Chapter Three—
Virtue As a Source of Order

Lives with a Purpose

Using their traditions' virtues as building blocks, two different ways of life are constructed at Quaker and military boarding schools. Chapter One has described what happens when classes, meals, styles of dress, and methods of supervising and orienting students are passed through the filter of moral tradition. Chapter Two has shown that the resulting life-styles grow out of carefully constructed and purposeful moral worldviews. Even someone with no previous exposure to Quakerism and only a layman's knowledge of the military can find much that is familiar in the two worldviews, because embedded within them are classic American liberal and conservative ways of thinking. Although liberals do not think in terms of the Inner Light, nor conservatives in terms of the mission, the former, like Friends, emphasize an ethic of openness that promotes tolerance and equal treatment of individuals, while the latter, like military officers, emphasize an ethic of personal responsibility that promotes discipline and successful accomplishment of tasks.

The Quaker and military moral traditions are different from everyday liberal and conservative ways of thinking, however, because they reflect a coherent sense of purpose. Quaker and military virtues are carried to their logical conclusions. Thus, a belief in the equal value of every person means that one cannot kill another human being, whereas a belief in personal responsibility for country and comrades means that one is ready to kill and die for them. Such single-minded

adherence to a moral tradition, whether it is deemed constraining or strengthening, does give order to life. A tradition engages its members in a story with a plot they can follow, in which they have a clear-cut role to play. This chapter analyzes the Quaker and military stories as they unfold at the six boarding schools and shows how the virtues define adults' and adolescents' roles as teacher and student.

The Quaker Virtues at the Schools

Equality

A teacher in his late fifties said, only partially in jest, that he preferred Mott to a conventional prep school because he found it "revolting" to be called "sir." At Quaker schools, adolescents and adults call each other by their first names. Closeness exists in more than just this token form, however. As a senior girl at Mott explained:

Something I've really valued here is that there isn't a huge distinction between freshmen and seniors, or between faculty and students, or between employees of the school and faculty and students. The school says, "Yes, these people are teaching you, and yes, they are older than you, but they are also your friends and they are here for you to go to other than to learn about math or history."

Of course students and teachers are not equals in authority: teachers assign homework and enforce rules which they, and not the students, have established. But the easy dialogue in the classrooms, the exchange of opinions between prefects and adults at dormitory staff meetings, and the astute way that many of the older students talk about individual faculty members—without either knee-jerk hostility or unreflective adulation—show a lack of generational distance that is rare at the high-school level.^[1] The three Friends schools promote another kind of equality by giving no prizes of any kind; students receive grades but are never publicly ranked. A teacher said that when he started at Mott he was convinced that "contests would be a good way to spark enthusiasm and get things happening," and he made an assembly presentation to encourage students to join in a bridge-building contest. After the assembly, "several teachers talked to me very informally and quietly and graciously and told me that contests really aren't the way we do things here at Mott. Who is best is not all that important, and ballyhooing who is best is definitely not a done thing."^[2]

A similar emphasis on equality exists among the adults on campus. Teachers and administrators at the three schools meet regularly to discuss new policies, program changes, proposed budgets, and serious disciplinary problems, and teachers speak out at these meetings. One Mott department head said, "In no workplace before have I ever felt the equal of the headmaster. Here I am perfectly comfortable telling [him] exactly what I think." An attempt is also made to minimize the division between faculty and kitchen, grounds, and office staff. At Fox a cook is also a dorm resident and student advisor; at Dyer a maintenance man is a popular coach. The grounds foreman at Mott, who coaches and serves as an advisor, criticized a new administrator for telling him, "'You people in grounds are here to serve the faculty.' But that's not true. Nobody here is serving anybody—we are all here together in a community—the students, the faculty, and us. . . . I feel part of my job is helping to raise the kids."

