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Chapter 3 44 this sticking point is given surprisingly little attention by current flourishing theorists. Even White (..) concedes quite readily that a number of the external necessities are “beyond the school’s control”. While that may seem incontestable, it leaves open the question of whether teachers should just bow down, poker faced, to the force of adverse external circumstances impacting on student learning, or whether they should take up arms on students’ behalf. 64 We think that one of the reasons that little attention is paid to this ‘sticking point’ is that the structure of ideal theory gives little reason/leaves little room to address Kristjánsson’s question. By building an educational theory upon minimal yet ideal conditions, the theory either has to continue arguing in the following form: ‘ if the minimal criteria (e.g. White’s basic needs) are met, then children can be equipped for flourishing in such and such a way’ or the theory has to provide separate suggestions as to how the world first has to change in order to make these unequally lucky or unlucky children more equal. 65 As we have discussed above, the translation from the ideal to the nonideal level is not straightforward; we also want to know ‘how to deal with the idealisations when moving to the nonideal level’. 66 Overlooking the type of questions Kristjánsson mentions, questions which address how we should go about moving from ideals to the nonideal level, is to our mind one reason to object against the exclusive use of ideal theory in educational theory on flourishing. Nonideal educational theory on flourishing, on the other hand, would be more inclined to raise the question of how teachers should respond to ‘the force of adverse external circumstances’, because it takes the actual unequal situation of the student in Kristjánsson’s example as a central and starting point. In the next part we will sketch the outlines of theory on education for flourishing that takes the actual as its starting point. Kristjánsson’s point is also interesting regarding a related, but different objection to ideal theory. The specific things that White deems ‘beyond the school’s control’, such as ‘clean air, power, housing, a police force, banks, government’, are idealisations which are needed to construe the theory that is being presented in White, as we have argued for above. 67 These things might indeed not be in the hands of the teacher but they do determine how a particular child from a particular environment arrives at school, and as such are central to the ‘human condition’. We 64 Kristjánsson 2017, p. 94, citing White 2011, p. 30. 65 E.g. White 2011, chapter 15. 66 Robeyns 2008, p. 357. 67 White 2011, p. 30.