“What do you do?” arrives the inevitable question.

Never much for cocktail party banter, I decide to keep my answer brief. “This year I teach three-year-olds.”

But it isn’t going to be so easy. “What do you teach them?” nudges my tablemate. It helps that he’s looking at me as though he genuinely wants to know.

I pause to reflect before I answer.

“To zip their own coats and put on their own shoes,” I begin, not sure where I’m going with this. “And to ask for what they want without whining or demanding. It’s not so much a display of etiquette I’m after; rather, I want to weed out helplessness and entitlement before they put down permanent roots.”

I feel my response starting to flow like Robert Fulghum’s ditty about all the good things he learned in kindergarten. My tablemate hasn’t heard of his book.

“And I teach them to share the pails and shovels in the sandbox and not to throw sand in each other’s hair. To help other kids up if they accidentally bump into them and knock them down, and then to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ To use words to communicate their anger, instead of fists and teeth and fingernails. And to fight fairly when the words just don’t seem to get their message across.

“And I tell them it’s good to cry when they miss their mommies, or when they fall down and scrape their knees. Then I help them realize that there are others besides their parents to whom they can go for comfort and support.

“And even at this young age, I encourage them to plot their own course each day, to learn from their mistakes, and to find their own solutions to their problems.”

The setting is suburban Washington, DC, just inside the Beltway, where power and status reign supreme. My tablemate just finished telling me about his son who recently was graduated from an Ivy League university and is already a successful broker on Wall Street. But there seems to be something missing from his son’s life, the father intimated.

“And most important of all,” I continue, “I help them to discover that the world is a loving, safe, affirming place in which they can live out their unique destinies to their fullest.”

My tablemate nods understandingly. Perhaps I should note that he is an older gentleman, in his mid-eighties, who married and had children late and who hails from a time when schools were not so relentlessly driven by fear and competition. We ease into a conversation about how there is something missing from education today, how the obsession with standards is draining the heart and the spirit out of the process. We agree that, when young children are happy, confident, assertive, self-aware, when they know how to think for themselves, the skills and information they are going to need to realize their potential will come to them easily and naturally.

“That’s very important work you’re doing,” my tablemate concludes, smiling warmly.

“Thanks.”

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