Equality is also one of the important lessons that a number of the teachers say they want to communicate to pupils. Mott sponsors one-week work camps in Appalachia and Washington, D.C., where students paint houses or work in soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless. A teacher thought the students' essays about these trips were "among the best examples of what our moral education is about at this school," because they showed that the students were challenged to think about "whether or not we have a right to the wealth we have. For the first time they encounter the fact that maybe it's not that the poor are poor because they are lazy and don't have the motivation to take advantage of the American dream . . . that some people are trapped in their poverty." History, English, and religion classes also address the issue of equality between races and nations. In a discussion about the nineteenth-century American ideal of progress, a junior concluded, "When we tried to live up to our goals of expansion and progression, our principles suffered, and other people were victimized, especially working-class people." "When we try to protect smaller countries," said another junior, "it puts them in debt to us; it gives us control over them."

At military academies, by contrast, the emphasis is on hierarchy, not equality. Students are separated from each other by their ages and ranks and from most of their teachers by strong conventions that inhibit closeness. One teacher at Pershing complained, "They're so polite I want to shake them sometimes," and a senior girl, telling about

her deep depression for most of the previous year, said, "I suppose I would have loved to talk to any adult, but I wasn't really sure how to approach them." A similar distance exists between teachers and top administrators at the three military academies. Occasionally people at the military academies complained about the hierarchical nature of relationships, but for the most part equality was neither expected nor sought.

Community

Two mornings a week, teachers, administrators, and students at Dyer Friends School gather together for "community meeting," a time when anyone who has anything to share can get up and speak, sing, or play music. Like a Meeting for Business, this gathering is in the hands of a clerk, a popular senior boy whose lazy manner hides a surprising amount of authority. There is no agenda. One Friday, a student opens the meeting by playing one of his own compositions on the piano; afterwards, team captains report on wins and losses in sports, a teacher urges students to attend an AIDS rally in a nearby city, and various members of the audience list events scheduled for the upcoming weekend: a hike, a dance, an open house hosted by the academic dean. Each of these announcements is accompanied by a background murmur of student commentary, affectionate rather than hostile, which is skillfully held in check by the clerk. A young teacher plays his guitar, then a girl with a remarkable voice gets up and belts out a song. A staff member asks students to look presentable for the upcoming alumni weekend—this generates a ripple of disapproval and mumbles about hypocrisy. Finally, the dean of students talks about the increase in theft in the school; he begs students to help him find the culprits, whose most recent booty was the school's video recorder. After this speech, the clerk closes the meeting, as he opened it, with a few moments of silence.

"Community meeting" is not a misnomer: at this informal gathering of 200 people there is a shared sense of belonging. This feeling is displayed by bookbags flung down in the halls, coats tossed over chairs, and student artwork on the walls; by the open office doors; and by the faculty children in the dining room. Dyer is not always harmonious—there are adolescents who make life miserable for their dorm mates and adults who make it clear they cannot stand one another.

But the school is home to teachers and students. It engages them profoundly: they think about Dyer, argue about it, and are constantly trying to improve it. To that extent it is exactly what so many of them want it to be—a community.

The concern to turn the school into a close-knit community of adolescents and adults is most clearly articulated at Dyer—perhaps because it attracts more emotionally needy students and adults—but it exists at the other two Friends schools as well. Fox is so small, and so many of its teachers and pupils are alumni or the children of alumni, that their strong sense of belonging is only to be expected. Yet at Mott, the largest of the three schools, students and staff also share a sense of being at home. One long-term teacher said:

This is not just a job, it's where I live. I don't see an end of my workday, I'm just here. I lived in a dorm my first seven years here, and the first two years I wasn't in dorm I felt left out. So we chose to become dorm parents again. And I coach. So I feel constantly involved.

When a senior was asked what she thought Mott considered the most important lessons for her to learn, she answered immediately, "Community and equality. . . . Everyone who comes here—even friends of mine who don't go here but have come to visit—say there's such a feeling about this place. It's a feeling we have for each other."

