Educate our children to be pro-active

There's a story all over the news about a cruise ship which turned away from a stranded boat.  Two lives were lost as a result.  Here's one instance of the story:http://www.npr.org/2012/04/19/150897139/cruise-ship-didnt-aid-drifting-boat-passengers-say.  It seems to me that my K-12 education trained me to be passive and obedient, not to go out on a limb.  It seems to me that there's a part of me that wants to turn away from things, to pretend I didn't see.  I hope I would not turn away and let those people die, but I do have a concept of what it is within a person that would cause them to do so.  It seems to me that it has a lot to do with my education.  We need to educate people to be pro-active, not to educate them to be passive.