This paper analyses the emotional governance of responses to terrorist attacks and examines the extent to which affective pedagogies in civic education may contest the emotional norms that are institutionalised in society. This analysis is important, not only because it makes visible how forms of violence (especially terrorism) have an emotional impact on school life, but also in that it adds a crucial dimension to the struggle against sentimental education as a form of political education that governs youth's affects and emotions. The analysis explores these tensions and theorises how affective pedagogies can elicit creative and productive rather than normative becomings within youth practices in the classroom. In particular, the paper discusses how affective pedagogies in civic education may be reframed to cultivate critical affective skills that resist sentimental responses and challenge superficial interpretations of terrorist events. Re-articulating and re-imagining affective responses to terrorist attacks in the civics classroom will open pedagogical spaces that pay more attention to the kind of emotional governance that takes place in schools, politics and the society.