For America’s Kids

America s kids are great!

They offer us our greatest joys and lead us toward our deepest hopes. As a parent of four and a grandparent, I know this daily adventure. Thirty years ago as a special education teacher, my classroom kids gave me a rich reservoir of stories. As a pastor for over twenty years, I saw no greater challenge than helping parents raise their kids with the understanding that character does count.

Since 1996 I have devoted my professional life to help build a nation of character by offering ideas and resources to parents, grandparents, educators, and community leaders about how to build America’s Kids of Character.

The great American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once wrote that our children are the new products of nature. Emerson saw nobility in every child. He understood that each new product required structure to prove durable.

Like ships built in dry dock but constructed for the open seas, children need character structure so they can be durable in tough situations. My dad was right when he told me that a ship isn t seaworthy if it is only sails in the harbor.

As adults our job is to build up kids to succeed in life s open seas. This is our essential task. We can be on track with this responsibility as we guide and inform kids about how to think and act with character clarity. Such education is needed for children 4, 10, 14 or 18. It s always timely.

The story is told about the professional speaker who conducted a successful seminar entitled, Rules for Raising Children. After having two children, he changed his seminar title to, Suggestions for Raising Children. When his kids became teenagers, he discontinued the seminar. He’d had enough!

Surely, every adult who has aspired to build Kids of Character has confronted the moment called Enough. These essays can be read as education, inspiration and encouragement to support adults to view themselves as character mentors, and as such, to help shape Emerson’s new products of nature into America’s 21st century Kids of Character.

Russell Williams,Founder

Passkeys Foundation

– Russell Williams