Summary: We need to focus on the person from the inside out. On skills relating to being in charge of self and one's projects. This requires time. Time from the developing person, time from the parents, time from the school. We need to back off a good distance from the idea of someone being a "good worker" in order to see the supersets of "good person" and "integrated" and "satisfied". This entry will focus on the possibilities created by time and focus.

First off -- I'm not big on mass education of character. It's better than nothing and probably has some positive effect. No argument there. But, I believe that the emphasis should always be on working from the center [of the person] out, when it comes to personal development. We must be about developing the individual perspective and skills and commitments and resources. A litany of phrases is not the same as an active and dynamic set of beliefs that integrate what has previously been lived with the life one is living now or the vision of a life towards which one reaches.

In what remains of this entry I will break out concerns and possibilities by a person's age, attaching observations, comments, arguments and thoughts about possibilities to each age range:

Age Range and Hours Per Week	Where Delivered	Who's Responsible	Focus And Example Growth Topics
Birth-3 yrs. 3 hours per week	Home	Parents Child as Possible	Competence: Habits that are survival- and success- oriented. While habits are being developed they are also accompanied by talk. The habits are explained/ encoded in a way that will be part of self-aware discussion and self-extension in the future. Examples: response to commands/command tones, relatively broad but scrupulous eating habits, exploration tempered with caution, playfulness. perseverence.
4-6 years 3 hours per week (156 hours per year)	Home, child-care, preschool	Parents Child as Possible	Competence and Socializing. Examples: language use for social within- family and within-community purposes. A balance of wilfullness and willingness-to-please. Work habits such as persistence balanced with curiosity; helpfulness and risk-taking moderated by/alternating with carefulness and self-protection. Beginning awareness of group dynamics within family and within peer groupings.
7-11 years 5 hours per week (260 hours per year)	Home and School	Parents and Teachers, Student As Possible	Competence, Socializing. Group skills, beginning efforts at self-awareness at abstract thought and at learning to learn. First exposure to personal profile of actual & potential abilities and related/ compared with desires, deep pleasure and satisfaction. Much of this through story-telling, story and fable interpretation plus an emphasis on learning to observe and comment upon individual, group and personal behavior within such contexts. Such learnings set the stage for learning to predict of the consequences of real group and real individual actions-- including self. Learning-to-learn social skills lessons will be taught both systematically (i.e., to small groups and classes before "need-to-know-now" has been demonstrated) and as occasion's and individual readiness allow.
11-18 years 5 hours per week (260 hours per year)	Home and School	Student Teachers and Parents as Needed	Competence and Socializing: It is during this period, that character development and metalearning (learning to learn, deuterolearning) can most effectively "lift off" and accelerate. Why? Because self-awareness, self-control and abstract thought (Piaget's formal operations) all may mix to allow meta-meta learning (metalearning squared). Metaphorically speaking it is the development of pilot skills to encompass, sometimes to supercede, the already developed passenger skills. When it comes to profound success we must individually tailor and appropriately fit all of our teaching to the formulation and pursuit of life aims within the context of life-as-experienced. The fact that this individuation must apply to hugely diverse aims (e.g., community development, running a newspaper, writing a novel, preserving threatened species, inventing alternatives to gas, running a farm, raising a family, military tactics and the development of philosophical systems, etc,), emphasizes the size of the task facing each learner and most profoundly all of those parents and teachers who have set themselves the charge of helping one or people define, locate and enter the "field of their dreams". Whatever the rationale, whatever form the apologia takes, such a glorious entry is not the predominant, nor even a secondary, product of secondary school and college studies. Indeed it is rare!When such a success does result, it was not, most certainly, in any intentional --"this-is-primarily/foundationally-what-drives-all-system-decision-making" -- sense. In my opinion, that has to change!! If we, students, parents and teachers & schools, are to reclaim the lives of present secondary and college students and if we are to have any chance of helping the coming generations to develop their, at the same time self-sufficient and yet societally useful potential, then we have much yet to do!!

Picture the number of unsolved problems we -- as communities, or nations, or as the world -- presently face. Now picture the number of people for whom those problems need solution. Now tell me that a faltering delivery of basic skills to an increasingly disinterested and even hostile client population is a sufficient response!!

Related Entries:

• The Biggest Reason for School Reform: The Loss of Our Children
• Learning in Groups: Maybe Schools Should Be More Businesslike??!!
• Learning to Learn (deuterolearning, metalearning):Knowledge About Self and Learning --> High Proven Payoff
• Weblogs in Educational Settings: Undergraduate and Graduate