There has been increasing interest in flourishing as an aim of education. Some of this likely arises from the experiences that many students have of a teacher or mentor who profoundly shapes their lives. Some of the interest in education for flourishing may also have to do with a dissatisfaction with prior models of education, such as human capital models, focused principally on equipping students to produce goods and services to support themselves and society. This is doubtless important, but education can arguably accomplish more. Such earlier models seem to miss the transformative potential of education, and the opportunities it affords to enable students to flourish.

While education can help students flourish, there is also a danger of potentially construing the scope of formal educational institutions too broadly. Schools and universities cannot be held accountable for all aspects of student flourishing, and student lives are shaped and flourishing enabled by numerous other non-academic institutions, including, for example, families, neighborhoods, religious and other communities, subsequent workplace experiences, and governments. If flourishing is to be taken seriously as an aim of education, it is important to more clearly specify what is, and what is not, within the purview of a formal educational institution.

In a recent paper in the Journal of Philosophy of Education, we have proposed an understanding of the scope of education for flourishing to attempt to find a middle way between an overly broad understanding that is impossible to achieve, and an overly narrow understanding that does not acknowledge the real potential for student formation. We believe that the scope of the contribution of a formal educational institution to student life might be specified as:

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 a broader set of aims than mere cognitive or professional formation, but narrower than all of flourishing. In particular, not all aspects of flourishing are included because of two restrictions: first, a restriction to those aspects of flourishing around which broad consensus can be attained and, second, a restriction to those aspects of flourishing which teachers and educational leaders are prepared to address. The extent of the first restriction may vary depending on the nature of the school or educational system and consensus may be narrower for a large public school system, say, than a small........

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