as

Humphrey (2013) notes:

… the analogy of SEL as resilience-enhancing does not necessarily reflect the complex processes

involved in the operation of resilient characteristics and behaviour on outcomes. The

characteristics ….may have direct influences, or they may play a role as moderators or mediators

of outcomes…. Furthermore, … the resilience demonstrated by individuals may vary as a function

of context, time, stressor and adaptive domain. (45)

Given the overlap between SEL and resilience, notwithstanding party political stakes in

differentiating these indicated above, Humphrey's discussion of national-cultural differences in

interpreting and programming such interventions is relevant. Humphrey notes that US varieties tend

to be more top down in implementation, more curriculum-oriented rather than focused on

educational processes or relationships, and with a more prescriptive, religious and politically

conservative, ethos:

'the US “version” of SEL arguably has closer ties to notions of character education and morality

than is evident elsewhere. This is perhaps because of the alignment with conservatism and

religion... both of which are a part of America's cultural history' (64).

He also notes that such approaches are easier to evaluate and to show efficacy since they lend

themselves more easily to standardized testing and sampling procedures than approaches

characterising more democratic school management approaches of Europe and Australia. So -

echoing discussions of governmentality (Rose, 1985, 1999) - an ideology is supported by

methodological/administrative technologies that assess and classify according to pre-set categories

that, in turn, are oriented towards adaptation and compliance.

Yet even if the Manifesto promotes a disparate set of recommendations, these are supported by

equally diverse modalities of ‘evidence’, including both scientific studies and ‘lay’ (practitioner)

reports of ‘best practice’. Tensions between different sources of ‘evidence’ are overlooked in favour

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of a discourse that sees science as confirming commonsense and the ‘obviousness’ of the need to

intervene. Such performativity (Ball 2000) relies upon technologies of measurement, some of whose

features blur the boundaries between everyday and technical knowledge. In particular, character

and resilience are formulated in the Manifesto as traits that can be taught. This poses an interesting

conundrum, as trait theory originates in a dispositional or temperament psychological model (with

long historical and cultural roots) that sees the fixed and enduring features of these attributes as

originating in biology or longstanding personal history. Yet such assumptions were precisely debated

in experimental social psychology of the 1980s (Potter and Wetherell, 1987), provoking the so-called

(methodological and epistemological) ‘crisis’ in social psychology (Parker, 1989). Notwithstanding

the wide circulation of technologies of trait assessment and their commonsense accessibility, it is

important to recall that trait theory assumes individuals are separate and precede the social, as well

as presuming the coherence and stability of these ‘traits’ across contexts. While, as quantitative

instruments (usually questionnaires), they are relatively easy to administer, their interpretation can

be questionable.

G&S’s different view of resilience: contextually-limited and not a skill

The Manifesto explicitly links social mobility with individual personality characteristics and skills:

‘There is a growing body of research linking social mobility to social and emotional skills, which range

from empathy and the ability to make and maintain relationships to application, mental toughness,

delayed gratification and self-control’ (Tyler, Introduction: 4). Questions of gender, class and ‘race’

are absent. By contrast, G&S offer key cautions about complexities of definition, interpretation and

application, emphasising the difficulty of showing transferable or longterm effects whilst also

reiterating how ‘[t]here is little agreement even on whether “non-cognitive skills” is the right way to

describe the set of issues under discussion, and terms such as “character skills”, “competencies”,

“personality traits”, “soft skills” and “life skills” are also widely used’ (43). G&S (2013)'s review is

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defined in terms of questions of age, touches (very slightly) on gender.- but as with the Manifesto –

does not mention class or ‘race’.

