Review of Breaking the War Habit: The Debate over Militarism in American Education, by Seth Kershner, Scott Harding and Charles Howlett (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022)
Rachel Waltner Goossen / Issue 2023, vol. 77 / Mennonite Life - Depending on one’s zip code, an American teen may have a high likelihood of attending a public school with Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), a federally funded program aimed to introduce students to U.S. military culture. At present, some 3,500 public high schools across the United States offer JROTC classes, with clusters especially in Southern states and in large urban districts. According to a 2022 New York Times study, troubling evidence is emerging that more and more high schools are mandating JROTC for large swaths of freshman students, even though by law these military classes are elective, not compulsory. Not surprisingly, some students and parents are pushing back against school officials, asserting – and winning – arguments that they have a right to public education without military-focused requirements.
The new volume Breaking the War Habit, a collaborative effort by a trio of U.S. peace historians, provides fascinating historical context for these present-day conflicts in districts around the country. Dating back to the new nation’s formation, rejecting school militarism has been “part of a long American tradition of opposition to military meddling in civil affairs,” which included James Madison’s and other founders’ concerns for the separation of powers, as well as limits on military authority (16). By the 1830s, as the Massachusetts educator and theorist Horace Mann began working out key principles for American public education, antimilitarist sentiments were widespread. Mann, the most influential of 19th-century U.S. educational reformers, proclaimed that young people must be “educated to that strength of intellect which shall dispel the insane illusions of martial glory” (5).