Preparing for Manhood for the 21st century: Creating a new role model Male for the emerging Spaceship Culture.

 

Abstract

The emerging structure of 21^st century planetary societies will force all of us to review what it means to be male. This address will discuss this world of the early 21^st century and need for a new view of what it means to be male. It will suggest some goals and programs for educators who are charged with the development and implementation of education programs to prepare boys and men for thrival in the early 21^st century.

1.0 Introduction

In this conference we are celebrating the education of boys in Catholic Schools. Of course there is much to celebrate. However if we are to prepare boys for success in the 21^st century, we will need to make some changes to their education and learning. It is my view that boys and men in western developing countries are increasingly in trouble. In the 70s and 80s affirmative actions programs were implemented for the education of girls. These were clearly critically needed at the time, and the programs were driven by the revolution unleashed by modern feminism. We have all benefited from these changes and we can also celebrate the considerable success that these affirmative action programs have achieved. However I believe it is now time for similar attention to be directed towards the education of boys. It is not that boys have been disadvantaged by the progress of women. In my view the disadvantage has come from the larger changes which are underway and which are affecting both men and women. I am going to discuss some of these changes in detail.

On the 5 AugustS, the Victorian Association of Secondary School Principals will launch Education 2010, which is a Preferred Future Vision for education in the year 2010. I have worked as the consultant for this project. Much of what I want to talk about today is based on this work and in a few cases I will be quoting from the document itself.

It is my impression that there is a considerable degree of concern and anxiety that in developed countries men and boys are struggling. Educators are noting that girls are now out performing boys in the education system. While the general malaise is recognised it is also far from clear what the core problems are, let alone the solutions. Indeed it seems that the only place men are still thriving is where patriarchal cultures are still strong and women are oppressed.

In this address I want to give you my views about the nature of this malaise and some possible solutions for the education system.

So that I can explain where I think the core problems lie I would like to commence by looking at the condition of the planet itself.

2.0 The planet on the threshold of the new millennium,

As we approach the threshold to a new millennium, we are witnessing the birth of a new planetary culture. A "century of the planet" is at hand. The Earth is becoming more interdependent and cooperative. This new planetary culture is being moulded by a combination of political, economic, technological and ecological forces of great power which are all working synergistically to create it. My grandparents grew up identifying themselves with Western Australia and New South Wales rather than Australia. My grandchildren will identify themselves with their planet as much as their nation.

To illustrate the magnitude of the changes, consider these three historic processes which dominated global politics in the mid 1990s

A global trading system is being born through the GATT Uruguay Round and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The first stage is now complete. In the next few years further agreements to ensure that international trade does not reward traders who plunder the environment and exploit labour will be enacted through the WTO.

At the same time, a new planetary environmental order is being realised through the Montreal Protocol (relating to the phasing out of ozone-depleting substances), and the outcomes of the 1992 Earth Summit, including the Conventions on Climate Change and Biodiversity. The World Bank's Global Environmental Facility has been established to fund the more effective management of the planetary environment outside the jurisdiction of individual countries, and to complement its work with them. A Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), has been established by the United Nations, as has an Earth Council, with headquarters in Costa Rica, by international Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) of the planet.

The World is also being united by ecologically driven fear - fear of global ecological disaster. For centuries fear has divided humanity. Now it is beginning to unite it. Fear, traditionally a force which prevents change and reform, is now becoming a major factor in encouraging cooperation, change and reform. The fear of unpredictable climatic change and an ozone-depleted atmosphere is forcing people to think 40 years ahead, and to cooperate on an unprecedented level. It is like being in New York in a snowstorm or in a town undergoing a major flood. In these circumstances, people who are indifferent or even hostile to each other start to assist and help one other. The planetary equivalent to this snowstorm or flood is climate change or ozone depletion. However, this time there will be no melting of the snow or subsiding of the water level so that people can quickly return to their old indifferent and hostile ways. The problem will continue to grow for decades, and it must be met by unprecedented and continuing levels of international cooperation: this is an emerging culture of interdependence.

