School is also a little world unto itself. Kids can learn on the playground the rules of survival and cruelty, or they can learn how to play fair and have fun. Examining the curriculum is the next step. When children read the biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, or when they study Martin Luther King, Jr. at school, their teachers should be talking about what made them great people. There also has to be an expectation in all classes that children can achieve, and that mediocre work will not be accepted.
Children pick that up.
Kids sense this insincerity. We currently have a real decline of moral literacy in children. Kids don t know what courage means. I recently read a powerful story in the American School Board Journal. After a series of murders in Baltimore, a school principal got on the PA system.