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Chapter 2 30 interchangeably. 74 White uses the word ‘well-being’ as the overarching aim of education in his 2011 book. He proposes that ‘well-being’ is an ideal aim that is intrinsically worthwhile, and although it is sometimes a bit confusing for the reader that besides ‘well-being’ White uses ‘flourishing’ and ‘a flourishing life’ as well, in principle ‘well-being’ and ‘flourishing’ can indeed be used interchangeably (assuming for now that the other criteria are also met). However, Seligman et al. argue not only that well-being ‘can and should be taught’ in schools, but also that the well-being of children can enhance their school performances. 75 In the description of criterion 1, we have written that flourishing is intrinsically worthwhile, and is not pursued in order to reach some other goal. Therefore, it is likely that Seligman et al. mean ‘subjective well-being’ here (which might indeed contribute to better performances at school), and that in this case well-being and flourishing cannot be used interchangeably. Due to the confines of this article, we are only able to hint in the direction of an answer to why flourishing is defended as an aim of education, but one thing that we think has become clear is that striving for a flourishing life is a lifelong journey in which one keeps asking what might bring out the best in oneself. As we have written, flourishing is characterised by ongoing development, striving and effort to sustain it. We think that one of the reasons of using the concept of flourishing as an aim of education is the emphasis on development and the development of objectively good capacities. This appeals to a strong intuition of educators to want for children that ‘they make something out of their life’. As said before, this distinguishes flourishing from currently popular conceptions of happiness that seem only to require that people ‘feel good’ about what they are doing, whatever it is that they are doing. Another, related, reason might be that ‘flourishing’ inevitably puts an ethical question in the centre of educational theory by asking what those ‘good’ capacities could be, and who can judge whether they are really ‘good’. But, is this not asking too much of children, risking to turn them into stressful, unhappy overachievers? Should we not just try to equip children to have a nice life, and focus on being satisfied with whatever it is that happens to them in life (be happy with it)? We don’t think so. We believe that flourishing is worth defending as an aim of education, because we do think it important for both educators and children to have high aims, so that educators will strive to create the optimal conditions for children, and for children to get the best chance to develop themselves towards the ideal of an optimal life. We side with Emmet where she argues that regulative ideals, impossible as they may seem or are to realise, give us direction in life. 76 However, we do understand that the open, formal criteria that we have proposed might invoke connotations of competitiveness or 74 For example in White 2011; Keyes 2007; Fredrickson and Losada 2005; Seligman et al. 2009. 75 Seligman et al. 2009, p. 302. 76 Emmet 1994, but see also Frankfurt 1999 and De Ruyter 2007 on the importance of ideals.