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Schools in England should be fined if pupils leave school with poor literacy skills, an independent report into last year's riots says. It adds they should demonstrate how they are building pupils' characters, and give careers advice to each child.

But head teachers have dismissed the recommendations as unrealistic.

The key to avoiding future riots, the report claims, is communities "where parents and schools ensure children develop the values, skills and characters to make the right choices at crucial moments". It says: "We propose that there should be a new requirement for schools to develop and publish their policies on building character. "We also recommend that Ofsted undertake a thematic review of character building in schools.

What makes Asa Berg such an effective third-grade teacher is that he is not quite 11 months old. It's an ideal age for the subject he's been teaching for more than half his life. The course is called Roots of Empathy. Asa is teaching the students about emotions, and his are right on the surface, easy to observe. In 47 classrooms around Puget Sound, in seven public-school districts and seven private schools, babies are part of the learning experience. The idea, which began in Canada and is spreading in the United States, is that children need to learn more than letters and numbers, they need emotional and social literacy in order to learn well now, and to grow into good parents and constructive citizens.

"I was a kindergarten teacher and I realized early on, as in the first week, that there was a great injustice, that some children came to school so ready to learn and a lot came with a lot of problems that prevented them from taking advantage of what schools had to offer," she said.

The program finds mothers or fathers from the neighborhood around each school. They don't look for super parents, just caring ones who are doing a good job with their own children. The students learn to read other people's emotions by watching the baby and parent interact, and they learn to think about the underlying causes of various behaviors.