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Chapter 6 91 ‘state the obvious’. I believe that it is an important aim of theory on education for flourishing to state the ‘obvious’ point that there is broad agreement in the society that I live in that education is – also – a means to contribute to every child’s (chance of) a good, flourishing life. It is my belief that there is in fact broad, intuitive agreement that one of education’s main purposes is to help children to be better able to cope in the world and live a life of well-being, but in a world preoccupied with efficiency, improvement and protocols this is sometimes forgotten, or interpreted in a too confined way. We tend to not see the wood for the trees, and to remind ourselves of this it is important that theory on flourishing points out the ‘obvious’. However, on a different interpretation of ‘stating the obvious’ one can also argue that substantive accounts of flourishing, such as for example White’s, in fact do not go beyond the ‘obvious’, in the sense that these tend to stick to culturally dominant (psychological) ideas about child-rearing and human development. 12 It is probable, that is, that these conceptions of flourishing make certain implicit cultural assumptions. The sociological research by Annette Lareau cited in chapter 5 exemplifies exactly what I mean by this. Lareau found two dominant cultural repertoires of parenting which she connected to different social classes. 13 Poor and working-class families tend to adhere to a different ‘parenting strategy’ than families from the middle- and upper-class. These differed, but it was clear that both had their own advantages as well as disadvantages. However, Lareau also observed that professionals (teachers, child carers, etc.) tended to endorse the strategies of the middle- and upper-class. Lareau stresses that it would, in any case, be a mistake to ‘accept, carte blanche, the views of officials in dominant institutions’. 14 As discussed in the introduction, I come across a lot of empirical research that aims to contribute to the ‘optimal development’ of children. It typically does so by proposing interventions that are very much in line with what Lareau identified as the dominant cultural repertoire of the middle- and upper-class. Generally, these interventions are based upon (developmental) psychological theories. These are often things that middle-and upper-class parents already tend to do well, and poor and working class parents do not do well, hence: they need the interventions to learn the same methods the middle- and upper-class already use. Examples are: reading to children, parental involvement in school (as described in the introduction), etc. This is not to say that the findings of this empirical research are necessarily wrong, or that such interventions or advice to parents are never needed, but it is to say that it is important to be aware of a possible bias. 15 12 Ramaekers and Suissa 2012. 13 See Lareau 2011. 14 Lareau 2011, p. 13. 15 See also Ramaekers and Suissa 2012, p. 108.