Building warriors in the classroom?(INSIDER REPORT)(army recruitment)

In April, the U.S. armed forces missed recruiting targets for the third consecutive month. The combination of growing shortfalls and expanding overseas commitments has prompted many observers to conclude that a return to the draft may be unavoidable (see article on page 24). Retired Marine officer Michael S. Woodson offers a different view: rather than reinstitute conscription, public schools should be used to rebuild the rudiments of a "warrior society."

"The only way to improve Army recruiting is to improve the quality of recruits over the long term," wrote Woodson in an April 4 report for Soldiers For The Truth, a military reform organization founded by the late Colonel David Hackworth. "It can only happen if recruiting dies and martial training and tradition rise in U.S. public elementary school curricula."

"Each of the armed services ought to use recruiting and research funds to pay accomplished former armed service members to train children in key areas that will develop their warrior talents: physical and mental toughening, orienteering, martial arts, marksmanship, swimming, outdoor and survival skills, negotiating terrain, mechanical skills, endurance, field medicine, problem-solving workshops and the like," he writes. This warrior-arts curriculum would "provide a much larger contingent of military-ready recruits and candidates when they come of age without having to put them through a sudden assembly-line process, after high school.... At any time, we would be able to raise a credible military force out of our peacetime population."

In previous eras, the skills and attitudes Woodson describes were instilled in young men without state intervention or encouragement. As ...