In "What's in it for me?" I outlined a major problem which prevents our society from moving forward - short-sighted selfishness, on a systemic level.  I recommended changing our schools from institutions which encourage shallow self-serving thinking to places which instill self-esteem and caring.  In this piece, I will try to map some of the stages, from where we are, to that pie-in-the-sky vision I see.

I chose schools as the starting place for social growth, as no other aspect of society has the same degree of accessibility with commensurate affect.  While changing parents' habits might be more desirable, because, as many people will tell you, values belong in the home or the church, parents as a group are hard to reach, at best, and the church reaches too few people.

The components of a school include the administration, the faculty, the school board, the parents, the students, and the curriculum.  Of these, the least likely to change at the outset are the parents and the students.  There is no force acting on them which is likely to promote such a change.  The school board is the next least likely, as they are seldom interactive with the students.

The other three are inextricably linked, because any two of them will overwhelm a change in the third.  A decision by the administration, however, to change curriculum, and to insure that the teachers support it, has a fair chance of success.