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Chapter 6 87 of an individual human being), but this is not necessarily the case. Human flourishing can for example also be regarded as difficult, or even impossible to realise, because one has to be incredibly lucky (for example with the family one is born in, or how healthy one is) to be able to live such a life, regardless of how much ‘effort’ someone has put in. Also, as for example Feder Kittay argues, flourishing can be seen more in the light of coping with adversity, which, although it does emphasise the ‘effort-side’, does not put much stress on one’s ability to actualise one’s individual potential. 2 Chapter 3 discussed current theories on education for flourishing and concluded that these theories are construed around the ideal of human flourishing. This is characteristic of ideal theory, as opposed to nonideal theory, which constructs its theory around the actual situation. In addition to describing the ideal of human flourishing as an aim of education, most theories also theorise about education for flourishing in an ideal-theoretical form. I argue that an exclusive reliance on ideal theory when theorising about education for flourishing is problematic, because (a) it is also important to know how to deal with the ideal when moving to the nonideal level; (b) ideal theory on education for flourishing makes (has to make) assumptions about children’s lives and their chances of receiving good education which do not reflect reality (i.e. they are what Robeyns calls ‘bad idealisations); 3 and (c) ideal theory is often ‘unpopulated’, which raises the question in what sense this theory is applicable to real people. 4 Therefore, to create a better balance, there is a need for nonideal theory on education for flourishing. I have suggested two ways in which this can be done; (1) prioritising theory on the improvement of basic needs over theorising about the ideal education for flourishing, and/or (2) the less radical option of starting from the actual world in theorising what might be ideal. Chapter 4 discussed a good example of a real and actual aspect of the practice of parenthood in relation to theorising flourishing as an aim of education. The chapter argued that parenting inherently involves taking an existential risk (what Bollnow calls a Wagnis ). Contrary to how ‘risk’ usually is interpreted as something that should be avoided, there is a sense in which risk in education is inevitable, namely the way in which parents risk themselves in raising a child (to live a flourishing life). Parents cannot ensure that children will become what the parents had intended in raising them. This does not necessarily mean that when parents fail in raising their children as they had 2 See Feder Kittay 2005. 3 Robeyns 2008. 4 Cigman 2018.