The proper scope of education for flourishing

Abstract

The concept of flourishing has recently come into vogue within various areas of the humanities and social sciences (e.g. philosophy, psychology, economics, health, education). This article focuses on its potential role within education, where the retrieval of flourishing has perhaps been most visible of all the recent areas of interest, setting in motion what some have called a ‘flourishing bandwagon’. This bandwagon has blazed a trail for the somewhat radical view that flourishing can be seen not only as a significant aim, but even the central aim, of all educational endeavours. Recent criticisms of the flourishing view focus on its potential vacuity and its unhelpful conflation of general and laudable, but uneducable, socio-political and psycho-moral aims with educable ones, hence placing unreasonable burdens on practitioners. After providing a brief historical and conceptual backdrop, this article aims at fleshing out and finessing the scope of education for flourishing and, hence at responding to the recent critics. This is done inter alia through an analogy with health where a similar theoretical problem beckons about possible conceptual underpopulations and overpopulations of the content of the aim of health itself.

1. Introduction: aims, scope, motivation, and some historical background

The concept of flourishing (eudaimonia) has recently come into vogue within various areas of the humanities and social sciences (philosophy, psychology, economics, health sciences, education) after playing only a marginal role since its halcyon days within ancient theorizing about the good life (in particular, Aristotle 1985). This article focuses on the potential role of flourishing within education, bringing insights from the other disciplines to bear only insofar as those have potential educational implications. Indeed, within education the retrieval of flourishing has perhaps been the most visible of all the recent areas of interest, setting in motion what some have called a ‘flourishing bandwagon’ (Kristjánsson 2020). This bandwagon has blazed a trail for the somewhat radical view that flourishing can be seen not only as a significant aim, but even the central aim, of all educational endeavours (see e.g. Curren et al. 2024).

What is motivating this recent revival of flourishing? Philosophers may be tempted to say that the springboard lies in the revival of virtue ethics within moral philosophy (Anscombe 1958; MacIntyre 1981) and the simultaneous setback for instrumentalist cost–benefit analyses of the utilitarian kind (Weber 1949; Mill 1972), as well as formalistic deontological (rule-based) procedures emphasizing purely rational decision-making (Kant 1964; Kohlberg 1981). Educationists will no doubt add the insight that the recently fashionable approach of character education—as the educational incarnation of virtue ethics (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues 2022)—has inspired the flourishing agenda, because the foundational concept of character education, harking back to Aristotle, is actually flourishing rather than (good) character. Psychologists may then refer to the recent rise of interest within their discipline in constructs of character and virtues (Peterson and Seligman 2004; Wright et al. 2021; Fowers et al. 2024) and a morally imbued concept of wisdom (Grossmann et al. 2020; Kristjánsson and Fowers 2024), all of which require an overall objective conception of a good life.

There would no doubt be a grain of truth in all those explanations. However, academics have a tendency to overestimate the influence of theoretical paradigm shifts on educational policy and practice. The educational reforms of the 19th century and the spread of public education in the West had, for instance, arguably less to do with the educational ideas of Wollstonecraft, Rousseau, Locke, and Kant than the impact of the Industrial Revolution and its economic ramifications. Similarly, the recent reimagining of educational goals along the line of flourishing is not primarily to be understood as an upshot of the resuscitation of virtue ethics and character education in academia, although it has also played a part (VanderWeele 2017; Kristjánsson 2020). The roots arguably lie, rather, in deep and growing disillusionment among educational policymakers, politicians, educators, and to some extent the general public with dominant ideals concerning the aims of education.

‘Ideologies’ might be a more felicitous term than ‘ideals’ here, for views about the aims of education often assume the form of interrelated networks of ideas and ideals, rooted in historically conditioned socio-cultural contexts. It should be noted that when we speak of the ‘aims of education’, the focus is not on the specific goals of a given class or a school subject. It would be somewhat odd, for example, to claim that the aim of an algebra class is human flourishing (though see Su 2020). Rather, what is being referred to is something along the lines of the ultimate aim, or ‘the ungrounded grounder’, of all systematic educational efforts. Terms such as ‘central purpose’ or ‘overall regulative ideal’ are also sometimes used here interchangeably, although they may have different connotations (de Ruyter and Wolbert 2020; de Ruyter et al. 2022). The idea is that if we enquire further into why the student is meant to be learning algebra—that is, what it is for—and continue to ask ‘but why is that educationally important?’, we end up sooner or later with a ‘grounder’ where the further question ‘yes, but why is that important?’ does not make any sense anymore for those who share the vision of the given justification as psycho-morally or socio-politically foundational.