G&S’s rationale is 'to identify key competencies that can be modified, we focus on more flexible,

malleable characteristics' (7). They define ‘malleability’ as ‘changeable’ which then becomes figured

as ‘indicating that they can be taught’ (4). Thus a link is set up between change/modifiability, the

contexts for this, and who might be responsible for enabling this. ‘Malleability’ is one of the key

analytical frames structuring the review, so navigating longstanding debates about which and

whether qualities are stable, situationally-specific in their exhibition, or transferable. Since G&S

consider ‘personality traits’ as ‘relatively stable characteristics’, their focus is on ‘more flexible and

modifiable characteristics, such as self-perceptions, motivation, and social competencies’ (7),

‘Competence’ appears as an intermediary term between ‘trait’ (considered less modifiable) and

mere activity or behaviour. In relation to the conceptual-methodological points made earlier, the

concern to shift from traits to modification (and so teachability) is noteworthy, even as they also

emphasise (in the Executive Summary) the difficulties of proving causality. G&S put forward eight

non-cognitive ‘competences’: self-perceptions, motivation, perseverance, self-control, metacognitive

strategies, social competencies, resilience and coping, and creativity. For each such feature they

consider questions of measurement, correlational evidence, malleability, and causal evidence

Significantly, while ‘non-cognitive’ could have been understood as a synonym, explicit mention of

'emotion' disappears.

'Grit' emerges as a feature of perseverance (17). Yet claims for ‘grit’ are presented as being

overstated, and indeed the Manifesto’s treatment rather misrepresents G&S's lukewarm evaluation

that '….there seems little evidence that grit is a possible factor to target for interventions at this

time' (19). SEL is covered in section 3.6 on 'social competencies' (25-6). They report 'a wealth of

research defines pro-social behaviour as embedded in the more expansive concept of social

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emotional learning (SEL). As a result, it is difficult to extract the social skills component from other

non-cognitive factors in this body of research' (26) and this problem is echoed in their conclusion to

this section (28).

Surprisingly, given the wider political and cultural emphasis on the discourse of ‘resilience’, and the

extensive literatures on this (Henderson and Denny, 2015; O’Brien, 2014), G&S treat resilience

together with coping in a brief two page, section (3.7: 27-8), paradoxically to make the important

point that they should be distinguished:

Resilience is often thought of as ‘bouncing back’ in the face of setbacks. However, resilience is

more than whether individuals continue to persist despite minor setbacks, which is more similar to

the concept of 'grit'. Rather, resilience is defined as positive adaptation despite the presence of

risk, which may include poverty, parental bereavement, parental mental illness, and/or abuse

(Masten, 2009; 2011; Rutter, 2006). (G&S, 2013: 27).

Michael Rutter’s well-known work on resilience is a key source for G&S, although his claims have

undergone some specification and reformulation (Rutter, 1985, 1993, 2000, 2006), while Rutter is

not cited within the Manifesto. In particular, questions of specificity and focus come to the fore.

Resilience is portrayed by G&S as a 'developmental process' (27) rather than an 'attribute or

personality trait' (27). They also point out (citing Schoon’s, 2006, earlier study and echoing

Humphrey, 2013) that while resilience may arise in the context of success despite adversity or

'exposure to significant risks' (27), it is neither continuous, nor generalisable across domains:

…children who meet the criteria for resilience may not necessarily be doing well continually, for

every possible outcome, or across different domains. For example, high-risk children who are

academically successful may experience greater emotional problems or depression. (27).

So G&S portray resilience as inextricably tied to context, whether across contexts of exhibition or

over time (and its greater or lesser associated 'risks'). Indeed Frydenberg (2017) takes this point

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further to comment: ‘Unlike coping, which consists of thoughts, feelings and actions, and has a long

established history in measurement, the concept of resilience is not so readily quantifiable,

particularly given that there is a judgment required about effective outcomes’ (4, emphasis added).

Having conceded this point about the irreducibly evaluative aspect of resilience, like Rutter, G&S

further differentiate between coping and resilience:

Coping involves skills that people use when faced with specific difficulties, whereas resilience is a

process which follows the exercise of those skills (Compas et al., 2011). As a result, coping is

malleable and the use of more successful coping strategies can be taught to individuals. Resilience

on the other hand, can be promoted through interventions which focus on reducing risk factors

and promoting protective factors that buffer against risk. (27)

While resilience is understood to arise from having coped, in the service of an agenda that only

focuses on measurement and malleability, situational, interactional processes and relationships are

taken out of the picture. This leads G&S to understand resilience differently from the way it is

mobilised in the Manifesto, for their next sentence is: 'Nevertheless, resilience is not necessarily a

skill that can be manipulated, but rather a dynamic interactive process. For these reasons, we focus

the rest of this section on coping strategies' (27).

