Scott Harding - Breaking the War Habit: The Debate over Militarism in American Education

Breaking the War Habit

SERIES EDITOR

James Marten,

Marquette University

SERIES ADVISORY BOARD

Sabine Frhstck,

University of California, Santa Barbara

Colin Heywood,

University of Nottingham

Dominique Marshal,

Carleton University

David Rosen,

Fairleigh Dickenson University

Patrick Joseph Ryan,

Kings University College at Western University

Nicholas Stargardt,

Magdalen College, Oxford University

Breaking the
War Habit

THE DEBATE OVER MILITARISM IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

Seth Kershner

Scott Harding

Charles Howlett

The University of Georgia Press

ATHENS

2022 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kershner, Seth, author. | Harding, Scott, author. | Howlett, Charles F., author.

Title: Breaking the war habit : the debate over militarism in American education / Seth Kershner, Scott Harding, Charles Howlett.

Description: Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2022] |

Series: Children youth + war | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021060248 | ISBN 9780820362212 (hardback) | ISBN 9780820362229 (paperback) | ISBN 9780820362236 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: United States. Army. Reserve Officers Training Corps. | United States. Army. Junior ROTC. | Committee on Militarism in Education (U.S.) | Military educationUnited StatesHistory. | War and educationUnited StatesHistory. | MilitarismUnited StatesHistory. | Education and stateUnited StatesHistory. | Civil-military relationsUnited StatesHistory. | United StatesArmed ForcesRecruiting, enlistment, etc.History.

Classification: LCC U428.5 .K47 2022 | DDC 355.2/232071173dc23/eng/20220119

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021060248

CONTENTS

One of the rewards of completing a book is the opportunity to thank those who contributed to its realization. At the University of Georgia Press, James Marten, editor of the Children, Youth, and War series, and press editors Jon Davies, Mick Gusinde-Duffy, and Beth Snead have been patient in their work on the manuscript. Special thanks to copy editor Polly Kummel, who has seen us through the final stages of the project with insight, kindness, and patience.

We also are indebted to the many activists who discussed their lives and experiences while they were engaged in counter-recruitment. We are especially grateful to Rick Jahnkow for helping to arrange interviews with counter-recruiters in California and elsewhere, and for allowing us to consult materials from his personal archive.

During our research we relied on terrific librarians and staff at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Chicago History Museum; New York State Archives; City of Portland Archives; Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University; M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives at the University at Albany; Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut; and Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

We also benefited enormously from the advice and guidance of colleagues, including Larry Wittner, Scott Bennett, Mike Clinton, Deborah Buffton, Heather Fryer, and Wendy Chmielewski. All have made valuable contributions to the flourishing field of peace history. Our intellectual debts to them and other members of the Peace History Society will, we trust, be obvious in the pages that follow.

Some parts of the book have drawn upon articles published earlier. All of the previously published material has been substantially rewritten and revised. The articles include the following: Seth Kershner, The New Beachhead Is in Secondary Education: Campaigns against Junior ROTC in Baltimore, Peace & Change 42, no. 3 (2017): 436464; and Seth Kershner, The Soldier as Super-Citizen: A Successful Activist-Scholar Collaboration to Challenge the JROTC, Fellowship (Winter 2011): 3233.

Breaking the War Habit

In 1926 a striking editorial appeared in the Army and Navy Register establishing the battle lines between opponents of militarism in education and those strongly endorsing it. You must admit, the essay began, that the ROTC must keep pushing hard to keep the naturally pacific mind of America from becoming pacifist.... Young men of this country are naturally conservative and conventional, not radical in their opinions. Playing on such sentiment, defenders of the program noted self-righteously that only if we had compulsory military training and a conscription system, we could park our spurs on our desks and let the citizens go hang.... But with a voluntary training system, we need the limelight. Our staid and unattractive work needs to be brought to popular attention, and, indeed, the best way to bring anything to the attention of the public is to start a fight about it. It turned out to be quite a fight, one pitting the determination of advocates for peace and justice against a powerful, entrenched American military establishment.

The analysis that follows provides the first historical account of challenges raised to the militarys influence in U.S. colleges and schools. It traces the history of opposition to the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) and Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC); that history took on added weight after the First World War, as an emerging movement sought to curb the growing influence of military recruiters on high school campuses. It is a fascinating, hidden story of the prolonged, uphill struggle of peace activists trying to prevent establishment of a military mindset in a country whose Founders warned of such perils.