To be sure, some have argued that education does not need any foundational ‘aims’ on this understanding (Standish 1999), or that it has numerous irreducibly pluralistic aims (Siegel 2024). Nevertheless, each historical era tends to be characterized by an answer to this question that is monistic in a sense that implicitly shapes educational policy and practice. The medieval era in Europe was, for instance, typified by a classical conception of education, according to which its main aim is epistemic and intrinsic: knowledge for knowledge’s sake (and that included knowledge of God and a divine plan for humankind), irrespective of any instrumentalist benefits. This classical conception did not mesh well, however, with the post-Enlightenment secularization of the West and the mass expansion of educational opportunities, resources, and aspirations in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.

During the 20th century, a new monistic view of the fundamental aim of education emerged, which can be helpfully referred to under the label ‘human capital theory’: a term that fully took hold in the 1960s (see e.g. Ergas et al. 2022). According to this theory, human skills, which are to be cultivated in education, form capital that aids production and has double benefits: for society (increased gross national product) and the individual (employability and higher wages). Although these may seem to be distinct aims, they are interwoven through the instrumentalist credo that the sole aim of education is the advancement of economically beneficial human capital. This view of the central purpose of education—while always controversial in academic circles—began to come under heavy public criticism at the turn of the 21st century. It is difficult to identify all the reasons for this pushback, but a few scattered suggestions can be made:

• Increased worries about human capital theory being incompatible with the proclamation in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that all children have a right to education (irrespective of their economic input).

• Concerns about the effects of unbridled economic growth on the environment, social cohesion, and political equity.

• Projections about most skills learned at school becoming outdated soon, as we enter the age of automation and artificial intelligence where machines do a lot of manual and even information-processing work.

• The mental health crisis among young people, hitting as hard, or even harder, at economically and educationally advanced nations—and sometimes related to ever more competitive high-stakes testing.

Whatever the exact reasons (possibly a combination of those and many more), educational authorities around the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the human capital theory. Moreover, this disillusionment has been most strongly expressed by some of the countries that tend to score highest in international PISA tests, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Finland (Stevenson 2022).¹ Arguably, therefore, the recent turn towards flourishing as a new monistic model of the central aim of education (including by some of the most powerful international policymakers; see e.g. de Ruyter et al.’s 2022 UNESCO report and Stevenson’s 2022 report for the OECD)—although coinciding with a turn towards flourishing in academic circles—must be understood more as a groundswell of scepticism towards the human capital theory in political and policy-making circles than as a direct implication of developments within philosophy and psychology.

While ‘flourishing as the aim of education’ has become the rallying cry of various educational political activists, along with academics and educators, there is reason to worry that the advocates are promoting a plethora of heterogeneous ideas under the label of ‘flourishing’ rather than a single ideal. As happens with any new paradigm, critics have also arisen of late, taking the flourishing ideal to task (Carr 2021; Hand 2024; Siegel 2024), although none of them recommends a return to either the medieval conception or the instrumentalist human capital one. Section 2 explores those recent criticisms and offers some responses to them. What stands out, however, is that current accounts of the new flourishing view have not elaborated with sufficient specificity the proper scope of ‘education for flourishing’. While those accounts have shown some concern with not underpopulating the concept, they may have gone too far towards the other extreme of overpopulating it (e.g., by not making a clear enough distinction between ‘general flourishing’ and ‘education for flourishing’) and hence made the ideal politically infeasible and practically overtaxing for educators. By drawing an analogy with a similar problem regarding the aim of ‘health’ (VanderWeele 2024), Section 3 aims to spell out a proper scope of ‘education for flourishing’ and hence to defuse the most powerful current criticism. Section 4 concludes with some practical implications of this conceptual undertaking.

