The Stage 11 elementary school needs to have more male teachers than female teachers in districts in which the preschool children are exposed more to mothers than fathers.
The male teachers need to be men who understand the value of risk taking, even if the child fails or gets hurt and humiliated once in a while, who understands the value of a child being held on his lap and is willing to stand up for that value to a community over anxious to call him a molester, who can take a drug dealer and help him or her understand how to translate the entrepreneurial skills of drug dealing into the entrepreneurial skills needed to run a business; who understands that we protea our children more in life by not overproteaing them in school; who understands that when we protea our children in school we are usually just proteaing ourselves from accusations by one or two parents which we fear will threaten our job.
•pie Journey of the Stage II adolescent
ді all ages, the Stage II journey involves rituals of options.
Imagine a Stage II video game for adolescents called "The First Date." Sometimes an identical choice (“kiss her") creates one outcome (passion), sometimes another (rejection) The game allows both sexes to experiment with new roles before they try them out in the real world.
At Stage II school balances messages of sexual caution with messages of sexual joy. It doesn’t turn sex into discussions of only safe sex, AIDS, herpes, rubbers, sexual abuse, date rape, stranger rape, harassment, power, and violence and then tell the boy to take all the initiatives. Discussion of sex in school has become like buying a cheap hamburger: where’s the joy?
Courtship rituals might include an adolescent boy being his girlfriend’s servant one weekend and being served by his girlfriend the next; cooking for her the first Saturday of each month, having her cook for him the third, taking her to a restaurant for a candlelit dinner, being taken by her. . . When they are older, they might choose more traditional roles, but at least it will be out of choice, not out of fear of peer disapproval or not knowing how to cook.
A Stage 11 school not only requires team sports for both sexes but uses the period after the game to understand the learning experiences of the game ("How does my unwillingness to pass the ball off relate to my larger life?’’). Alternative sports like flag football and rotation baseball (each player at a different position each inning) are part of the school curriculum. This does not mean that football, even in its one-sex, smash-face form, cannot be financedpriiutely, it does imply not financing it publicly. Male child abuse might be fun to watch, but taxpayers should not be required to pay for it.
Stage I sports were designed to build defenses against the outside world, so “our team good, their team bad" was understandable. Stage II sports are designed to prepare us for trade uith the outside world — for a global economy in which we are all part of the same team Stage II sports help us to rejoice in someone else’s special competence rather than be jealous of it.
The Stage II school system will help the student understand why individual sports and team sports lead to different life journeys. If Jane focuses exclusively on gy mnastics, she learns little about how to negotiate with her peers. And if Dick focuses only on team sports, he has not necessarily prepared himself to be a good self-starter or a good creative thinker — skills rveeded to start one’s own business, be a writer, artist, or an intellectual who thinks for her — or himself (rather than worrying about being politically correa).
The Stage II male-female journey involves both sexes learning from the tfiale heritage of risk taking and the female heritage of caution; from the tt^e heritage of learning not to limit oneself for fear of a broken bone and the female heritage of not having to prove oneself by breaking one’s bones.
The Journey of tho Stage II family
Because Stage II individuals can live without each other, their union is one of choice, not survival. Choice is a more fragile unifier than the need to survive. Yet most everyone wanes both choice and stability. So Stage II rituals must celebrate both choice and continuity For example, as a child moves out of the house, the famify might conduct a remarriage ritual to recognize its new family form, celebrating both the change and tlx‘ continuity
These changes require changes in consciousness, which implies activism and politics.