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Chapter 3 42 Practice(s) The above discussion does not mean to imply that reality or the actual situation of education receives no attention in the theories. It is acknowledged by all authors in some form or another that the world is not perfect. White, for example, outlines in the 2011 book ‘how the wider society would need to change to bring this [a life of well-being] more within everybody’s reach’. 52 Also, attention is paid to the limitations of the particular agent, as De Ruyter argues that ‘flourishing is a balancing act, in which aspirations are combined with realism, (..) are weighed against each other and (..) are balanced with other values and responsibilities’. 53 Also, there is attention for the practical. For example, Brighouse elaborates on ‘what the education system should do (..) in pursuit of its obligation to prepare children to live flourishing lives’. 54 Brighouse takes the reader step-by-step through the three spheres of the school – the formal, the informal and the hidden curriculum, and elaborates in great detail how things ought to be done differently. Reiss and White take a similar practical approach by asking what the implications for the curriculum of a school are if we take well-being seriously as an overarching aim of education. 55 They argue that usually, in practice, the situation is the other way around, schools accept the current traditionally important subjects (reading, math, biology etc.) and build up a curriculum from this given (a subject-led curriculum). According to Reiss and White aims- based education, i.e. beginning with well-being as the overarching aim of education, leads to different choices, for example to different – new – subjects. These examples indicate that for none of the discussed scholars the nonideal world, i.e. educational practice, is irrelevant, therefore we can conclude that their theorising is not ideal theory in the form of (or analogous to) utopian idealism . 56 However, even though some of these examples are clearly practical, and describe real educational practices, 57 we have not seen examples of what Robeyns calls ‘transition theory’ which attempts to theorise the transition from the actual towards the ideal. 58 The above discussed texts perhaps do not seem to be ideal theory, because they refer to a (nonideal) reality or actual practice, but they still argue from the ideal to the actual, and sometimes on the basis of idealisations. What is important to make clear here is that although real practices are being described, these are not central to the theory. Nonideal theory, to our minds, requires a full integration of the actual into the theory; and transition theory even requires theorising how the actual needs to change in order to move more in the direction of the ideal. 52 White 2011, p. 6. 53 De Ruyter 2012, p. 28. 54 Brighouse 2008, pp. 64-70. 55 Reiss and White 2013. 56 See Schmidtz 2016. 57 Such as Brighouse 2008, and Reiss and White 2013. 58 Robeyns 2008, p. 346.