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What can education do? A critique of an idealised understanding of education. In this article I argue that an idealised understanding of education is problematic in two ways. First it neutralises and makes normal an unequal distribution of wealth and power by identifying those who are to be included as excluded, thereby establishing a foundational inequality. Secondly I argue that a depoliticised understanding of education makes inequality seemingly natural and normal in the larger discourse of education. In the article I show three contexts in which inequality is produced: educational reform, educational research and developmental psychology applied to education. In the second part of the article I develop a line of thought that starts with equality and argue that the assumption of equality is necessary for an education that aims at intellectual emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]