So the imperative to identify modifiable qualities that can be trained or taught requires the broader

concept of resilience to be redefined or limited - along with significant conceptual modifications that

G&S (2013) clearly comment upon - to become merely described as coping. Contrary to the

widespread association of resilience with positive psychology (Chambers and Hickinbottom, 2008), it

is only at the end of that section that G&S make a link between coping strategies and positive

psychology, but this is to call for more research to explore whether there are in fact any

relationships between positive emotions ('learned optimism', explicitly formulated to counter

Seligman’s earlier ‘learned helplessness’) and other 'non-cognitive skills'.

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Counting character

Space limits further analysis of circular and constitutive relations between and across G&S and the

Manifesto, whereby the dominant methodological paradigm implicitly presupposes the notions of

character and resilience at play. This gives rise to the linking of two senses of ‘counting’, statistical

and moral significance. Alongside technologies of countability, the question of whether resilience is

‘teachable’ remains rather less clear, while problems of measurement and evaluation remain.

Nevertheless the Section in the Manifesto on 'The challenge for evidence-based policy making'

argues against the idea that 'non-cognitive skills... are too hard to measure' (15), and makes the case

for investment in developing evidence for this neglected area.

It should be noted that a near synonym to resilience, mental toughness, arose from sports

psychology as a set of practices devoted to improving physical performance and endurance (Clough

and Strycharczyk, 2012; Crust and Clough, 2011), also frequently cited alongside Dweck’s (2006)

‘growth mindset’ as a specific educational harnessing of social expectation effects. Its shift of domain

of application to the field of education and social care should be read alongside the earlier and

continuing role resilience and positive psychology play in military training.vi

How ‘character’ is made ‘manifest’, or is understood, is therefore informed by prevailing rhetorics of

evidence-based practice. Indeed much of the Manifesto is devoted to calls to invest in developing

assessment tool kits 'focussing on interventions that aid development of the crucial non-cognitive

basis in early child development' (9) and, within school, evaluation of parental education

programmes, developing new measures (to include character and resilience in school readiness),

vi '"The spread of positive psychology is a key development in world culture. This book tells the remarkable story, including its adoption by the U.S. Army." - (http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/martin-seligman/flourish-9781864712988.aspx), Professor Richard Layard (instigator of IAPT and the happiness agenda)

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while the proposed new state-sponsored schemes and their associated evaluation in rolling them

out all involve the development of largescale quantitative measures.

The trope of 'character counts', combining both moral and statistical discourses of counting,

becomes self-referential, even self-serving, in its claims. Yet if 'character' is rendered into something

that can be (numerically) 'counted', nevertheless, wider sociocultural, pedagogical and moral

meanings remain at play in this very restricted operationalisation of the term. The Manifesto ends

with a call to employers to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility activities that develop character

and resilience in young people and to develop alternative routes into professions that reflect a

valuation of more than 'raw academic achievements'. Qualifying academic achievements as 'raw'

suggests a reversal of Lévi-Strauss' (1975) anthropological analysis that aligns 'raw' with nature (and

so 'cooked' with 'culture'). Calling these 'raw' paradoxically positions current educational contexts as

lacking in adequate adaptation or orientation to the socio-political realm. This undermines precisely

the features teachers are supposed to be mobilising to develop character and resilience, including

also social and relational aspects of coping. Altogether, while many of the measures the Manifesto

proposes recall earlier initiatives, under neoliberal political conditions the rhetoric has shifted from

public responsibility and provision to private sponsorship.

McKenzie’s (2005) prescient discussion of North American approaches to emotion, social and moral

(ESM) education clarifies some key features, specifically singling out the US company ‘Character

Counts!’ as having a coercive indoctrinatory model. She concludes by noting that ESM education

covers different approaches some of which rely on opposing foundational assumptions, many of

which are unacknowledged. Such ideas and models are now becoming influential in the UK, as

indicated by the University of Birmingham Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues (a big player in

the field), which changed its name from the Centre for Character and Values perhaps to reflect its

philosophy of Aristotelian virtue ethics but arguably also to distance itself from the overtly moralistic

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(and Christian) orientation associated with earlier incarnations of character education. It also aligns

itself with more recent developments in empirical moral psychology around character strengths.

