NYT: Public Military Academies Put Discipline in Schools (growing trend)

[DeepModem Mom]

Public Military Academies Put Discipline in the Schools
By ALINA TUGEND
Published: April 6, 2005


Ryan Donnell for The New York Times
At Philadelphia Military Academy, students prepare for a drill team competition with old Army rifles that have been disabled. The school has 157 ninth graders and expects to grow to 9th through 12th grades.


....Current interest in public military schools is a marked contrast to the public's cool attitude toward private military academies, many of them boarding schools, after the Vietnam War. There were more than 270 private military secondary schools and colleges 40 years ago, but there are fewer than 40 today. The decline in the number of private academies has stabilized in recent years, but the growth is occurring in the public sector.

Those gains are fueled by the urgent desire of many parents and students for an orderly, safe academic environment, and by some funds from the Department of Defense....

***

But if supporters look at public military schools in Philadelphia and elsewhere and see islands of stability in chaotic urban seas, critics view them - and the Pentagon's material support for them - as little more than a means to market the military to poor and working-class minority children.

Chris Inserra, who is part of a coalition to block the proposed naval academy in Chicago, said in a telephone interview that high school "is not the time to be indoctrinated into the military."The growth in military academies is an extension of a national trend over the past decade as high schools have become more accepting of a military presence on campus.

Army, Air Force and Navy junior reserve officer training corps programs, in which students take military-oriented classes and wear a uniform at least once a week, have expanded over the last 10 years across the country, from 2,410 a decade ago to 3,189 programs in high schools today, according to a Department of Defense spokeswoman. In contrast, students in military academies wear uniforms every day and are always expected to observe military courtesy, including addressing their teachers with "sir" or "ma'am."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/education/06academies.html?pagewanted=all&position=

[TahitiNut]

1. "All your children are ours."

Two years in a U. S. Service Academy (USCGA) and two years in the Army tells me this is a Bad Idea™. Military indoctrination causes people to operate at the most fundamental levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, translating all to sycophantic behavior.

[Branjor]

2. Looks like pictures

I've seen of boys in Islamic schools in places like Afghanistan getting their training for jihad.

[rodeodance]

3. you are right--

"The growth in military academies is an extension of a national trend over the past decade as high schools have become more accepting of a military presence on campus.

[rodeodance]

4. looking for order!!

....On one side of the middle school in Philadelphia, students wearing the teenage uniform of baggy jeans and faded T-shirts shout down the locker-lined halls at each other.

On the other side, there is a different uniform: short-sleeved, pale green Army shirts, crisply pressed olive trousers, shiny black shoes and black nametags ending with 08, for the year they expect to graduate.

"Looking sharp," says the principal, Ozzie Wright, a Desert Storm veteran, as the ninth-grade cadets march smartly down the hall, following the barked orders of their classmate, the platoon leader......

[rodeodance]

6. the military model.

It was the Chicago public school system that most fully embraced the concept, and when Paul Vallas, the former chief executive officer for Chicago's schools, moved to head Philadelphia's public school system three years ago, he brought his enthusiasm for the military model.

"The programs teach individuals teamwork and personal responsibility," Mr. Vallas said. "I think it's a very effective character-building experience."

[MountainLaurel]

5. Spot on, Branjor

I hadn't thought about it, but the similarities are definitely there. After all, the madrassahs are the only education available to poor children (excuse me, MALE children) in Pakistan and other countries. And in the U.S., these military programs tend to be located in "high-risk" populations (a.k.a., poor and minority neighborhoods).

[SoCalDem]

7. My hometown had St. Johns Military School

and at that time they accepted 3rd grade to 12th grade..

Most of the boys there had gotten into some trouble at home, and were sent there as punishment.. I actually dated a guy from there once..attended his graduation and at the ceremonies, there was one lone 3rd grader who had to carry his class flag.. In May in Kansas it's very windy and HOT.. The poor little guy fainted.. His parents did not even come to get him.. The "commandant" at the school drove him to the train station, and put him on a train to Wyoming..

Sad boys...

It always reminded me of people who are all excited to get a new "puppy", but then the puppy chews their shoes and pees on the rug, so ...off to the pound they go.. It always reminded me of a "pound" for boys who did not meet their family's expectations.

People with MONEY, that is:)



edit... It's STILL there..looks pretty much the same..
link here

http://www.sjms.org/