JROTC class at Forest Park High School {thanks, The Baltimore Sun}

Step 5: Send in the military.

I saved this step for last because, honestly, it’s my wild card. It’s a solution that may not be very popular. However, if it were ever implemented in earnest, it could very well be the most effective cure for our ailing schools.

While teaching at Douglass, I regularly found myself escaping to the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) wing of the building during my planning periods. Quiet, clean and empty, its hallways were an alternate universe patrolled by retired military folks in impeccably starched uniforms and crisp fatigues. Quite different from the general population of the school where anonymous packs of feral kids roamed the hallways while classes were in session.

Often I’d peek through the open classroom doors at the lessons in progress, watching the majors and sergeants helm a room of teenagers seated in precise rows. Subjects ranged from the standard high school fare (history, biology, English, etc.) to the finer points of military science. It was a self-contained world, operating in an environment of businesslike order. It was eerie, especially juxtaposed with the chaos that ruled on the other side of the building.

In those hallways, I saw education happen where statistics had shown it shouldn’t. I couldn’t help but wonder why this model wasn’t being applied to the rest of the school. Hell, why wasn’t it being applied to the rest of the system? I envisioned a school system that, rather than handing failing schools over to state supervisors, instead released them into the custody of the U.S. military.

JROTC emphasizes discipline, self-respect and personal duty to community and country. Its a model that’s worked in some of the system’s most compromised schools. But it’s a small program. Too small to make the seismic changes the Baltimore City Public School System needs to achieve credibility. I advocate exploring the possibility of a more intense partnership between the U.S. military and the public school system.

Turn our armed forces loose on our worst schools, the places where the largest number of underachieving, unwilling, or “unteachable” students reside. Convert these schools into military-run educational boot camps, complete with on-campus housing facilities. The military has a time-tested model for instilling discipline and self-reliance. And it has the resources and the stomach to do what the school system is incapable of: Break kids down to build them back up. Let’s put the approach to work for our most at-risk students.

It’s no secret that many of the kids who fail in school never received sufficient guidance from their caretakers. They’re ignorant to what’s considered appropriate behavior in a school setting, they’re apathetic to academic achievement, and they’re unable to discern right from wrong. I contend that these students would benefit from the rigorous regimen of the military life. Moreover, the total immersion experience of a boarding school would remove them from the harmful influences many go home to when the dismissal bell rings.

Considering the money-crunch that plagues many poorer urban school districts, the prospect of a fully integrated military partnership adds much needed resources and cash flow to the educational equation. After all, recent history has shown the military has an uncanny ability to locate large sums of money to fund its efforts.

Of course, building a better world for our school kids isn’t the military’s mission statement. There has to be incentive.

Our armed forces spend big to bring in new soldiers. In 2007, the military shelled out over $4 billion to recruit nearly 146,000 people (including reservists). That works out to about $27,000 spent per recruit. From a marketing point of view, that kind of return on investment indicates a lot of wasted dollars. Now, compare that to the roughly $11,000 a year allocated per student in Baltimore. If the military were to front even a fraction of that cost in its efforts to establish public military schools, it stands to reason that they’d be looking at a way to get a whole lot more bang for their marketing bucks.

Instead of dumping money into traditional advertising like TV ads and billboards, they’d have an opportunity to reach potential recruits on a much more meaningful level. Their schools would not only give kids a sustainable model for personal growth and improvement, it would give the military unfettered access to thousands of potential recruits. It’s a mutually beneficial situation. Kids get the education they deserve, the guidance they need and the opportunities they may not have otherwise had; the military recruits more efficiently from a pool of candidates predisposed for that kind of career.

Epilogue

I’ve done my best to put together a measured, thoughtful list of action points for our school system. Some may be more feasible than others, particularly when you consider the economic and political climate in which we live. But they’re a start. A start of the dialogue.

I’ve said my peace. And now, I’m hoping you’ll say yours. I want your suggestions. Email them to me at mmcdermott@getrenegade.com. I’d like very much to share them with readers in a later column. More importantly, I’d like to compile them to send to North Avenue. If there’s anything school CEO Andres Alonso’s proven in his time with us, it’s that he is a man who’s willing to listen to the community. He’s shown a commitment to finally turning over the stagnant soil of the status quo. Though his solutions may not always be popular - whether within the system itself or with armchair skeptics like me - he’s not afraid to burn the play book and loft one into the end zone for the good of our kids.

Previously:

Introduction to the series

Step 1: Leave magnet schools alone.

Step 2: Rediscover what worked before.

Step 3: Treat teachers like professionals.

Step 4: Build social responsibility into the curriculum.

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