BULLETIN
March - April 2011
Reflections on Raising Boys By Bob Lunder
Table of Contents 1-2 Feature Story 3
Notes from Inside
4
Development Committee
5-6 Spring Gala Feast 7
Camp Glen Brook
8
Main Lessons
11
Community Marketplace
Bob Lunder is a current parent, P’18 and P’16. The following are his impressions from the lecture “Raising Boys” given by Whitney MacDonald, organized by Social Inclusion and Community Education in January of this year. In older societies and primitive cultures when a boy reached adolescence, he was taken away from his family and subject to an ordeal and ritual as part of his passage into manhood. To use the Plains Indian tribes of North America as an example, a boy was never allowed to stray far from the campsite while growing up. He was always amongst the tribe and ostensibly in a safe place. When his time came, older men from the tribe would lead him from the campsite to a place he did not know. His initiation might include physical pain (a bone being broken, walk across hot coals, etc.) and would certainly include leaving him alone. He might spend four or five days praying and waiting for a vision. He would find his way back to the tribal village through trackless wilderness, with no one to help him survive or confront danger. This test of endurance and courage would produce a spiritual transformation of the boy into a young man (the terms ‘boy’ and ‘young man’ are often used interchangeably in our society). Upon returning to the village he received recognition from all tribe members as now being a man and warrior. The people would depend on him in providing food and in defending the tribe, even at risk to his life. The young man
knew what role he needed to play until old age. In today’s highly urbanized societies little thought is given to how a boy becomes a man, and almost no recognition of the passage into manhood occurs. Further, a man’s role in family and society has been devalued in popular culture and even in educational institutions. Fathers often are not present in their boys lives. A crisis in a significant percentage of young men in our society has developed. Whitney MacDonald, a Waldorf teacher from North Carolina, discussed the disturbing statistics relating to the alienation young men feel at a lecture at our school on Jan 18. Rates of imprisonment, drug use (90% of rehab patients are male) and violent death are extremely high for young men today. Perhaps more telling were the statistics on college enrollment, which has seen a shrinking percentage of male college enrollees (only 44% of the total) and graduates (just 46% of the initial male college enrollees graduate within six years). I spoke with Mr. MacDonald after his lecture. In contrast to the statistics on destructive behavior in young men I pointed out the selfless acts of courage young American men perform. I am friends with a number of courageous Marines who have returned from combat tours having risked their own life and limb to save their fellows. I know firemen who survived the World Trade Center collapse in 2001 and swear that they could depend on every man in their firehouse to be just as fearless