Finally, a new planetary security system is also struggling into existence. In 1946, Australia's Foreign Minister, H. V. Evatt, played a leading role in the development of a United Nations Charter which gave the United Nations the responsibility of playing the role of both planetary peacemaker and peacekeeper. The Cold War prevented the United Nations playing the peacemaker role totally, and severely restricted its peacekeeping role. Machinery to permit the UN to fully play these roles have yet to be established. Meanwhile, the UN has started to act in an ad hoc way. It put Saddam Hussein back in his place, and has acted in planetary crisis points such as Bosnia and Somalia, with limited success. However, it is certain that the UN's performance will improve, as permanent peacemaking and peacekeeping machinery is put into place. The failure of the world to come to grips with the ugly realities of Bosnia for so long has reinforced the need for the creation of global peace-making machinery. In more recent times the world disapproval of the SLORC regime in Myanmar (Burma) and the Military dictatorship in Nigeria should be noted. Both are developing global pariah status.

Despite the resistance and difficulties which each of these three historic changes is facing, all are likely to be consolidated and in place by the end of the first decade of the 21^st century.

At the same time the European Community is being formed . Soon it will invite Eastern Europe to join it. The great resistance of some Europeans to the birth of a new European Community slowed down the confederation process, but has not stopped its formation . The rise of national fervour in Eastern Europe and Western Europe in such places as Catalonia is related to the break up of the old security arrangements formed in the Cold War. This is not a disintegration of Europe, as some people have maintained, but a painful breakdown of old arrangements before the formation of new ones. The Slovenians and Latvians of Europe have recently shifted from a status of dependence to that of independence. In the next few years they will seek to become part of an integrated European Community, just as Luxembourg has been for many years. The "Common European Home" was first prophesied by Pope John 23^rd, and later, by President Gorbachev. It is being created before our eyes.

In North America, economic union is also coming. The leaders of the USA, Canada and Mexico have signed the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is the first stage of a single economic community, "from Alaska to Argentina" which will be completed by 2010 at the latest. In our own region, the Bogor Declaration in 1994 committed the APEC region to complete economic and trade integration by 2020.

For more than a century, a continuous process of globalisation and internationalisation has been under way. During this time, people have transferred their primary loyalties from their town or city to their region or state, and finally, to their nation. In the 1990s, the final step to the development of a new planetary culture, the transfer of primary loyalties from nation to planet, will begin.

Other forces are also pulling us in the same direction. Information and communications technology is building a single, highly networked world. By the end of the century everyone on Earth will be able to witness, and to a degree participate in, a single event somewhere on the Earth's surface. Space separation and time zones no longer prevent people working together. Teleconferencing, e-mail, multimedia workstations and faxes are only some of the new tools of planetary cooperation and dialogue. New computer software is now assisting cooperative dialogue and decision-making independent of space and time. One of the biggest areas for innovation in information technology in the 1990s will be work which uses information and communications technology for cooperative and collaborative work, including work where participants are separated in space and time.

The Internet connects millions of people around the world. It provides them with electronic mail, a news service, remote computer access, remote database access, and many newer services. We are evolving towards cyberspace, a word and concept coined by William Gibson in his science fiction classic, Neuromancer.

We are hearing and sharing the same news around the world by the courtesy of modern technology, and it reminds us that we share one small and vulnerable planet. A Minamata, Chernobyl or Exxon Valdez catastrophe reminds us of this shared fate and responsibility, even if we do not appear to be directly affected. We know more about what is going on all over the planet than ever before. John Donne's famous Devotion of the year 1620, has never been more true.

No man is an Island, entire of itself;
Every man is part of the continent, a part of the main;
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
As well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne, `Devotions upon Emergent Occasions' XVII

3.0 The Cowboy and Spacehip cultures

In the 1960s, Kenneth Boulding wrote a famous essay called "The Economics of Coming Spaceship Earth" and about the same time Buckminster Fuller wrote a book entitled Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth. Both authors drew on the metaphor of the Apollo Mission, and particularly the famous picture taken from Apollo 8 which showed the beautiful, blue and white, fragile Earth against a lifeless moonscape in the foreground. Just after the near disaster of Apollo 13, which was the subject of a recent film, the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant used the metaphor of the Apollo Mission that nearly ended in disaster to promote the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, indicating that the whole planet was indeed in the situation of Apollo 13.

