Summary: It’s one thing to say that we will develop the potential in each child. It’s another to know what we’re talking about.

In order to see what schools need to build from we will need a means to make an estimate of potential [It will be some early “snapshot” of potential, just how that snapshot is to be taken is our concern. The estimate of potential will be an extrapolation from present behavioral indications].

Ill have to spend some thought on this before I can lay out the specs for an evaluation of how well schools are doing in this territory. Without some careful forethought Ill be just like the apologists or the rabid critics: constructing phrases of rant that have neither thoughtful nor empirical roots in the realities of schooling or the lives and hopes of families and the students they are gifting to the next generation.

So here goes; one hypothesis concerning an individual’s eventual adult potential will be that her or his present absolute and relative strength of skill, re age-mates, will indicate both:

• where s/he will stand relative to age-mates in the future and
• what absolute “cultural literacy” will be present at the conclusion of schooling.

For starters let’s assess each child at age four (age arbitrarily chosen … meant to get in there early —before before schooling has begun). Further, let’s test in each of the following areas (no particular order but meant to represent a cross-section of important sensibilities (see Gardner via Guignon in Education World , for example, for a more formal presentation of a closely related set of capabilities. Or, see a summary of J.P. Guilford’s

Structure of Intellect at the TIP psychology site). Our assessment will include careful measurement of the following skills:

• listening skills,
• speaking skills,
• numerical awareness and understanding,
• general cultural information,
• eye-hand coordination,
• bodily coordination,
• musical (tone, rhythm, pitch, melody) skills,
• ethical understanding,
• social skills
• introspective skills
• mechanical skills
• skills at understanding and working with natural systems and creatures
• esthetic and design sensitivities and skills.

Next, we’ll concern ourselves with what we might have and what we might do with it. The end goal: to get better and better at helping individuals to realize their own, unique, “potential”