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Chapter 6 96 distinguish between children with more or less good fortune, and more or less chances to compensate bad luck with education. A more radical approach to nonideal theory might ask for a thorough and precise evaluation of what the established (pre)conditions for a flourishing life, as proposed by the theories discussed in this dissertation, really imply for actual children in actual schools in different places in the world. Such research would have to be based on a variety of sociological and psychological research (either already available or conducted for this purpose) about the circumstances of children living in particular environments and how these affect their (school) lives. It would be interesting to link the empirical data to the specific (pre)conditions that have been proposed in current theories on education for flourishing. In this way, it is also possible to empirically test to which extent the idealising assumptions that I have argued to be ‘bad idealisations’ are in fact false assumptions or not. A second potential way of empirically ‘testing’ theoretical work that I would be interested in relates to the findings of chapter 5. It is an interesting question whether actual parents have hopes and/or expectations about their children and their children’s future flourishing life, and to which extent they are made explicit and integrated in their parenting. How are such hopes and expectations articulated? Do actual parents articulate that they do things in order to contribute to their child’s flourishing (or happy) lives? Lareau’s work suggests that parents generally do not have such explicit ideas. 24 Finally, related to these questions, it would also be interesting to explore in what sense parents expect things from themselves, from their children’s schools, or from other professionals with regard to aiming for the future flourishing of their children. This would help to map out in what sense claims about parents are internalized by parents, as Ramaekers and Suissa argued, and whether this is beneficial for both children and parents, or rather problematic, and whether there is indeed a traceable bias related to parents’ social class. 24 Lareau 2011.

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