Beginning with the notion that emotions are an integral part of us as social beings, who are shaped by political, economic and cultural contexts, the purpose of this paper is to investigate what kind of place (if any) emotions occupy within two Croatian curricular documents: the National Curriculum Framework and the Cross-Curricular Theme Personal and Social Development. A critical discourse analysis of these documents identifies political and ideological social influences contained in conservative ideas about the preservation of Croatian national identity based on patriotism as an emotion whose passive transmitters should be children. The latter represents a subtle form of pastoral power in which emotions are the primary medium by which dominant discourses are internalized and normalized. Furthermore, curricula are dominated by discourses of rationalizing and economizing emotions through the meritocratic idea of individualized responsibility for success that a child achieves through cognitive emotion control and management skills. Thus the values of the market and entrepreneurship contained in the curricula place individualized emotions at the center of economic relations through specific forms of emotional capitalism (Illouz 2016). Fetishizing positive emotions through a vision of an optimistic future and a positive self-image is noticeable. The emphasis is on emotion control - responsibility is transferred to the child who becomes a rationalized subject who, upon completion of schooling, independently manages life decisions. Within the curriculum, owing to the struggles for a fairer and more democratic education, there are also spaces of critical hope (Boler, 1999) through non-violent strategies and emotions that are, at least formally, brought into relation with stereotypes and violence. This relation opens the space for a more intensive reflection on the implementation of critical and emotionally oriented education.