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Chapter 3 41 The actual situation might be different, of course. 46 Actual children have disabilities, or come from violent homes or neighbourhoods. This suggests that these particular examples are a form of ideal theory, because the theory centrally relies on idealising assumptions which depict “the child” as better situated than children in reality are, or can be expected to be. We are not convinced that the other scholars discussed here rely on idealisations in the same manner, they seem to only write about these conditions (health, relationships, etc.) as constituents of flourishing, that is, as part of the ideal they are describing. The ideal as central Another important aspect that overlaps is that the theories start with, and give central weight to, the ideal situation. In White’s 2011 book every chapter comprises a (more) theoretical part and a second part that is called ‘issues for education’, where he discusses the implications of his theory for educational practice. The ideal principles developed in the theory are his starting point. In her 2007 article on ideals and flourishing, De Ruyter does a similar thing. Starting from a general (minimal) principle, namely that children need ideals to flourish, she argues that it is the responsibility of teachers to offer those, because the state cannot be sure that, in practice, parents will do so and/or whether parents will offer the ‘right’ ideals. 47 At first Brighouse seems to take a different course. 48 His introductory chapter starts with the recent strong expectations laid upon schools to ‘make up for the failures of other social institutions’. 49 This implies that the actual situation is taken as a central or starting point. However, this is not the case if one looks at the structure of the rest of the book. As Brighouse explains in the introduction, in part one he ‘elaborate[s] for a set of principles that schools, policymakers, and educators should adopt’, 50 and in the second part the book ‘takes up three concrete policy controversies in the light of the[se] principle[s]’. 51 In general (and this does no justice to the nuances and differences of the diverse books and articles) the authors argue from a set of ideal-theoretical conditions towards what this might imply for either a realistic or an actual educational practice. 46 White (2011) and Reiss and White (2013) do not deny that the actual situation is often suboptimal, which we discuss in the next section. However, that they do so does not alter the fact that the optimal conditions are necessary as idealising assumptions in construing the theory. 47 De Ruyter 2007, p. 34. 48 Brighouse 2006. 49 Ibid., p. 1. 50 Ibid., p. 2. 51 Ibid., p. 5.