These contemporary programmes appear more ambitious and grandiose than those of earlier

proponents who talked in terms of promoting and nurturing specific moral values (Suissa, 2015), but

rather aims to shape a future society.vii

Elisions, affects and effects.

Having traced through citations, circularities and disfluencies of claims that compose the Manifesto, I

now identify five emerging interpretations arising from legitimation strategies at play. Firstly, the

discourse of emotions paradoxically makes these emotions vanish; second, the absence of

discourses of gender (notwithstanding dominant narratives of the gendering of emotions) works to

class as well gender emotions; thirdly, the role accorded the popular expert has particular political

consequences. Together these inform, fourth, the model of social mobility the APPG appears to

endorse. Finally, I briefly consider the status of neuroscientific claims within social policy.

Discoursing (the disappearance) of (‘bad’) emotions

Within the Manifesto, emotions disappear but covertly return figured (only) as positive. 'Soft skills'

are sometimes narrated as 'non-cognitive skills' that are distinguished from academic achievement

and school curricular subjects. G&S (2013) define 'non-cognitive skills' as 'motivation, perseverance

and self-control' (Executive Summary, paragraph 1. 2), so implying a binary between not/‘thinking’.

The (positive) non-thinking is thus configured as resulting in compliant behaviour. Correlatively, the

Manifesto emphasises that ‘non-cognitive skills’ are not 'fluffy or superficial' but 'about having the

fundamental drive, tenacity and perseverance needed to make the most of opportunities and to

succeed whatever obstacles life puts in your way' (6). In its ‘positive’ reading of G&S, perhaps it

vii Jubilee Centre http://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/355/about#sthash.dbOkqNS5.dpuf.

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could be said that the Manifesto is itself doing resilience and manifesting character in making the

move towards optimism.

Mention of 'emotional well-being' alongside resilience in the Manifesto Introduction rapidly

disappears while, following G&S's (2013) practice (c.f. 2) the quotation marks around 'skills' in the

Manifesto (including 'soft skills') disappears after the Foreword, acquiring a presumed natural status,

so that by the first page of the main text it is only the 'soft' of the epithet '"soft" skills' that is so

qualified (10). Further, the word 'emotional' appears in G&S in section 4.4 on 'Social and Emotional

Learning Programmes (38). SEAL is reported as specifying five domains: self-awareness, self-

regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. While (as already discussed) Humphrey et al.'s

(2010) critical evaluation is cited and quoted here, the overall 'conclusion' arrived at is that there is a

lack of standardisation or documentation of which specific skills are taught in SEAL schemes, which

makes their efficacy different to assess.

Yet in claiming a relationship between educational attainment and earnings, the Manifesto goes on

to define 'crucial character attributes' (12) or '"soft" skills' as 'motivation, curiosity,

conscientiousness and application to task' (13), and then heralds the lack of these as a 'key driver' of

reduced mobility. So ‘emotions’ in the Manifesto increasingly disappear in favour of e.g. a ‘positive-

psychology’-influenced 'social intelligence',viii and the few later references to ‘emotional’ occur as

linked to ‘social’, and rapidly become reformulated into less expressive and reflexive qualities to

focus on ‘grit’ and ‘spark’ (37). In relation to this, the Manifesto frames G&S's evaluation of outdoor

adventure/volunteering programmes as having 'positive effects on "the psychological, behavioural,

physical and academic outcomes of young people" and are, as such, "a promising tool to promote

health and well-being of young people"’ (49). In their evaluation, however, G&S are rather more

cautious and circumscribed in their approval for outdoor adventure/volunteering programmes than

viii Positive psychology and KIPP pedagogy focuses on 'seven "highly predictive" strengths: zest, self-control, gratitude, curiosity, optimism, grit and social intelligence.' (Manifesto, 2014: 35)

19

the Manifesto suggests, concluding that studies '...suggest that participation in outdoor adventure

programmes has small to medium effects' (38). They point out that the diverse designs, purposes

and populations involved in these programmes make assessment of efficacy problematic, as well as

– significantly – the absence of any theoretical explanation as to why they should be beneficial.

