Military Schools Recruit With Promise of Discipline

Insight on the News, March 29, 1999 by Kim Asch

By shifting their focus from training future soldiers to preparing civic leaders, military prep schools have made a comeback -- although their ranks have thinned since WWII.

A mid the frenzied world of adolescence, with its alluring distractions from television and music to drugs and sex, Jennifer Cole has learned to sit quietly at the desk in her room and study. She has no choice. A supervised, two-hour homework period beginning at 7:30 p.m. is part of the daily regimen at Massanutten Military Academy in Woodstock, Va.

"I was rude, I needed discipline -- according to my mother," says Cole, a native of Newark, N.J., about the path that led her to this small, coeducational boarding school nestled in the Shenandoah mountains. Now a senior student officer, Jennifer concedes that her mom was right. "You grow up here," she says.

Americans have done an about-face in their attitude toward military prep schools. Shunned during the Vietnam War and its aftermath, military academies saw their ranks dwindle from nearly 600 at the end of World War II to about 50 by the midseventies. But those schools that survived have seen enrollments soar during the past five years as more parents seek alternatives to the impersonal environments and values-neutral, watered-down curricula of many public schools.

Virginia boasts the most military schools of any state -- five -- with Massanutten celebrating its centennial this year. The academy is "the strongest it has been in 35 years," says Senior Vice President Jad Davis. Its 200 students -- a quarter of them girls -- hail from 23 states and seven foreign countries.

Some military schools have remained all-male, such as the prestigious Valley Forge Military Academy and College just outside of Philadelphia (graduates include Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, author J.D. Salinger and nine-time Grammy Award winner Jimmy Sturr). Others are linked with Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs and offer extracurricular activities that coordinate with their branch of the armed services. Three cadets earned their pilot's license last semester through the Air Force JROTC program at Randolph-Macon Academy in Front Royal, Va. Still other schools maintain close religious affiliations.

At all of the schools, classes are small and orderly -- averaging about 12 students, or cadets -- and supplemented by tutoring (mandatory for those who need it). Cadets address teachers as "sir" and "ma'am." About 98 percent of the graduates go on to college, often to selective schools such as Dartmouth, Princeton and Boston University. Only a small percentage of each class enter the service academies, including those at West Point and Annapolis.

Waiting lists are common. At Valley Forge, all 800 slots have been filled for the last six years. "They're coming back now because there's a very obvious and clear need for what we have to offer," says Valley Forge's president, Rear Adm. Virgil Hill, a former superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. Desperate for their sons and daughters to improve failing grades or halt destructive behavior, parents pony up an average of $15,000 a year in tuition, room and board.

Julie McAvoy of Reston, Va., a stay-at-home mother, says she couldn't protect her daughter Erin when her classmates began drinking and smoking. She could tell her A student was losing the battle between her conscience and her desire to belong. "When it looked like she was being influenced and was not handling it anymore, we talked about it and agreed that she should get out of the environment," says McAvoy.

Of course, military schools can seem more like another planet to the average teen. At Massanutten, reveille is at 6 o'clock every weekday morning. Cadets are required to attend formation 45 minutes later dressed in full uniform, complete with polished boots.

There, members of Alpha Company -- that's all the girls -- are scrutinized for signs of excessive grooming. Sparkle nail polish and heavy makeup are banned. Hair must be tied neatly into military buns or cut above the collar.

Cadets are called to formation before every meal and almost every new activity in their meticulously scheduled day. Simple pleasures -- watching videos and going into town on Friday nights -- must be earned. Academic achievement and good behavior within the Massanutten corps are rewarded with rank, for example, and with rank comes privileges.

"I had leadership qualities, but I was displaying them in a negative fashion," says Lt. Westley Watenda Omari Moore, the son of Jamaican immigrants. He used to encourage his classmates to "talk back" to teachers, acted as the "class clown" and set off smoke bombs in lockers.

He left the Bronx, N.Y., for Valley Forge at age 13. His mother worked three jobs to keep him there. During his first few weeks at Valley Forge, he was absent without leave five times in failed attempts to sneak back home.

"I finally realized a lot of people were making a lot of sacrifices for me to be there, and from that point on I was a different cadet," says Moore, now a junior at Johns Hopkins University and a second lieutenant in the Army.