I apologize for my long silence. Between traveling to a family wedding in southern Maryland (along with some sightseeing in D.C. and a visit to the Naval Academy—my fifteen-year-old son’s current collegiate aspiration), furiously grading all the papers and exams that didn’t get graded the long weekend we were out of town, Christmas, and a post-Christmas visit from my parents, I’ve had no time to impose my views upon an unsuspecting world.
But, like it or not, I’m back in the saddle.
As I was operating this morning’s swim taxi, I was listening to a conversation between Bill Bennett and David Gelernter, at the end of which Bennett asked Gelernter about the significant lacunae in the education of his Yale undergraduates. Gelernter’s answer (as I distractedly remember it—apologies to those more attentive or with better memories than mine): his students were unfamiliar with America’s greatness (especially as expressed in the U.S. military) and with religion. Undergraduates at most of America’s elite colleges and universities have little contact with military life. In addition, all too many of them exhibit little serious engagement with religion and theology.
I remarked upon this to my son (who, unlike his sister, is willing on occasion to cede command of the car’s radio to his father, and will listen to Bennett, Medved, and Hewitt on our trips to and from the pool). He answered that he knew lots about the military, the Bible, and theology. (I’ll concede his encyclopedic knowledge of the various weapons favored by spec ops troops, not all of which has been gleaned from video games, and his willingness to defend positions taken by R.C. Sproul against his somewhat less rigorously Calvinist Bible study mates.) I remarked that he doubtless knew some things that Yale undergraduates didn’t know and they knew things that he didn’t know. Yeah, he sighed, geometry (a subject currently giving him fits).
But leaving aside the oddball home-schooled kids of an oddball professor and his oddball theatre director wife, I thought about my own students. I guess I can be relieved that, at least in the respects cited by Gelernter, my students resemble Yale undergraduates. Or disturbed . . .
My institution doesn’t have an ROTC program; the few ROTC students I’ve had did their thing down at the Trade School on North Avenue. I’ve also had the privilege of teaching a few veterans, the most impressive of whom had been a staff sergeant in the Rangers and was, last I heard, a prosecutor in south Florida. Suffice it to say that military culture does not have a big impact on campus.
Nor does religion. Though founded by Presbyterians, my institution has not been affiliated with that denomination in its modern history. We have neither a chaplain, nor a religious studies program. (I’ll leave it to others to say whether the presence of either of these features does more harm or good to the cause of religion on college campuses.) Many of my students have at best a nodding acquaintance with the Bible or with the teachings of the denominations with which they nominally identify (if they identify with any at all). Many are, I suspect, “moralistic therapeutic deists,” at least if they haven’t left the faith of their fathers (or grandfathers) altogether. (I hasten to add that those who make it through our core curriculum will have been required to read—most emphatically not the same as “will have read”—selections from St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Old Testament, as well as works like Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Weber’s Protestant Ethic, so that they “might could” be a bit more sophisticated on their way out the door than they were coming in.)
But there’s one group of students I encounter who do not conform to either of these descriptions—African-Americans. They seem to be much more likely to have a friend or relative who is spending or has spent time in the service. And they seem to be much more likely to continue to be engaged in the life of their churches while they’re in college. They tend to light up in class when we discuss religious questions, and to offer thoughtful and reasonably well-informed observations. (To be sure, their peers set the bar pretty low, but they have little difficulty exceeding it.)
I realize that my experience is limited and that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I wonder whether others have similar impressions of their African-American students.
It would be nice to think that some of my students are in some respects better than run-of-the-mill Yale undergraduates. Perhaps we can arrange an exchange, mutually profitable to students at both institutions.
December 29th, 2010 | 4:19 pm
Maybe we ought to reintroduce the draft for military service. What would be so unreasonably about sapping off a few from that steady flow of graduates from the Ivy League to Wall Street?
December 29th, 2010 | 8:09 pm
Members of the military disproportionately come from the South, and Yalies come disproportionately not from the South. Even though the ROTC is apparently returning now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is repealed, don’t think that the average Yale student will therefore have more exposure to the military. The left-wing loathing of the military goes far beyond any particular policy; remember, ROTC recruiters were banned long before ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was enacted.
December 30th, 2010 | 8:13 am
“Trade school on North Avenue”
Go Jackets!!
December 30th, 2010 | 9:11 am
I’m wondering where we ever got this idea that military service was ever attractive to the elites of the United States. Sure, once a war was on, the sons of Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, Columbia, etc., rushed to the colors. But make it a career, or even spend some time in uniform in the absence of a war? Please!
The United States inherited from the Mother Country an abhorrence of standing armies and of conscription. The latter has always been the exception, not the rule in this country–an institution in place for just thirty of our two hundred and thirty of our 234 years.
The rest of the time, the military had to rely on volunteers, usually recruited from immigrants and the dregs of society. An officer might be considered a gentleman, but one did not find many in the higher ranks of polite society, nor were enlisted men welcome in respectable establishments. Throughout the 19th and into the first part of the 20th century, desertion in the Army ran close to 20% per year (the exception being the black “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry–thereby proving that the Army was the best career open to a black man, and the worst to a white man). Venereal disease rates, particularly for troops in the Philippines and China, were astronomical.
The situation we have today is, therefore, profoundly anomalous: a volunteer army composed of high quality individuals, who also are highly regarded within the general society. That relatively few graduates of the Ivy League are represented in the ranks of either the officer corps or enlisted men seems a quibble, when one considers this.
The truth is, for the first time in American history, the military really does resemble the society whence it comes. In two studies called “Who Bears the Burden” conducted several years apart, the Heritage Foundation discovered that the demographic makeup of the military mirrors almost exactly that of the general population. The myth that the ranks are filled with poor whites and minorities “who cannot find work”, along with its corollary that the elite do not serve, is graphically disproven.
In fact, the studies showed that the top income quintile (i.e., the richest) is slightly over-represented in the military, while the bottom quintile (i.e., the poorest) is slightly under-represented, while the middle quintiles are proportionally represented.
If there is a distinction within the military, it is regional, not socio-economic: the South and Southwest are very heavily over-represented, while the Northeast and Pacific Coast are heavily under-represented. The true correlation seems to be political–conservative “red” states provide the bulk of military recruits, while the deepest of liberal “blue” states provide the fewest.
As to the draft, what would be the point of restoring it? The era of mass armies is over, and modern military tactics and technology are too complex to be instilled in unwilling conscripts who are in uniform for just a couple of years. The proficiency and discipline needed to wage both modern, high-technology, high-intensity combined arms warfare and low-intensity, low-technology counter-insurgency operations can only be found in long-serving professionals.
Because the number of recruits needed each year is so small, a restored draft would call up only a fraction of the available 18-year old manpower (which begs the question of 18-year old woman power, but that’s another issue). So, one can expect a very high number of deferments and exemptions would be offered, and the world being what it is, these would mostly go to those enrolled in college or otherwise capable of gaming the system. At the end of the day, those swept up would be those incapable of finding an excuse to be excused–the poor and minorities. Thus, the military would come to look less like the country as a whole–but it would look more like the stereotype of what the liberal media believes about the military.
And, overall, the military would be much less combat effective than it is today, which is of course, the bottom line: the military exists only to deter aggressors and fight the country’s wars, not to bring about social transformation or raise awareness of anything.
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