G&S’s description as '"black box" programming’ (38) seems apt, where ‘simple participation is

assumed to lead to participant development without any ability to describe the specific mechanisms

through which change may occur' (38). The same point would seem applicable to notions of

'character’ and ‘resilience'.

Indeed ‘negative’ emotions (of fear, anger, anxiety) may be at play, albeit not explicitly topicalised.

G&S express reservations about coercion and impacts on 'children and adolescents who may be

forced to participate and may also be placed in compromising conditions in unregulated

programmes' (38). They highlight how enforced participation typically occurs alongside being away

from parents, family or friends. They emphasise the need for aftercare and follow up as essential to

the evaluation of longterm changes, claiming that the evidence for standalone exposure or

wilderness therapies suggests they have little (or even adverse) effects without such embedding

(38).

Gender and emotions

The problematic reformulation of emotions returns us to questions of gender, for ‘soft’ skills are

being hardened up. Emotions and emotional sensitivity, traditionally (stereotypically) associated

with femininity and women, are now central to knowledge-based economies (Illouz, 2013; Pykett,

2012b). So important are relationship skills to contemporary forms of labour that early

representations of EI (Emotional Intelligence) topicalised the challenge to traditional white men. Just

because the so-called feminisation of labour (that is part-time, low paid, precarious work) has now

extended to men and especially young people, with ‘people skills’ now central to current modes of

20

labour, this does not mean that the gendered associations of emotions have disappeared. Yet

relationality disappears via the very discourse that acknowledges its importance by instrumentalising

it into something else. As the Manifesto puts it: 'soft skills lead to hard results' (5), and this is a

reading that G&S would appear to support. An opposition is therefore set up between soft SEL -

'empathy and ability to make and maintain relationships' and hard 'application, mental toughness,

delayed gratification and self control' that re-introduces the implicitly gendered, hierarchy of

emotions between enclosed, competitive individual agency and relationality. Such gendering reflects

long-sedimented cultural discourses that are reformulated via this coding. Explicit references to

emotions and relationships become reformulated as ‘non-cognitive’, and relational, interactional

features disappear. ‘Non-cognitive skills’ become individual, decontextualized, progressively less tied

to ‘emotional well-being’ agendas and so altogether less affective (with emotions thereby put under

erasure). In other words, they become more cognitive. The vulnerable, feminised, subject is now

fortified, and its masculinity restored.

Everyday experts and state deniability

Mitigating the masculinity of claimed authority are quotations from 'ordinary people' to justify the

policy position being presented (Clarke, 2012). These appear in the Manifesto firstly by mobilising

commonsense notions and everyday tropes that make the specific interventions and

transformations appear natural and inevitable and, secondly, in eliding the gap between expert and

practitioner - so obscuring the exercise of political (and pedagogical) power and even makes it

appear more egalitarian. Thus the section from the Summit on 'The academic background' involves

claims from almost no academics. Under the section, 'What is character?', the account of the

theoretical components of 'character' is attributed to Jen Lexmond, founder of (the UK-based)

Character Counts with Richard Reeves of the thinktank Demos. ix

ix Reeves was with Demos at the time of publication of the Manifesto. He now works elsewhere.

21

Similarly, it is NGOs or Third Sector organisations who offer definitions and maxims, with (Dr)

Stephen Adams-Langley from Place2Be (a schools-based counselling servicex) 'explaining' what

resilience is. By such means the reservations expressed by G&S about the elision of resilience with

non-cognitive/SEL skills, and between resilience and coping, (let alone the very problematic notion

of character or, still worse, talent) can be sidestepped. A similar trend is discernible in the Manifesto:

‘Jonathan Wood, Place2Be's National Manager in Scotland defines resilience as an individual's

"bounce-back-ability" their recovery time" (38). There is even a mobilisation of statistical discourse

to convey causality: 'As Eileen Marchant, of the UK's Association for Physical Education, puts it

‘there's an absolute correlation between believing in yourself and what happens in other areas of

the curriculum’ (39). The Manifesto’s narrative aligns itself with the speakers quoted, in the above

example using ‘as’, without explicitly adopting that position, or denying it.

