Encore ça change ...

Abstract

‘Finding Consensus on Well-Being in Education’ is an ambitious and inspiring work in favor of establishing flourishing as the aim of education in classrooms and schools worldwide. The authors offer theories of action to explain how education for flourishing would be virtuously self-sustaining in its ideal state, how we could transition from current educational policies and practices to those that foster flourishing, and why schools currently impede student, teacher, and social flourishing. This commentary critically examines each theory of action, raising questions about the reasons that schools currently fail to promote flourishing and why and how they might do in the future. I argue that David Cohen’s classic essay ‘Plus Ça Change . . .’ provides important insight into why education for flourishing may take as long to develop and take to scale in the twenty-first century as Deweyan progressive education took (and is continuing to take) in the twentieth century. The kind of education that the authors of ‘Finding Consensus’ are calling for is hard and ambitious work that may take a very long time to get right – even as it is also well worth trying to do so.