Kenneth Boulding introduced the idea that the Earth needed to change from a "cowboy economy to a "spaceship economy " if life on the planet was to survive. Today at the mid point of the 1990s humanity is mid way through a transition between what can be recognised as a disappearing Cowboy Culture and an emerging Spaceship Culture in the 21^st century^. We now recognise the Cowboy Culture as an unsustainable society and the Spaceship Culture as a sustainable society. The Cowboy and Spaceship Cultures have the following characteristics:.

From	To
The Cowboy Culture	The Spaceship Culture
Individualism	Communitarianism
Independence	Interdependence
Autocracy	Democracy
Humanity against nature	Humanity part of nature
Unsustainable production & consumption	Sustainable production & consumption
Patriarchy	Gender Equality
Intercultural & interreligious intolerance	Intercultural & interreligious tolerance
Conflict resolution thru confrontation	Conflict resolution through negotiation
Reliance on Defence	Reliance on Security

The journey from the shootout at OK Corral and life on the frontier, to negotiated sustainable living in the Spaceship is a metaphor used to describe the journey humanity is already making and will most likely be completed by about the year 2025. By the mid 1990s it was already clear that communitarian cultures such as Japan, Korea and Germany were achieving greater economic success in the new global economic environment than individualistic Anglo Celtic cultures such as the UK, USA and Australia. This is partly because their core cultures were more compatible with the emerging interconnected interdependent world of the 21^st century.

The 19th century was the century of dependence, most of us lived in colonies. The story of the 20^th century has been one of independence. The last European empires, the Russian and Serbian empires crumbled, and others such as China and Indonesia could follow. The story of the 21^st century will be one of interdependence, living and collaborating on an networked planet. In the evolving Spaceship Culture of the 1990s the individualistic formulas which had produced success in the past no longer working as they used to. The word interdependence is a key word to describe our evolving just-in-time, environmentally sensitive society: interdependence between men and women, between tribes and nations, between enterprises, between employer and employee in our work places, and between humanity and nature.

The world's religions have been slow to recognise this extraordinary shift. As it is, there has been an astonishing reappearance of pantheism in the West. On the other side of the coin, is the even more aggressive rise of religious fundamentalism. The world religions seem to be splitting in two: into a progressive part, which is moving into the 21^st century , and a reactionary part which is in a state of future shock, and which wants to return to the 19^th century or even earlier.

Religious fundamentalists are religious cowboys who still believe in patriarchy, authoritarianism and even killing in the name of religion. The world's religions are like everyone else, they are divided between adherents of the cowboy culture and adherents of the spaceship culture. For example the battles over issues such the ordination of women represent a major challenge to church cowboy patriarchy.

We are all aware of the intolerance of the Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Seikh fundamentalists, who are causing such crises in virtually every major religion. I am of the view, and this may be somewhat controversial to some , that Rome itself shows some of this fundamentalism, though of course not its intolerance and violence. Meanwhile, religions such as the Baha'i, the Quakers and Buddhism, which preach universality, tolerance and caring, and which do not have significant fundamentalist wings, are receiving more respect and attention in he West. On his last visit to Australia, the Dalai Lama drew immense crowds wherever he went.

The emergence of the spaceship culture has advantaged women. They were massively disadvantaged in the Cowboy culture, but they are more at home than men in the emerging Spaceship Culture. Feminists, who until recently, have focused on the development of gender equity and on moving women from dependence to independence, are now beginning to move on to interdependence, at least in those part of the planet where the Spaceship culture is already beginning to dominate. In the remainder of the Planet which is still dominated by the cowboy culture, women are still in as much trouble as they ever were, they are still caught in the web of dependence..

The transformation of our society of the last 20 years from one which promoted individual rights over community rights has changed to the point where community rights are now seen to be more important than individual rights. The battles in the 1990s over smoking in public and gun ownership are just two manifestations of this battle between community and individual rights. The community has won in each case but not without bitter conflict between the community and some defenders of individual rights.

The gun control debate is continuing to focus our attention on the issue of community violence. In reality it is my view that the world is actually not more violent, but thanks to technology, its capacity to do damage has increased immensely. In the cowboy days, the enemy tribe lived in another territory and tried to take our land by force, he came over the hill with guns blazing. Defence is the form of protection for a cowboy era. Now the enemy might live amongst us, a fellow passenger on the spaceship. We are now moving from an era of defending the territory from invasion (ie defence) to protecting ourselves from threats from within (ie security).