Moving concepts

In a context of political challenges, this 'non-cognitive' arena appears to be a new site for performing

efficacy. Explicitly oriented to the project of ‘social mobility’, the Manifesto stresses 'mobility' in two

ways to connect the individual with the social. Firstly, it is suggested that that 'non-cognitive skills

may in fact be more "mobile" than their cognitive counterparts' (15). But, secondly, the next

paragraph adds a twist, claiming: 'Excitingly this evidence suggests that concerted efforts to enhance

Character and Resilience could provide particularly fruitful ground for policy makers grappling with

the stubborn blight of social immobility in Britain' (15). Noteworthy here is that the problem or

'blight' identified is not social inequality, but social immobility. ‘Immobility’ evokes associations of

being stuck or – especially combined with ‘stubborn’ - as resisting change. Hence these

circumstances could happen to anyone but the problem still lies with ‘ungritty’ individuals who lack

the mobility to deal with them.

x 'Place2Be is the leading UK provider of school-based mental health support, unlocking children's potential in the classroom - and beyond', http://www.place2be.org.uk /.

22

The friction implied by the notion of ‘grit’ may offer a clue. For even as social mobility (like financial

investments) can go down as well as up, upward social mobility is typically not unambiguously or

uniformly embraced by individuals (Friedman, 2016), nor only benign in effects (Reay, 2002; Ingram,

2011). Further, the notion of 'blight' suggests some kind of infestation or plague afflicting a

presumed pre-existing healthy state. Significantly, the unit of analysis here remains unspecified and

so could be read as individual as well as general.

The Manifesto portrays how equipped and engaged individuals can do well if they show enough

application. Its final section opens by citing the APPG’s claim that 'social mobility is not in fact a

singular, monolithic concept. Instead it can usefully be broken down into three aspects: "breaking

out" (from a troubled background), "moving on up" (making sure all can reach their potential) and

"stars to shine" (nurturing outstanding talent)' (46). The Manifesto continues by claiming that 'the

core of the social mobility challenge is enabling individuals to find first a foothold and then desirable

progression in the labour market’ (46-7).

Given that the Manifesto makes clear that its aims are to be met without any additional funding for

schools, the strategies proposed for engaging and supporting parents reads as disingenuous, not

least how 'non-stigmatising targeting mechanisms' (27) for parent support classes ('since parenting is

a learned skill in which we all can improve', 27) could be devised. Yet aside from quoting 'Nobel

prizewinner' econometrician James Heckman on how 'the true measure of child affluence and

poverty is the quality of parenting' (20), the Manifesto claims the importance of parental style

without defining this or referencing research. Without further elaboration of just how parenting

practices link improved educational, health and wellbeing and social outcomes, the debate on

economics (social conditions, opportunities and exclusions) threatens to become transformed into

one of psychology (whether of the children or, now, their parents) (Millei and Joronen, 2016; Lowe

23

et al., 2015; Suissa, 2014). Aligned with questions of poverty, and (lack of) social mobility, such

analyses risk reinscribing prevailing pathologisations of working class families and communities.

One clear interpretation is that the Manifesto reflects an intensification of psychologisation (De Vos

2012, De Vos et al., 2010) under neoliberal capitalism. While the ‘psy complex’, the apparatus of

disciplines and professions regulating and assessing the characteristics, behaviour and relationships

of citizen subjects emerged alongside nation states (Ingleby, 1985; Rose, 1985), such processes of

subjectification have acquired new force under global neoliberalism (Parker, 2014b). Indeed De Vos

(2016) has argued that the incitement to subjectivity in this era alongside multiple regulations and

technologies of measurement has, paradoxically, implicitly evacuated the domain of the psychic in

favour of the neurological.