Before proceeding with our argument, let us reiterate that the flourishing view is about flourishing as an overarching educational aim or ideal. Although, according to this view, all education should ideally aim at flourishing, this does not mean that all flourishing is educable. It goes without saying that an account of an educational aim or ideal is logically limited to what can be taught and learned (Hand 2024). For instance, although we may agree that deep love and affection are vital ingredients in flourishing, this does not mean that, according to the flourishing view, those attitudes and affections must, or even can, be taught in schools (although students may learn indirectly about their value through reading good literature, for instance). Despite acknowledging the fact that the flourishing view is about the educable subset of flourishing only—and also granting that the distinction between flourishing as an overall aim of life versus an overall aim of education has often not been carefully made in the relevant literatures (Siegel 2024)—we do not have space here to explore historically why theorists have undertheorized the relationship between general accounts of the good life and accounts of the aims of education. Even if one acknowledges that flourishing or some other account of well-being is fit as the aim of living well, one could still coherently posit a much more specific goal for education, such as autonomy, critical thinking, or economic prosperity. As educated guesses, we hypothesize that most Aristotelians (and that includes the historical Aristotle himself) have simply taken it for granted since eudaimonia is the aim of life, as argued by Aristotle (1985), and education is preparation for a good life, education must have the same overarching aim. For social scientists promoting flourishing as the aim of education, such as Seligman (2011), who want to get rid of philosophers’ normative baggage, the idea is rather that what is desirable as the end of an activity is what happens to be universally desired as that end—and it transpires that when we ask parents and teachers, they typically say that the aim of education is to help children thrive, in an objective as well as subjective sense, and hence, to flourish. For further enlightenment on those questions, we refer readers to already existing writings on the different value commitments of different accounts of flourishing, historically and into modernity (e.g. Kristjánsson 2020; de Ruyter et al. 2022).

2. Criticisms of the flourishing agenda

The flourishing agenda itself is still too new and underdeveloped to have yet elicited substantial criticism, although that is now beginning to change. Before addressing directly three recent criticisms of the flourishing view (Carr 2021; Hand 2024; Siegel 2024), we wish to acknowledge two different ways of interpreting them. On the first understanding, the three critics are making substantively different points and no purpose is served in collapsing them together. On the second understanding, which happens to be ours, it is more instructive to see them as variations on the same theme, expressed at descending levels of specificity. Carr’s ‘vacuity’ objection, which we address last, articulates the most general worry: that accounts of flourishing as the aim of education are bound to be irretrievably bland and vague. What Hand calls Siegel’s ‘missing argument’ objection urges that while there may be respectable accounts of flourishing as the aim of human life in general, no successful attempts have been made to argue that flourishing can, equally respectably, be seen as the aim of education. Finally, Hand’s ‘unlearnability’ objection insists even if serious attempts have been made to articulate the view of flourishing as the aim of education, they all make the fatal mistake of conflating learnable educational goals with unlearnable ones, with the latter being outside the purview of educational practice. For us, this series of criticism indicates a hierarchy of concerns about flourishing not being fit for purpose, applying arguments of increasing specificity.

2.1. The ‘missing argument’ and ‘unlearnability’ objections

Let us now explore those criticisms in more detail, in a way that sets the scene for our discussion and riposte in Section 3. Harvey Siegel (2024) argues that proponents of the standard approaches to flourishing as an educational concept have failed to motivate the step in their argument in which they move from flourishing as the aim of the good human life to flourishing as the more specific aim of education—or, indeed, that this step is wholly missing. While it seems a reasonable and respectable thing to say that the overall aim of human life is to achieve some sort of well-being, it sounds less plausible to Siegel to claim that education has the same overarching goal, when the more natural thing to say is that it has a plurality of more lower-ordered goals, such as the promotion of creativity or the fostering of critical thinking. Siegel is sceptical that all these goals can be subsumed under one umbrella, of flourishing, since they resemble more an extended family—each with its own characteristics and justifications (epistemic, moral, social, political) and only connected by family resemblances—rather than a unifiable set of features that all fit under one umbrella. He does not, in principle, exclude the possibility that flourishing somehow unifies them all as an educational concept; he simply claims that this argument is yet to be made by proponents of the flourishing view. He also worries, more specifically, that many of the components of flourishing mentioned by those proponents ‘are only loosely connected with education, and education is seemingly at most a small factor in bringing them about’. This specific complaint builds a bridge to Hand’s (2024) criticism explained below but let us focus on the more general worry first.

Siegel is quite right—as we acknowledged at an earlier juncture—that the original contributors to the flourishing discourse in education, namely the Aristotelians, have failed to make an explicit argument motivating the step from ‘the overall aim of life’ to ‘the overall aim of education’. This is because, in Aristotelian ethical theory, ‘education’ is understood broadly as the process of learning to fulfil one’s human potential. It is not confined to school and university education only but to the whole of one’s life, as a lifelong learner. There is thus a conceptual link built into general Aristotelian virtue ethics between the telos of life and of education. This assumption seems somehow to have surreptitiously trickled down into other main variants of the flourishing view, although none of them accepts Aristotle’s teleology; indeed, they would emphatically reject it (see e.g. Seligman 2011). So Siegel is right in spotting an argumentative lacuna, which needs to be filled, in many of those approaches.

