From 'the conscience of humanity' to the conscious human brain: UNESCO's embrace of social-emotional learning as a flag of convenience

This article analyses UNESCO's advocacy of social-emotional learning (SEL) as key to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-particularly SDG target 4.7. It interrogates the agency's growing emphasis on digital SEL and conscious "whole brain" approaches as part of a wider neuroliberal turn towards the behavioural, psychological and neurological sciences and considers their implications for UNESCO's status as the "conscience of humanity." It argues that "SEL for SDGs" operates as a "flag of convenience" hoisted by UNESCO to garner legitimacy in a global governance landscape increasingly shaped by private/corporate interests, new (tech-based) philanthropy, and neoliberal policies and funding infrastructures. It demonstrates how the privileging of biological and neuropsychological explanations for complex global problems is reconfiguring UNESCO's global citizenship work towards a depoliticised, individualistic and neuroliberally-inflected "conscious human brain" response to complex societal challenges which forestalls political dialogue and undermines an appreciation of their material and economic determinants.