In later years, kids brought home – may still be bringing; I don’t know – cards with behavioral comments like, “Plays well with others,” “Listens to instructions,” and “Shares with others.” Those remarks were much more helpful than the covers-all subjective determination of personal performance.

It’s occurred to me this past week that, if those criteria are so important for children, why aren’t they still important after they grow up? After all, the implications of our behavior are much greater once we get our hands on the levers of power. We don’t have to look far to see the grown-up grim results of refusing to share with others or not playing well with them. Why can’t there be a branch of, say, the World Court that evaluates leaders’ performances and issues evaluations like “Fit (or Unfit) to Govern”?

The reason this has come up is an e-mail I recently received from an acquaintance in Nicaragua. He runs a bilingual school for local kids. Its existence depends upon the profits of his resort, which is hurting because of the current violence in Nicaragua. It’s an old, old story: The grownups can’t play well with each other, and it’s always the kids, who have no idea what’s going on, or why, who suffer the most.

Our film crew, with three women involved in a Smithsonian conservation project, visited the resort, Hacienda Merida, a couple of years ago while putting together a documentary about saving songbirds. The hacienda is on Ometepe Island, formed by two volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, far removed, you’d think, from any troubles on the mainland. But almost-buried steel rails running into the water are reminders that this was once a sugar plantation owned by the notorious Somoza family. The island kids, uniformly dressed for school, were learning – courtesy of Smithsonian and via Skype with kids their age in Virginia – to treat wintering songbirds as valuable parts of their environment, instead of prey for their slingshots. They also played the most enthusiastic game of béisbol I’ve ever seen, with only a 100-foot-square of concrete and an old handball for equipment.

The resort is on the western shore of the island, with a great view of the smoking cone of one of the volcanoes and at the end of a ride on a frighteningly decrepit ferry and the worst road our crew has ever driven (and we’ve seen some beauts). Miles across the water on the mainland, a giant windfarm spins incessantly in the steady east wind. Dining is alfresco on a palm-shaded veranda enlivened by occasional zooming flocks of small parrots and urracas, like giant blue jays, looking for unguarded morsels below. The showers run cold water only; but in that climate it takes only a couple of days to get used to it.

Alvaro Jose Molina Briones, the owner, is obviously the patrón of his territory. But he has interests you’d hardly expect of a jefe. In a constant battle against island-wide litter, he awards the equivalent of 50 cents to anyone who brings him a large plastic soda bottle filled with inorganic trash. These become “eco-bricks,” which are stacked between walls of chicken wire and plastered over to make sturdy walls. He’s started a bilingual school for the little kids, on the assumption that the future belongs to the literate. It’s staffed by, among others, volunteers who swap a tropical vacation for teaching English to Spanish-speaking kids. The school is supported by donations and profits from the hacienda operation.

Here’s where the fly lands in the ointment. Elected leaders worldwide, from China to Turkey to Venezuela to Syria to Russia, and even the United States, seem to enjoy the feeling of being boss, and, usually in incremental steps, stop playing well with others. President Daniel Ortega, facing increasing opposition to his rule, has been attempting to snuff it out -­ literally. Hundreds have died or been imprisoned; tourism, once an important contributor to the economy, has dried up for the time being.

Thus the e-mail from Alvaro, asking if I remembered him (of course I do), and pleading for support of his school. One of his “graduates,” a well-spoken young man with a gift for photography, talking to gringos, and working with computers, has put up a lovely web site describing the entire operation. It’s difficult, in these days of hundreds of worthy charities calling for our help, to choose among them. It’s equally difficult to look at those lively Ometepe kids, unaware of the growing menace on the mainland, without helping, at least a little, to equip them with the best education they can possibly get.