In an era of change, preparing our youth for an uncertain future is akin to building the airplane while it is in flight. Since we do not have the luxury of putting development on hold until we figure out the destination and the kind of plane we need to get there, we must fly anyway. This article employs an airplane analogy to illustrate the fact that whatever part we would like to assign to school-based character education--pilot, navigator, wings, flaps, seating, material that makes up the fuselage--it is clear that character education is not the plane. It is part of the plane, and it can only function in the context of the rest of that plane. So, the larger question, within which the fate of school-based character education is contained, is: what can and should schools be doing to make positive contributions toward the future direction of our youth and society?