As we understand it, Michael Hand (2024) picks up the thread from Siegel but takes it further. He weaves together a number of different arguments that ideally need to be kept separate. One argument is that extending the remit of teachers as drastically as some flourishing enthusiasts suggest does not just put further pressure on an overburdened profession, it makes the job quite impossible. Hand also argues that flourishing is but one contestable conception of the good, and there is no decisive reason to favour it over the alternatives. Even if that were true, however, it is not as if we can just do away with the flourishing view and rest content with the current incontestable conception that guides education: namely, the human capital theory (which obviously is highly contestable). Education will always be guided by some theory of the good.² Even if we accept the liberal premise that no decisive arguments can be produced to favour one comprehensive theory of the good over another, we are still forced to come up with some plausible arguments to justify the theory about the aim of education that is in place, or some alternative; there is no neutral incontestable space here. We cannot just sit on the fence.

Hand makes a more powerful argument (the ‘unlearnability’ objection), on the other hand, which targets the flourishing view specifically. He points out that a desirable attribute, quality, or state can only be adopted as an aim of education if it is the sort of attribute, quality, or state that can be acquired by learning. The problem he notes, however, is that on any plausible account of human flourishing, it is not a state of being that can be acquired by learning. To be sure, some of the necessary conditions of flourishing, for instance, a range of moral, intellectual, and executive virtues are things that can be learned. No theorist of flourishing has maintained, however, that a full set of virtues is sufficient for flourishing. Various political steps need to be taken also. But those steps are not primarily educational ones, and nothing an individual learns will inoculate them against the misfortunes that can prevent flourishing. In sum, then, because educators can help only with goods of the learnable/educable kind, flourishing cannot serve as an aim of education.

It may seem as if Hand is failing to take notice of a distinction that proponents of the flourishing agenda typically make between preconditions and constituents of flourishing (Kristjánsson 2020). However, that distinction does not suffice to rebut his objection, because some of the constituents of flourishing that these proponents often mention are not, strictly speaking, educable: for example, the role of educational institutions in increasing social mobility. So we need to make a further distinction between the institutional/political aims of education and the aims of educational practice within the classroom (Maritain 1943). Typically, proponents of the flourishing view have both understandings in mind when they talk about the central aim of education. Regarding the latter aims only (educational practice within the classroom), most flourishing theorists have arguably not committed the conceptual fallacy of which Hand accuses them. Claiming that flourishing is the central aim of classroom education is not tantamount to claiming that such education can ever be sufficient for flourishing. The goals of learning can only encompass the learnable, the goals of education the educable. We think most flourishing proponents have taken those truths for granted and have therefore failed to argue for them explicitly. However, such an argument cannot be avoided with impunity.

All in all, some components of flourishing (1) can be enhanced through educational policies; some (2) are learnable through classroom activities; some (3) are outside the sphere of formal educational systems altogether. Hand’s criticism has been helpful in reminding us of the need to make those distinctions. Most of the flourishing literature has failed to honour them, much to its detriment, as Hand notes. We try to make amends in Section 3.

2.2. The ‘vacuity’ objection

David Carr (2021) mounts by far the most radical counter-argument against the flourishing view, in the sense that it cuts to the quick of many of the substantive assumptions that lie at the heart of it. Carr directs his animadversions mainly at the original Aristotelian approach, but given that this approach is the historical originator of all flourishing approaches to education, Carr’s critique indirectly hits at other approaches also, especially those drawing upon the Aristotelian character virtues as essential parts of flourishing (e.g. VanderWeele 2017).

Carr’s criticisms are related to what we have earlier called the ‘blandness’ objection (Kristjánsson 2020): namely, the objection that flourishing approaches to education stand in danger of becoming overly bland, uninformative, or even fully subjectivist. Kristjánsson’s book offered various correctives to the blandness problem. Carr’s ‘vacuity’ objection magnifies the concern further until it clashes with most of the assumptions undergirding Aristotelian or quasi-Aristotelian approaches to character, practical wisdom (phronesis), and flourishing.

This position may seem surprising since Carr is the academic father of Aristotelian character education in the UK and can thus, implicitly at least, be named as one of the godfathers of the flourishing view (see e.g. Carr 2012). That Carr has changed his mind on most of the Aristotelian assumptions he earlier endorsed is noteworthy, to say the least. He now believes that ‘the currently vaunted notion of flourishing is trivial to the point of vacuity and can therefore serve no useful (theoretical) educational purpose’ (Carr 2021: 391). He specifically argues that given ‘the hopeless particularity and contingency of all possible human trajectories for faring well or otherwise, it is hard to see what might be illuminated or gained regarding education, curriculum development, or pedagogy’ (p. 395). Along the way, Carr rejects character as irreducibly subjective, phronesis as hopelessly indeterminate as a decision procedure, and learning from personal and literary exemplars (once his favourite method of moral learning) as morally dubious and unstable.