But… no neuromythology

Yet there is significant prevarication around claims of heritability and biology in the Manifesto. Given

recent preoccupation with neuroscience and brain scans (Thornton, 2011; Edwards et al., 2015), it is

striking that these do not feature at all. Further, while 'biology' is briefly mentioned, reflecting the

new era of brain plasticity the topic and focus is on training. What emerges is a focus on a pedagogy

(through the trope of modifiability) that is devoid of explicit theorisation of origins. Caution about

neuroscience has arisen from within the field (Button et al., 2013; Chen, 2013; Howard-Jones, 2014),

as well as achieving some popular circulation. Perhaps this could be interpreted as a victory for the

busy critical researchers who have challenged both the uses and interpretations of this

neuroscientific 'evidence' (Burman, 2011; De Vos, 2014; Lesnik-Oberstein, 2016, 2017). It could be

read as a retraction from the 'neurofication of policy' noted by Edwards et al. (2015) and Pykett

(2012b). It certainly flies in the face of the '1001 Critical Days' cross party manifesto published in

September 2013xi as well as the two Allen Reports of 2011, which advocated (very) early intervention

xi This report is hosted on the website of the Child and Maternal Health Intelligence Network, http://www.chimat.org.uk/resource/item.aspx?RID=171486),

24

on cost effective grounds. Early intervention remains a key theme in the Manifesto, but this lies in

the domain of parent training and education. Yet probably more pragmatic grounds should be

noted: subscription to a neurological deficit or critical period model invites political strategies

requiring investment, while resilience instead puts the responsibility back onto the individual

subject.

Conclusion

This discursive analysis suggests that – manifested in the Manifesto - New Labour emotion-talk has

acquired austerity hardness, which has then been, neoconservatively, moralised into 'character', as

reflected by a literal elision or bracketing out of the word 'emotion'. While SE(A)L is neither

conceptually nor methodologically equivalent to resilience, and certainly not to character (having a

less prescriptive ethical-moral content and outcome), there is a discursive shift away from the

feminised genre of emotions to the serious (masculinised) matter of character, along with the

multiple repetitions that 'non-cognitive' (or so-called 'soft') skills are not 'fluffy'. Replacing an earlier

emphasis on risk and vulnerability, discourse has shifted to topicalise mental toughness and

hardiness. In this context a positive psychology, happiness agenda shifts beyond the individual

requirement to adapt and get back to work quickly, such that distress and dis-ease become

moralised as character deficits or failings (Chambers and Hickinbottom, 2008; Hickinbottom-Brown,

2013; Harrison, 2012; Gill and Orgad, this volume). The concept of resilience originated in

environmental studies where it characterised contexts and not people, and still less individuals

(Joseph, 2013). In the current political context it will take some work to (re)turn the political

discourse of resilience into something more social and situated, although such work is being

undertaken (Hayward 2013; Munro 2013).

Methodologically, the efficacy of the New Labour SEAL programme was hard to demonstrate,

precisely because of local variations in definition and application. Along with the repudiation of

25

messy, emotional stuff, the Manifesto reflects a wider reassertion of the need for scientificity, for

measurement and standardization. Indeed Humphrey (2013: 39-40) noted that what made the

notion of 'emotional intelligence' attractive in the first place was the 'added legitimacy and status'

(40) afforded by the word 'intelligence'. But, despite significant cautions offered by G&S (2013), a

constant refrain animating the claims made in the Manifesto concerns the demand for proving

efficacy. Here it might be recalled that the only financial commitments advocated by the Manifesto

are to fund the development of psychometric assessment and measurement tools. What remains

unproblematised throughout is the concept of skill, notwithstanding the very significant critical

literature on this, and how this maintains a cognitive-behavioural and politically conservative model,

that reifies and abstracts activity and commodifies it (Harris, 1987).

26

I have focused here less on ‘character’ than ‘resilience’, though the linking of these is perhaps the

key performative achievement of the Manifesto. ‘Character’, specifically ‘character education’, of

course, has a much longer cultural history than ‘resilience’, reaching into specific national and

cultural imaginaries as well as institutional contexts (Baier, 1991; Kupperman, 2001). Expensive

governmental buy-in into US ‘character’-building industries is afoot (an example of which would be

xii http://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/media/news/article/4366/Insight-Series-Narnian-Virtues

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Kim and Anna and the reviewers for their support. Simon Bailey, Susan Brown, Carl Emery, Ian Stronach and Judith Suissa made helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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