Ideals, Education, and Happy Flourishing

In this essay, Doret J. de Ruyter defends the claim that parents as well as professional educators need to impart ideals to children in order to realize their wish that children become happy and flourishing adults. The argument consists of two parts. First, de Ruyter shows how ideals are important to construing the meaning of objective goods. Second, she contends that educating children with ideals is important to motivating them to strive for something higher or better. De Ruyter’s analysis rests on two key concepts: ‘‘ideals,’’ which refer to things one believes to be superb, excellent, or perfect, but that are as yet unrealized, and ‘‘happy flourishing,’’ which describes the fulfillment of objectively identifiable generic goods and the person’s satisfactory meaningful interpretation of these goods.