Carr’s paper is a must-read for all serious participants in the flourishing discourse of late: a whetstone upon which to sharpen the contemporary arguments. We choose to understand his ‘vacuity’ objection for present purposes as a more radical generalization of the thrust of the ‘missing argument’ and ‘unlearnability’ objections above. As long as the scope of education for flourishing remains unspecified, accounts of education for flourishing can be as narrow or broad as anyone happens to like—to the point of vacuity. The problem with this objection, however, is that, although published in 2021, Carr fails to engage with the attempts by flourishing theorists, including the present authors (VanderWeele 2017; Kristjánsson 2020), to imbue the flourishing concept with the specificity needed to parry the ‘vacuity’ objection. One critic has even scorned Kristjánsson’s view for its obsessive attention to detail in setting out the contours of flourishing, resembling ‘the fine print in an insurance document’ (Haldane 2020). It may well be that these authors and others have not been successful in identifying the precise components of flourishing in education, but it seems uncharitable to accuse them of being vague and bland—without offering a substantive critique of their specific proposals.

All that said, we share Carr’s underlying worry that the flourishing agenda might achieve nothing except perpetuating an already floating set of liberal ideological commitments in our schools. The whole flourishing argument, as Carr sees it, is about changing a bit of the rhetoric surrounding the aims of schooling, without actually changing anything about it substantively or materially. We hope there is more to it than that, but school reform carries a long history of disappointments. We will return to each of these objections below after we discuss, with greater precision, what we see as the proper scope of the notion of education for flourishing.

3. Mapping out the scope of education for flourishing

As noted in the critiques of education for flourishing above, it would seem that proposing that education addresses all aspects of flourishing is far too broad a scope, placing unrealistic demands on teachers and educational leaders and failing to acknowledge the role of other institutions and communities in the life of students. On the other hand, proposing that educational systems only address narrower cognitive and epistemic aims seems too restrictive and does not properly acknowledge the profound effect that teachers and educational leaders can have on shaping students’ character, and sense of purpose, and their social relations with both fellow students and others. The proper scope of the extent to which a formal educational system ought to aim to promote flourishing arguably lies somewhere in between these two poles, acknowledging both the possibilities and the limitations of what can be accomplished by schools and teachers. Unquestionably, the cognitive and epistemic aims of education are central and enhance flourishing of students both immediately, in equipping them with capacities and knowledge which are constitutive of flourishing, and also in enabling future flourishing of students in the employment of such knowledge and capacities towards other goals, pursuits, and ends. However, given the possibilities of education to also shape character, purpose, and relationships, the purview of education for flourishing should arguably not be restricted to only education’s cognitive and epistemic aims.

We would propose, and will attempt to defend the position below, that the scope of flourishing towards which a school or university educational system should aim is (1) the developing of students’ knowledge, understanding, and the cognitive skills and epistemic virtues that facilitate knowledge and understanding, all of which enable present and future student flourishing and also (2) the promotion of those aspects of student flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained, and which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address. The first part of this thesis seems relatively uncontroversial. The second part, however, is in need of further exposition and defence.

This second part is intended to take seriously both the potential and the limitations of what an educational system can achieve, and also the plurality of understandings of flourishing. Given this plurality of understandings, an educational system, we argue, should aim principally at promoting those aspects of flourishing around which there is consensus. Depending on the level of education that is in view, that consensus should pertain to teachers, educational leaders, parents, and, when age-appropriate, students. However, we believe that the potential for such consensus is in fact reasonably broad and may include, for example, various aspects of well-being such as happiness, health, purpose, character, good relationships, and capacity for financial self-sufficiency (VanderWeele 2017). These are aspects of well-being to which most people in most cultures have aspired, and around which consensus might be sought.

These various facets of well-being above are by no means exhaustive of all that might be constituted by flourishing but are arguably an important part of it and worth pursuing. Nevertheless, the actual pursuit of, and consensus concerning these ends is not entirely straightforward. While some degree of consensus may be possible that happiness, health, purpose, character, and relationships are worthy pursuits, there may not be complete consensus around how these various aspects of well-being are in fact understood. There may also not be complete consensus around what constitutes good character, even if there is broad historical consensus around the importance of some of the various virtues constituting good character (Dahlsgaard et al. 2005; McGrath 2015) such as a sense of justice, or gratitude, or creativity. In particular, there may be disagreement regarding the prioritization of virtue groups (intellectual, moral, civic, performative) or of discrete virtues within a group (say, compassion versus justice), and whether there exist any ‘master’ or ‘meta’ virtues for adjudication (Wright et al. 2021; Fowers et al. 2024). There may also not be consensus around comprehensive systems of meaning, even if there is consensus that students should develop a sense of purpose and broader life aims.

