While on vacation recently, I puttered in a motorboat along the banks of the Amazon River outside of Leticia, Colombia. Children of all ages looked up from their tasks or came out of their houses to wave and smile at us. We were four obvious gringos, not the only foreigners in evidence, but strange enough to be curiosities to the native people. The kids stared. I suppose we stared back.

Whole families travel the river in “peke-peke” boats, long, thin dugouts made from big trees, that were pushed along by propellers on extended axles kept high in the water. The kids were often asleep, lulled by the river’s rocking and the thick, warm air, but again, those who weren’t smiled and waved enthusiastically. When we waved back, the women smiled and nodded, as if approving of our good form in responding to their kids. It felt as though some highly-organized tourism bureau — not possible under Amazon circumstances — had drafted every single kid for the important job of greeting tourists, freeing the moms for the work of mothering.

Riverside family life is fairly public, since the houses’ half-walls are only high enough to provide minimal privacy and obstruct little of the breeze that is the only air conditioning in this equatorial climate. Kids helped with laundry, fishing, building or other chores. And they played together a lot, shrieking and playing at the river’s edge or kicking balls up on higher ground. They all had black-button eyes, bright with smiles framed by healthy, full cheeks. Life among the indigenous people may be hard, but food is plentiful; the trees in the lush forest are full of a dazzling array of fruits strange to me. The kids’ clothes were strictly third-world, but struggle was not in their faces.

Elsewhere I’ve found native populations often resent seemingly rich tourists. And who can blame them? But neither in the Amazon villages nor in the city of Bogota were there packs of beggar children dispersed into the streets by some modern Fagin, pestering you for this or that. In fact, we slowly became aware that bigger towns had houses, marked by government signs, for orphans. So homeless Amazon kids haven’t been abandoned to survive in the streets. And even they looked up from playing in the front yards of their group homes and smiled and waved.

In short, the kids seemed reasonably happy. Naturally, we were astounded by the pink dolphins, spiders the size of dinner plates, and darling orange-gray monkeys that crawled onto our laps and ate plantains out of our hand. But really, it was almost as thrilling to see the seeming contentment of so many children.

In the course of our adventure, I stopped chewing on the details of how to get things to go better for our kids and schools back home. Under the big sky I focused on the big picture. What would it look like if those of us who deal with kids got it right? I had two big conclusions.

For one thing, the kids would be reasonably happy. Not spoiled, not enabled. But cared for and grinning at least some of the time. Ironically, the one child I met who seemed troubled was the son of educated parents with the means to get him a hand-held device for video games — the only such device I saw for the two weeks in South America. He seemed lost in the sad, solitary world of gaming, a sight only too familiar at home. When asked to stop and come to dinner, sure enough, he was belligerent and uncooperative. Okay, he’s a sample of one, and might have been distressed for any number of reasons. Still, he reminded me of the many American kids who seem famished for healthy, human connections, especially with grownups.

And secondly, if as a culture we got it right, schools would nurture kids’ thirst for learning — and not kill it as so often happens. I have no hard evidence that the Amazon kids were particularly eager for learning. My Spanish is not so terrific that I could interview children to probe their appetite for school, or new skills. But from birth every kid is a sponge for knowledge. So why wouldn’t they be?

One night we attended a “first annual” festival celebrating youth and the indigenous culture. Under-rehearsed skits and dances tried to express some of the local lore, but the teenage performers gave it their all. They seemed happy to learn their ancestors’ stories and show them off. At one side of the performance space the younger kids had commandeered a bank of plastic chairs. Approached by a gorgeous young man portraying a menacing bird, the kids held the chairs to their butts and retreated in a swarm, like a flock of gawky plovers, staying together as the fearsome performer caught on to his considerable power to arouse the flock. They were without cynicism. The adults at the microphones lavished them with praise.

Reasonably happy kids learn more than those distracted by distress. Period. I admit that I get sucked into the politics and drawn-out struggles over the details that govern kids’ lives in schools and social services. The bureaucratic issues matter a lot. But we fight too much about which grown-up can make what decision, and too little about whether the decision is actually working well for the kid. Is his happiness level high enough to support learning? Is she hungry for more?

It was a pleasure to be around kids really enjoying being kids. Being reasonably happy and thirsty for learning are hard goals to quantify, but I hope to keep the big picture in mind. And to pay closer attention to the immeasurable joy in kids’ eyes.

Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at juliasteiny@gmail.com, or c/o EdWatch, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.