The threat of nuclear war has been replaced by the threat of the terrorist : episodes such as the Oklahoma City Bombing, the poisoning of Japanese subways, the Waco incident, the formation of far right military cells in US rural areas of the USA such as the Free Men in Montana who recently gave themselves up after a 3 month siege against their enemy the US Government (interestingly, like all cowboys they don't seem to believe in Free Women). This month the FBI busted a group called the "Viper Team" who planned to blow up every Government building in Phoenix Arizona. We have discovered extremists in our own rural areas through the gun debate.

The tragedies in Dunblane and Port Arthur in 1996 have led us to the conclusion that we really needed to consider this issue of escalating violence. Finally we are concerned the violence of our mass media and from Hollywood in particular. All these are manifestation of the promotion of cowboy cultures in a world which is increasingly adopting the values required for life in the spaceship. The tragic massacre in Port Arthur in May 1996 has lead to some heated debate amongst the Australian community. With a majority of 90% of Australians in favour of gun control it seems irrational for there to be any debate at all. However the debate is really not about gun control, it is instead about individual rights versus community rights, or the battle between independence and interdependence The Australian public recently heard some elected politicians, such as Bob Katter Jnr claim that the Port Arthur massacre would not have occurred if all the people present in Port Arthur that day had been armed and could have shot the gunman dead before he killed anybody. He was promoting a genuine cowboy cultural solution, in an Australia the majority of which are already at least partial adherents of the spaceship culture. Many of these spaceship dwellers found Bob Katter Jnr's solution offensive, tragic and even ludicrous.

The gun debate has in fact been an extremely significant point in our transition of evolving mindsets, not only have we witnessed the debate over community rights but we have seen a concurrent review of violent behaviour. Violent videos, computer games, music, literature and TV programs have all been subsequently targeted by Government action. The important issue in this is not merely the removal of questionable material from the sight of our children and adolescents but rather the introduction of a process which promoted responsible and caring adulthood .

My view is that male violence, particularly amongst youths, is due to the fact that we have been unable to transform our role model for maleness as we make the bigger transformation from the cowboy culture to spaceship culture. Many of these violent episodes could be seen as attempts to live by a cowboy lifestyle in an spaceship society, or as a Rambo in a spaceship culture which finds Rambo behaviour increasingly threatening and offensive. Many of the violent films produced by Hollywood in the late 20^th century represent the last gasp of this urban cowboyism and their box office success demonstrates the difficulty many of are having in coming to grips with this change. The people filling the theatres showing these films are mostly people who are more comfortable within a cowboy culture. Those who are horrified by this film violence are the emerging spaceship majority.

I think what we need to do is to develop a new role model for spaceship masculinity. Given that the dominant role (or archetype) model in our society in recent times has been the rugged cowboy, it is worth wondering if there are alternative archetypes in our collective unconsciousness which we can rediscover and rehabilitate for the modern era, or whether we have to create a genuine new model for being male in a spaceship culture. It is interesting that many of the space travel science fiction stories on film are really examples of a cowboy culture in a spaceship environment, with battles between good and evil and intertribal/ intergalactic conflict. Such narratives might be technologically advanced but they are sociologically archaic.

4.0 Preparing Boys and Men for a 21^st century Spaceship Culture

What would a role model for masculinity in the spaceship look like?

For the remainder of this address I want to suggest to you a couple of ways the education system could play a leading role in creating a new role model for men and boys appropriate for the spaceship society of the 21st century. These involved borrowing and adapting two ideas from other people. The first is Professor Peter Singer's concept of the circle of concern . The second is the proposal of Robert Bly to reinvent initiation.

4.1.Circles of Concern

First of all Professor Peter Singer's concept of the circle of concern. We all like to be nurtured and cared for and most of us like to nurture and care for others. Even the least caring of us cares for a few in their immediate circle. The mafia member who adores his family, yet is at war with the rest of humanity demonstrates this clearly. We all are capable of caring. It is just that some of us are more selective in our caring than others. Most of us who embrace the spaceship culture are followers of John Donne and are involved in mankind. We are concerned with sufferers of famines in Africa and we send money to try to help them, even though their problem does not directly affect us.

