Learning to nurture a newer generation

Raising a successful child with just values is the most important human activity, and it will be as complex, demanding and fulfilling in 2020 as it is today. This mystical process cannot be reduced to a single essential ingredient, but one crucial factor that determines whether a child succeeds or fails is the presence of caring adults.

I grew up in rural South Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s in a racially segregated social order born of the ugly history of slavery. Fortunately for me, my parents and other adults never let the unjust external barriers become my internal ones. They provided buffers to combat a hostile world that told black children we weren't important. And they prepared me by precept and example to spend my life challenging that world.

The changes from that time have been remarkable, and by 2020 the world will look very different from today. Many of our children will be parents, and they will find themselves enmeshed in a popular culture shaped by technological, social and economic forces hurtling past us before we even realize it. In such conditions, the need to instill in their children a set of ironclad core values - honesty, integrity and service - will become even more important. Adults hold a sacred trust to protect children from physical and spiritual poverty, violence and greed, and to show them how to care about something beyond themselves.