Because of its political concerns, Mott goes beyond Fox and Dyer in promoting a sense of belonging in the world as well as in the school. A Quaker staff member thought that the most important value students should take from Mott was "a feeling of the total world as a world community." Other teachers expressed their desire to communicate to students something they called "responsibility to the world" or "a sense of world citizenship."

Students and, more rarely, teachers use the word community at military school, but it is almost always tied to the military virtue of loyalty, as when Pershing's Kyle Bennett said that people in his company who tattle on their fellow cadets "have no sense of community." In a technical sense, all boarding schools are communities, places where people live, eat, and work together, but the emphasis on building a shared sense of caring and belonging, either between students and teachers or among the faculty, is not present in the military

environment. Quaker schools hold frequent meetings of adults—department meetings, dormitory staff meetings, and so on—and also assemblies, Meetings for Worship, and other gatherings for both adults and students. During my weeks at the military academies there were no full-faculty meetings, no school-wide meetings of teachers and students, and only two student assemblies. All three military school faculties include adults who care deeply about particular students, but the sense of togetherness and mutual affection shared by the adults and adolescents in Dyer's community meetings or in Mott's twice-weekly assemblies is not in evidence at the military academies.

Simplicity

Today's Quakers are not like the Amish; their simplicity is a matter, not of rejecting twentieth-century life, but of carefully weighing twentieth-century priorities. "In listening to the Inner Voice, [Friends] know that moderation is better than excess, that our lives should be centered, not dissipated, and that if we cannot live in voluntary poverty, we should not live in voluntary prodigality."^[3] Moderation is not an easy doctrine for twentieth-century American adolescents, who tend to experiment with excesses on their way to developing a sense of identity.^[4] One Mott senior, a non-Quaker, when asked about the lessons he thought the school taught, ran through an impromptu list of Quakerly virtues and dismissed simplicity out of hand: "Let's see. The cornerstones of Quakerism are simplicity, truth, nonviolence, and equality. Well, simplicity is out the window—people are extravagant here. I like to dress up—that Miami Vice look!" A long-term Quaker staff member also thought that Mott sometimes failed to convey the virtue of simplicity, although she considered it a very important value. She could not reconcile her belief that one should "live simply, so that others may simply live" with the wealth of many students and their "expectations of more and more and more."

Ellen Kahn, another Quaker teacher, was more hopeful about Mott's success in teaching simplicity. She felt that the required service programs—work camps or weekly volunteer work—helped students see that "it is good and noble to work in professions that don't necessarily make a lot of money, but which can be of use to other people in the world":

I think we help kids to see how a responsible person from an affluent society needs to relate to the world, and that implicitly discourages materialism. . . . I think most of our kids really are quite materialistic. . . . But the . . . faculty are role models, because I think there are very few of us who are conspicuous consumers.

Of course, she concluded with a laugh, it wasn't only Quaker-school teachers who were role models for simplicity. "Probably the same could be said of any independent-school faculty, since none of us get paid very well, and if we cared about getting paid well we wouldn't be here!"

Although the tendency toward informality, casual dress, and direct speaking encourages a simplicity of manner at all three schools, the virtue is most prominent at Fox. There students and adults live unelaborately, sharing meals and chores. On many mornings students get their own breakfasts, chatting with the cook, who is already starting the noon meal, and after breakfast each student does his or her cleaning job around the school. The older alumni remember an even simpler time, when students also milked cows, helped with the apple-picking, shoveled coal, and did repair work around the school. A couple from the class of 1940 reminisced with amused affection about the strictness of the school in their day. One of the first ordeals of the new school year was a clothing inspection by the Yearly Meeting's dress-code committee. Students unpacked their trunks and laid their clothes out on the beds; then the women's committee would examine the girls' clothes and the men's committee, the boys', asking them to "lay aside . . . anything too flashy or gaudy for a proper Quaker." This meant, explained the woman, "nothing red. No bright colors, no big plaids. . . . Now, my senior year I had a dress that was dark red with a tiny flower in it, and they let me keep that." In addition, "we weren't allowed to show very much skin: we had to wear silk hose—that was before nylons—and long sleeves and high necks, even in the summer."