Singer says :

. . . . . " think about our views now about the very crude and blatant form of racism of the slave traders who thought that it was acceptable to go over to Africa and capture Africans and use them as useful tools and objects to be sold to the plantation owners in the U. S. A. - despite the obvious enormous costs to the slaves themselves in terms of their suffering that they experienced , the breakup of their families and all the rest.

We now think that as outrageous because we can see the suffering of the slaves, and we don't see the distinction between Africans and Europeans as in anyway justifying that. Now we have expanded our circle of concern to include all human beings but we still have a boundary on that circle of concern , and that boundary is now the boundary of our species.

Obviously that is not an absolute boundary- we're opposed to some forms of cruelty to some species. I believe that the relevant factors in considering the interests of living creatures are neither matters of race or matters of species, but things like the capacity to suffer, and therefore I think that we ought to expand the circle of concern to include all beings who are capable of suffering.

I now want to read a piece from Education 2010.

"In the 1990s Professor Peter Singer described a concept which he called a spreading circle of concern . He noted that in past centuries and even today racism and intercultural intolerance was due to the fact that people cared for one kind of humanity such as a particular tribe or religion, but not another. Their circle of concern did not embrace all of humanity. Now the circle is extending further to go across the boundary around our species. During the 1980s and 1990s for example, species such as whales became protected as the circle of concern broadened to include whales while vegetarianism and animal rights became mainstream concerns. This concept of the circle of concern should become a major component of the curriculum. Individual students should be encouraged to map their own Circles of Concern and to work to increase the ambit of these Circles. This is especially important in our decaying patriarchal society, where traditionally boys and men have been enticed into believing there was no room for a circle of concern in what has been traditionally a Cowboy Culture. However with the emerging Spaceship Culture it is vital for all humans to embrace the concept of the circle of concern and incorporate elements into their own circle of concern.‘

4.2 Reinventing Initiation for the 21st century

Robert Bly in his book Iron John proposed that society needed to reinvent initiation. Bly argues that the initiation process in traditional and indigenous societies had been discarded by modern communities and cultures at enormous social cost. His thesis is that our society is full of boys running around in men's bodies, still doing what boys do but with men's strength and with the technology which adults can get their hands on. He points out that for women puberty manifests itself with biological change. For men he says that without a cultural change which is powerful for men as the biological change is for women, boys will never progress to fulfilled manhood. The church in its declaration of war on "paganism" was a major player helping to eliminate initiation from western culture.

Bly says:

'Having abandoned initiation, our society has difficulty in leading boys towards manhood.........The main reason is our ignorance of initiation and our dismissal of its value.'

He further quotes Michael Ventura from his essay The Age of Endarkment (in contrast to the Age of Enlightenment).

Ventura says:

'Tribal people everywhere greet the onset of puberty , especially in males, with elaborate and excruciating initiations , a practice which would not be as necessary unless their young were as extreme as ours.

They would assault their adolescents with , quite literally , holy terror, rituals that had been kept secret from the young until that moment , rituals that focused upon the young all the light and darkness of their tribes collective psyche, all its sense of mystery , all its questions and all the stories told both to harbour and answer these questions ......The crucial word is focus. The adults had something to teach : stories, skills, magic, dances, visions , rituals. In fact if all these things were not learned well and completely , the tribe could not survive.... tribal cultures satisfied the craving while supplying the need , and we call that initiation . This practice was so effective that usually by the age of 15 a tribal youth was able to take his or her place as a fully responsible adult.'

Bly suggested that we bring back initiation as a mainstream concept. What we really need to do is take that empty wine skin called initiation and pour new wine into it: to reinvent initiation in a form relevant for the 21^st century. We also need to place initiation is the place it was in tribal times into the mainstream culture and into our formal education system.

It is interesting that most indigenous cultures choose the years of puberty to provide what was for them this formal education process. Many of our teachers and educators tell us that during the years of puberty young people can be impossible to teach and unwilling to learn. On the threshold of adulthood they are keen to learn how to become effective adults, rather than what we wanted to teach them. Although we had thrown initiation out of our mainstream learning the need is still there. So much so, that many street gangs often incorporate ritual and rites of passage into their gang cultures. It seems self evident that during the transition to adulthood a process of initiation should be a major focus of education. To a large extent it would be useful to separate genders and develop complementary and parallel programs for each gender. Traditional cultures have used the initiation process to reaffirm their culture to their young by having them learn their cultural myths and knowledge, and to prepare them to be effective and responsible adults and parents. Initiation also serves to contain and turn youthful aggressive and violent tenancies into useful and productive pathways. Initiation is the traditional pathway to warriorhood: men who use their physical strength and strategic acumen for only noble and transcendental purposes, rather than for self empowerment and gratification.