Our proposal then would in part be that educational systems restrict attention to those aspects of flourishing around which consensus can be attained. The extent of the consensus possible will inevitably vary by the nature of the educational system under consideration and by the cultural context. A broader consensus may be possible in more homogeneous, versus more pluralistic, countries and cultures. A broader consensus will likely be possible in certain religious schools versus state or public educational systems.³ However, our proposal advances the notion that it is those aspects of flourishing around which general consensus can be attained that ought to be the principal focus of education for flourishing. This will almost inevitably include the cognitive and epistemic aims of education, as per the first part of our thesis, but arguably, in most contexts, it will also extend to various aspects of happiness, health, purpose, character, social relationships, and financial self-sufficiency.⁴ Nevertheless, we take the view that the restriction to those aspects of flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained is important. It is important so that these efforts to promote flourishing that extend beyond education’s cognitive and epistemic aims receive adequate support and are not inordinately resisted. It is also important because if there is not such broad consensus among educators, parents, and possibly also students, then resistance to such aims is likely to result in a further narrowing of the scope of education for flourishing, possibly resulting in its reduction, once again, to simply the cognitive and epistemic aims themselves.

As already explained, in the second part of our thesis we propose the restriction that the scope of education for flourishing be focused on those aspects of flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained. However, this is not the only proposed restriction in the second part of our thesis. We propose also that education for flourishing be further restricted to those aspects of flourishing ‘which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address’. Simply because there is broad consensus that physical health or good relationships are ends around which there is near-universal consensus of their importance does not entail that they are within the purview of what an educational system ought to seek to bring about, focus on, or maximize. With regard to the end of physical health, for example, the teacher’s role is not the same as the physician’s, and the educational system is in no way interchangeable with the institutions of public health and medicine. Each has its own role and domain of expertise. The teacher, or other members of the educational system, may at times take on roles that extend beyond education’s cognitive and epistemic aims, to provide physical or psychological care, or advice, or character formation, or may have dedicated members who provide some of these services, but this will not be so at all times, in all places, and for all persons. The educational system has as its primary means of enhancing flourishing its own particular cognitive and epistemic aims.

Yet the very fact that the teacher does at times take on these roles, or that members of the educational system may provide such services, does suggest some role, within education, for contributing to these more diverse aspects of flourishing. Our proposal then is that the educational system contribute towards those aspects of flourishing which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address. Such preparedness arguably involves both a willingness to make such contributions and the skills and resources needed to do so. The implied scope of this specification will thus vary by context, and by teacher, and by the resources available within a given system. Some educational systems may have resources that are sufficient to carry out more extensive programmes on, say, character development or on nutrition than others. Some schools may have the facilities or the expertise to offer more extensive athletic, or financial management programmes than others. Some teachers may be better prepared to address various aspects of a student’s sense of purpose or character development than others. Some teachers may be better prepared to assist students with matters of health than others. The specification that education focus on those aspects of flourishing which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address thus aims at not placing undue burden on teachers and educational leaders, but rather at acknowledging both their potential contributions and their limitations.

Importantly, however, the capacities of an educational system, and the aspects of flourishing ‘which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address’ are not fixed constants. They can be changed by the provision of additional resources; they can be changed by the development and implementation of new programmes; they can be changed by the training of teachers (Higgins 2011). In some ways, then, the proposal that education focuses on those aspects of flourishing ‘which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address’ is an aspirational specification. By better resources and better training, the proper scope of education for flourishing can be expanded. This will be especially important in the following section when considering possible inequalities that might arise from making flourishing the aim of education.

Because of the aspirational aspect, the second restriction that we have suggested in the second part of our thesis concerning the scope of education for flourishing is perhaps not as severe as it might first seem, since the nature of the restriction is itself malleable. Nevertheless, we believe this restriction is important. It is important in not placing undue burden on teachers and educational leaders. It is important in acknowledging not only the potentialities but also the limitations of teachers and leaders, both in terms of expertise and capacities to enhance flourishing and in terms of time available to do so. This latter point concerning time will be of special relevance when we consider, in the next section, the potential trade-off between pursuing education’s cognitive and epistemic aims versus the broader aims of flourishing.

In any case, in summary, our proposal is that the proper scope of education for flourishing concerns the developing of students’ knowledge, understanding, and the cognitive skills and epistemic virtues that facilitate knowledge and understanding along with the promotion of those aspects of student flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained, and which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address. This is again broader than simply education’s cognitive and epistemic aims, but narrower than all of flourishing.