This dress code no longer exists at Fox, but the emphasis on frugality and hard work remains, best exemplified by Andrew Henley, a Quaker in his early thirties who teaches several subjects, coaches sports, and runs the work program. The Fox headmaster had no hesitation in naming Henley as the person who best embodied the spirit of the school. First of all, "there's just plain old-fashioned heritage." Andrew Henley is descended from generations of local Quakers; his ancestors have been members of the Yearly Meeting and

attended Fox School "for who knows how long." Yet, the headmaster insisted, "he's not an anachronism. He is in touch with the real world." Another reason Andrew embodies the Fox spirit has to do with his faith. "His spirituality has not been confused by a lot of the things going on in Christianity today: evangelical things, fundamentalist teachings. He has not been entrapped by that sort of dogmatic approach to spiritual growth." Finally, as leader of the work program Andrew is responsible for students' keeping the school clean:

So much of the experience of being a student here has to do with contributing to the community, and Andrew is extraordinary on that front. [The work program] works because it's such a given for him, not a big deal. He doesn't feel in the least awkward about insisting that someone do a better job cleaning a bathroom. . . . Andrew's greatest wish is to transfer to other people a simple love of work. He likes to work hard, likes to work up a sweat. He finds joy in that and likes to share it with other people.

During one of my weekends at Fox School, Henley asked for volunteers to help him mop and wax the floors; the first work crew was filled in minutes. "The kids enjoy working with him," explained one of his colleagues; "they get into discussions." One of his students said she respected Henley more than any of the other teachers, because "he's the most honest; he doesn't play games. . . . He's someone I can trust."

This dedication of Henley's, this combination of honesty, openness, and single-mindedness, is part of what Quakers mean by simplicity. There are some equally dedicated people at the military academies, but no one with Henley's serenity and emotional transparency. Austerity is an important part of a soldier's life, and members of the military profession cannot be accused of being materialistic, since they earn relatively little money compared to civilians with similar responsibilities. Nevertheless, simplicity is not a military virtue. At the military academies, the grandiose architecture, the ritualized exchanges of titles and courtesies, the importance of parades, ceremonies, and elegant uniforms, and, perhaps above all, the artificiality of the formal self-control cadets and adults are required to show all work against simplicity.

Peace

The Quaker schools are peaceful places in two senses. First, pacifism is a clearly articulated political stance adopted by many—although by

no means all—teachers and students. It emerges in discussions of current events, world history, religion, and literature and often colors the statements of those who speak in assembly or in Meeting for Worship. A group of Mott freshmen in a social studies class discussing the national budget deficit want to know why the United States can't cut defense spending; in a Latin American history class, a Fox teacher expresses his distress at the U.S. government's support of the Nicaraguan Contras; and at Dyer students in an American history class listen to their teacher describe with obvious bitterness how in the late 1960s the Democrats split over opposition to the Vietnam War. Pacifism is not limited to talk: teachers and students participate in peace marches and demonstrations. One senior girl, a birthright Friend,^[5] said, "I try to get to political gatherings off-campus. Last year I worked it out through the school to go to the peace march—I took off for a week and went down to Washington by train."

Peace-making was also the foremost lesson the head of Fox's school committee wanted students to take away with them. He hoped they would realize that:

The peace testimony is more than just refusal to go to war. It involves nonviolence in all confrontations . . . whether it's with your roommate or your girlfriend or someone you meet on the street. And it goes back to . . . how teachers interact with their students both in class and out. Because you learn from what you observe.

