Abstract
This article compares the sociopolitical context of the origin of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) to the period of its radical expansion during the 1990s. In its early years, military training aimed to Americanize new Southern and Eastern European immigrants while easing upper-class fears of social tensions and building support for impending military actions. In this decade, JROTC serves white, middle-class desires to “discipline” minority students and subordinate racial difference to an identification with the nation. At the same time, it quietly contributes to contemporary military manpower needs in a postconscription era. Offering one example in which extra- or noneducational interests become institutionalized in the public schools, the article recommends further interrogation of cultural beliefs buttressing claims on the educational public sphere.
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Bartlett, L., Lutz, C. Disciplining Social Difference: Some Cultural Politics of Military Training in Public High Schools. The Urban Review 30, 119–136 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023252527956
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023252527956