Aboriginal People, like all indigenous people, are more fortunate than European Australians in this regard at least. For Aboriginal People, the traditional initiation process accomplishes two things, it affirms and promotes their Aboriginality and it prepares them for life in adult world. As part of Reconciliation they could reinvent their own initiation process for the needs of the 21st century to affirm their Aboriginality and to empower them to thrive in a multicultural Australia.

I therefore propose that we celebrate the education of boys by dividing the years of learning into three phases

* The years from birth to puberty;

* The years of puberty which are now called the Initiation years, and

* Adult education thereafter.

An initiation program could introduce the young to the world of heroes and myths, spirituality and comparative religion, ethics and values, and intercultural and traditional knowledge, and teach the young how to build effective relationships. For too long our education system has concentrated too much on the world of facts and the development of skills, leaving out too much which represents the richness of culture and human experience. Such an initiation process would prepare our youth for responsible and purposeful living in the Spaceship Culture of the 21^st century.

Initiation would seek to create more balanced people on the threshold of adulthood by introducing students to many diverse sources of knowledge and wisdom. It would introduce students to inspirational stories and to outstanding people who can serve as role models. The initiation program could develop self esteem and self respect. The program should include significant tests of skill and achievement, which extend students and help them to understand and improve their capacities and to recognise and overcome their limitations.

This initiation should include promoting the mapping and extension of individual circles of caring and the development of a caring culture generally .

4.3 The caring and compassionate culture

For too long our society and education system has focused on the negative isms of our society such as sexism, racism and speciesism. All of these are products of a society which lacked sufficient caring, compassion and empathy. Therefore it is vital that we embark upon designing a journey towards a caring and compassionate culture rather than just deal with various aspects of an uncaring one such as sexism and racism. In creating that journey towards a caring and compassionate culture we need to develop a broad concept of caring itself. This could involve:

* caring for oneself including one's physical and mental health;

* caring for one's children, partners, friends and relations, and colleagues;

* caring for one's community;

* caring for others including those with different cultures;

* caring for other species and

* caring for the Planet.

Therefore our concept of caring should incorporates self esteem, individual health, respect and caring for others, both within one's family and for other cultures and races (i. e. intercultural tolerance) and caring for other species and for the planetary environment, leading to the development of sustainable lifestyles and behaviour.

5.0 Conclusion

Boys and men are in trouble because the world is changing rapidly and they are not adapting as successfully to these changes as women are. Perhaps we have celebrated the education of boys too much and not concerned ourselves with the responsibilities which educators have relating to the transformation of boys into effective, caring, successful men. It is my view that we are short changing future generations of males because we have abandoned the means by which societies have traditionally prepared the young for successful adulthood. On of the central tenets of education in Catholic schools has been the recognition of the importance of spirit and soul in the creation of well adapted and successful adulthood. Confirmation is but one example of the importance that churches have placed on ritualising the transformation of children into adults.

I now believe that religious educators need to go further. They should turn their back on their traditional hostility to pantheistic religions and recognise the power of initiation and borrow it and reinvent it in a form appropriate for our times and our needs. We could have a wonderful conference just discussing the elements which could constitute such an appropriate initiation process. In a rapidly changing world of today our young need even more than before, some of the things which religious education has always provided: the rituals, the myths and the spiritual.

If we are to continue to celebrate the education of boys into the next century and in the emerging spaceship culture , then we need:

* A new vision and set of role models for maleness for the emerging spaceship culture, or perhaps a rediscovered or remodelled archetype, and

* The means to promote this model to our young, and to assist their transformation into successful adults in this spaceship culture. I suggest that the reinvention of initiation is a way to achieve this.

I do not believe that we can afford to let things drift any further. Significant new initiatives are needed. Let us celebrate the education of boys in Catholic Schools by ensuring that men of the 21^st century are prepared, not for just survival in the 21st century , but for thrival.