Kennett's call not Silly

Jeff Kennett's call for a return to national service to boost community spirit should not just be dismissed out of hand. Jeff is right when he says, that "...In Australia today we have a community in which people take for granted the environment in which we live and remain unchallenged and untested. There is too much emphasis on the individual and not the community. The simple fact is that most people don't understand how lucky they are living here. National service is a good thing in that it would make that clear to people and also teach them what it means to be a member of the community."

While the Mr Brumby disagreed, saying Victorians already had a great spirit of community service, that's not the point. A brief review of the literature tells us that boys are less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago, too many are plastered to the controls of their video games, hostile to school, disconnected from adult men and listless on "academic steroids" prescribed to them for attention deficit disorders. One of the worst enemies of young Victorians is boredom, and when young people live meaningless, boring unproductive lives, they generally find ways of entertaining themselves which are not always in society's best interests. The great thing about some sort of voluntary peace corp concept for young people is that it might...

a) provide a productive outlet for young people who are otherwise disaffected or disaffiliated
b) it will introduce them to some stable male and female role models
c) offer an opportunity to take healthy risks
d) offer an opprtunity to establish healthy peer relationships
e) it will provide them with a structure to their lives which will involve discipline and tradition which are deemed by the psychological literature as protective factors in their lives
d) it will equip them with a skill base for later on in life.

The epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving men is real and demands action; their "failure to launch" is a major public health issue - where are other people's solutions?