Arguably, with the scope of education for flourishing specified in this manner, many of the objections that have been raised concerning the notion of education for flourishing can be addressed. For instance, our position helps address objections concerning the plurality of conceptions about what is good (Hand 2024) by focusing upon those aspects of flourishing around which consensus can be attained. We believe our position addresses the ‘unlearnability’ objection (Hand 2024) by focusing on those aspects of flourishing for which education can properly make a contribution. We believe our position addresses the ‘vacuity’ objection (Carr 2021) by specifying more precisely the proper scope of education for flourishing. We believe our position addresses the objection that flourishing is too broad an aim to provide unity to education’s lower-order goals and activities (Siegel 2024) by properly emphasizing and prioritizing the cognitive and epistemic aims of education, though not restricting scope to only these aspects of flourishing. Finally, we believe our position addresses the objection that flourishing makes educators’ jobs impossible (Hand 2024) by focusing on those aspects of flourishing which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address.

Our proposal about the proper scope of education for flourishing might perhaps be yet further supported by drawing an analogy with the proper scope of clinical medicine (VanderWeele 2024). The primary focus of medicine is the health of the body. This is what clinicians are principally trained for and prepared to address. And yet an exclusive focus on the health of the body seems too narrow a scope of medicine. Many medical decisions have implications for other aspects of human life. Side effects of treatments and medications can sometimes alter one’s capacity to pursue work, or affect the nature of one’s relationships, or have significant implications for life experience and happiness. There may be trade-off between longevity and years of disease-free survival, on the one hand, and quality of life on the other. The ends of health and those of other aspects of flourishing such as happiness, relationships, or meaning can sometimes come into conflict. It would seem appropriate then for clinicians to take into account these other aspects of flourishing and not focus solely upon the health of the body. And yet, all of flourishing is arguably far too broad a scope for the practice of medicine. The clinician, like the teacher, is not interchangeable with a marital counsellor, or a priest, or a life coach. One might once again propose that the proper purview of medicine lies somewhere in between these two poles of the health of the body on the one hand and the whole of flourishing on the other. One of us has elsewhere (VanderWeele et al. 2019a; VanderWeele et al. 2019b; VanderWeele 2024) proposed that the proper purview of medicine concerns the health of the body, and also those aspects of flourishing that are affected by decisions concerning health of the body. This broadens the focus considerably from only the health of the body to numerous aspects of flourishing that are important to patients and important in patient decision-making. And yet it also keeps the scope sufficiently narrow so as to not inappropriately suggest that the clinician be responsible for somehow maximizing all aspects of patient flourishing. Analogously, the proper scope of education for flourishing includes the cognitive and epistemic aims that sustain such flourishing but arguably extends beyond these to include those aspects of flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained, and which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address.

4. Practical implications

If, as we propose, the scope of education for flourishing pertains to those aspects of flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained, and which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address, this will almost inevitably entail that some schools and some educational systems will be better prepared than others to promote student flourishing. Often, it will be those schools with the greatest resources, both in terms of teacher ability and financial resources, that have the capacity to address the broadest range of aspects of well-being. If this is so, then the expansion of education’s scope beyond its cognitive and epistemic aims has the potential to further exacerbate inequalities, as it may lead to the heightening of not only cognitive and epistemic disparities, but also differences in other aspects of flourishing as well. To address this, it would of course be important that additional resources be devoted to supporting programmes that enhance student well-being precisely in those settings in which existing resources and teachers are most constrained. Programmes specifically focused on character development, social-emotional learning, well-being enhancement, or practical skills like nutrition and financial management could potentially be implemented in more impoverished schools, not as responsibilities of the teachers in classrooms, but as a supplement provided by others. The practical implementation of such systems would inevitably need to take into account the context, but if a broader approach of education for flourishing is not to exacerbate existing inequalities, special effort will need to be made to provide support to those schools most in need, not only in the pursuit of their cognitive and epistemic aims, but also towards the promotion of those aspects of flourishing that extend beyond those aims.

