Routledge Military High Schools in America

Once considered a bastion of learning, leadership, and disciplined lifestyle, today’s private military academies are often regarded as expensive holding facilities for unwanted, incorrigible boys who have nowhere else to go. Their depiction in popular media has reinforced the impression that they are boot camps disguised as educational institutions. The reality is far more complex and far more encouraging. Using a decade of participant observation research, including serving as an instructor at some of these schools, anthropologist William Trousdale explores the contemporary experience of military school life. From the admissions office to daily life in barracks, classrooms, playing fields, and social events, he describes how these schools endeavor to realize their mission of creating educated, mature young men from largely at-risk youth and the challenges―both met and unmet―in doing so. This volume will be of interest to those studying secondary and alternative education, at-risk youth, and the role of the military in society. Review I unequivocally and without reservation commend Dr. Trousdale's work as a must read for a potential parent, potential student, school administrator, counselor, teacher, and anyone just plain interested in this special educational setting....I found it knowledgeable, well constructed, and informative. It is the type of book long needed in the private military school arena as a guide to parents to dispel the myths about such schools. For far too long the truth has been clouded in mystery, half truths, and pure fiction. Dr. Trousdale's work fills a void and, even better, provides a real source of information for that parent or guardian seeking to find that special placement for ward or son. - Col. Roy W. Berwick, President, Oak Ridge Military AcademyTotal institutions are viewed as highly controlling, confining, and bureacratic places where inmates have little contact with the outside world. Unfortunately, military boarding schools for boys are guilty by association in the general public's mind. But this book shows them to be such only in structure, and not for the content and process of what unfolds in the day-to-day lives of the cadets, their loved ones, and the staff that serves them. This book is important because it provides a rare view to the backstage world of the increasinly elusive and private military academy for children and adolescents. It provides a thick description of the everyday world of academies. It is a big picture perspective on military schools that board exclusively boys--it is comprehensive, deep, and grounded in a realtive reality boarding on some common, generalized truth. It is a social scientific examination of broad and important proportions, contrasted greatly with the narrower views of medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and educators, far more focused in their case studies. - Morten G. Ender, Sociology Program, US Military Academy, West Point From the Back Cover Using a decade of participant observation research, including serving as an instructor at some of these schools, anthropologist William Trousdale explores the contemporary experience of military school life. From the admissions office to the daily life in barracks, classrooms, playing fields, and social events, he describes how these schools endeavor to realize their mission of creating educated, mature young men from largely at-risk youth and the challengesaboth met and unmetain doing so. About the Author William Trousdale is Emeritus Curator of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, former curator at the Freer Gallery and adjunct instructor at several military academies. In addition to his work on military schools, he is an expert on the art and archaeology of Central and East Asia and on the British colonial period in Asia. Trousdale directed the Helmand-Sistan Archaeological Project in Afghanis