We believe it is worthwhile trying to push towards as broad a consensus around flourishing as is possible to attain. This extends to at least certain aspects of happiness, health, purpose, character, social relationships, and financial self-sufficiency (VanderWeele 2017). Even on a facet of well-being such as character that seems, on the face of it, somewhat fraught within the context of pluralistic Western societies, more consensus may be attainable than it may at first seem (McGrath 2015; VanderWeele 2022). While objections are sometimes made that, in a pluralistic society, we will not be able to attain agreement concerning character, these claims are arguably exaggerated. Historical and cultural surveys have indicated that almost all cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions have placed value on character (Dahlsgaard et al. 2005). Moreover, there is broad consensus across cultures and traditions on many of the specific character strengths as being good and desirable: Dahlsgaard et al. (2005) indicate that among these are courage, justice, humanity, temperance, wisdom, and transcendence (understood as aspirations to higher ideals that go beyond self-interest). It would, for example, be rather unusual to find someone who did not want to possess courage, practical wisdom, or justice (Kristjánsson 2015: Chapter 2; VanderWeele 2022). These may not be exceptionless regularities, but these specific character strengths, for example, are nearly universally desired. We do not want to pretend that the matter of character education in the context of a pluralistic society is straightforward, only that it is worth working on, and that the best way to do so is by seeking consensus, and as broad a consensus as possible.

The challenge of attaining consensus also points towards possibilities for more specialized or parochial (e.g. religious) systems of education. As noted above, we believe that even in state education the scope of education for flourishing extends considerably beyond education’s cognitive and epistemic aims. And we believe also that the potential for consensus may be considerable. There are, however, limits. In the context of a pluralistic society, it is unlikely, for example, that there will be consensus on spiritual or religious aspects of well-being. One might still take knowledge of world religions as an important epistemic aim of state education, but this is very different, for example, from spiritual formation which would effectively presuppose a particular set of religious or spiritual commitments. Such spiritual formation is arguably a part of ‘education’, understood in its very broadest sense of any process by which a human person is shaped and led towards fulfilment (Maritain 1943), but will in general extend beyond what is appropriate for state education in the context of a pluralistic society. That such spiritual formation is nevertheless arguably a part of education understood in its broadest sense points towards the possibilities of education for flourishing in religious schools or more specialized school systems. We would maintain that for religious schools, our specification of the scope of education for flourishing as pertaining to ‘those aspects of flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained, and which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address’ is still applicable, but that in such school settings, the consensus that it is possible to attain will be more expansive since, in such schools, the understanding of a person’s spiritual well-being will be more likely to be shared. Notably, whether this contributes to flourishing in various ways is an empirical question that requires evidence. A greater ease of application because of shared values does not necessarily translate into greater flourishing.

We have proposed that education seek to promote those aspects of flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained, and which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address. This is of course not all aspects of flourishing. Teachers and educational leaders are not prepared to address all aspects of flourishing, nor will they ever be, nor will they ever have time. However, efforts to accomplish, and subsequently assess, this broader notion of education for flourishing are likely to benefit the lives of many students (see also VanderWeele and Hinton 2024, for a corresponding assessment framework for education for flourishing). As noted above, there may well be important aspects of flourishing for which it is not possible to attain consensus. All of this points towards the need also of other persons and communities to help promote the formation and flourishing of students in ways that extend beyond what is possible for the formal school and university educational systems to do. School and university education is not responsible for, and is not sufficient for, all aspects of student flourishing. For this, we need also families, communities, neighbourhoods, religious organizations, and other institutions. Each of these plays an important role in promoting the flourishing of students and the formation of persons.

5. Concluding remark

In summary, we have argued that situating the aim of education for flourishing between the poles of (1) focusing exclusively on cognitive and epistemic goals, or (2) expansively on all of flourishing, helps address some of the objections to the notion of education for flourishing that have been put forward recently in the literature. We believe that specifying the proper scope of education for flourishing provides motivation to expand efforts to promote student flourishing; gives insight as to how inequalities may arise and may need to be addressed; points towards the need for, but also the limits of, attaining consensus around our understandings of flourishing in a pluralistic context; and thereby also points towards the need for other communities and institutions, and possible partnerships with them, in the promotion of flourishing and the educational formation of persons.

Footnotes

1

PISA stands for Programme for International Student Assessment. This is a test given every three years to 15-year-old students in countries participating in the OECD. Notably, Finland is no longer the highest scoring country in Europe, having been superseded by Estonia.

2

That said, a theory of flourishing as the aim of education is, arguably, more flexible and context-dependent than the human capital theory, and there might be a case for arguing that it is not ‘comprehensive’ in the same sense.

3

Home-schooling might be viewed as an extreme case of the relative ease of attaining broad consensus, though in home-schooling arrangements involving multiple families the challenge of attaining consensus arises again.

4

Empirical research from the UK indicates, for instance, that the purported dissonance in views about the aims of education between parents and teachers may be grossly exaggerated and mainly based on mutual misunderstandings (Harrison et al. 2022).