In other words, pacifism is not only a political stance but also a vision of how members of the school community should treat one another. Physical violence is strongly discouraged, and according to students it rarely occurs. Not everyone is kind, but at all three schools the expectation is that members of the community will try not to hurt one another's feelings. At a tiny place like Fox, such a norm is perhaps to be expected. But even at Mott, with its 500 students, teenagers insisted that no one was treated cruelly. A senior, Leah Brodsky, believed that "people at Mott have an interesting kind of tolerance," because they are polite to people they don't like. Not that people should dislike each other, she said, but when they do, "if everyone is at least civil, then your confidence isn't shot and torn apart, and you can go about your life and then go to other places where maybe people will like you." She compared Mott to her earlier school, an all-girls acad-

emy "where they absolutely despised me, and they ganged up on me like crazy. . . . They sensed my difference."^[6]

Dyer had several obvious bullies; nevertheless, students thought of it as a nonviolent place compared to the schools many of them had come from. A junior boy who valued "the oddity and diversity of people at Dyer" couldn't imagine a person who wouldn't fit in "except maybe someone who was really violent and liked to be angry. And even those people usually fit in eventually, because they change, and you get to see what they are really like and get close to them." Another student echoed this vision of Dyer as "big on nonviolence." He thought that having "a Quaker philosophy at a high school" wasn't easy, since "it's hard to deal with people on a mature level when you're not that mature yourself." Nonetheless,

people who have been here for all four years learn that there are more ways to deal with people and situations than just with violence. That talking, explaining your side of the situation, is better than hurting. . . . People are suspended and expelled for violence, and I see that as a major thing.

At military academies a favorite classroom topic is war, not peace. In history classes, students came alive when particular battles were discussed, and several showed a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the facts behind such events as the charge of the Light Brigade and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Many of the cadets fantasized about military careers (although only a small fraction of each graduating class goes on to a military college or enlists in the armed forces).^[7] Peace is also not a word that describes relations between cadets. Hazing—mental or physical abuse, especially of the junior ranks by their seniors—is officially forbidden at all three schools, but a great deal of it occurs nonetheless.^[8] At Pershing, for example, a cadet expressed his approval of a certain amount of force or at least intimidation as part of military training: "If you can get someone scared without hurting them, that's the idea; that teaches respect." Yet he drew the line at one method of scaring cadets: hanging them out of a fourth-story dormitory window. This had happened to him the year before:

They had me out the window head first, and then they started taking the strings out [of my boots], and I could feel my feet starting to slip out. When one of my boots came off they held me by [the other], and then when I

started to fall they just grabbed my underwear and yanked me back in. . . . I was petrified.

The Quaker Story:
Bringing Out the Inner Light

A Search for the Good

Equality, community, simplicity, and peace are all chapters in the Quaker story of fostering the Inner Light in every individual. In a peaceful environment where people feel equal to one another, share a strong sense of community, and live simply and single-mindedly, it is easier for that of God, or what is best in every individual, to emerge. That is, in essence, the moral project of Quaker schooling. A Mott dean believes "that there is that of God in all . . . kids, . . . something that is unique and spectacular and that deserves celebration" even in "the kid who comes in here with a peace symbol etched on the top of his head and reeking of pot smoke." This belief, he said, shapes his approach to advising and administering discipline. "We expect the best of kids, and I think sometimes when you look for that which is special in kids you are more likely to find it."

For most of the students at Mott, Fox, and Dyer, the Quaker project of bringing out the Inner Light translates into the desirability of expressing one's inner self—in other words, being different from everyone else, being a unique, special individual. In formal interviews and informal conversations with students in Quaker schools, the most common answer kids gave when asked what was distinctive about their school was, "This is a place where we can really be ourselves." A Mott sophomore explained that even if you stay in your room and are anti-social, "people are still nice to you," because "people respect the fact that someone is different." Of course, she added, "there aren't that many super-conservative people here." Asked if those few conservative students were ostracized, she answered, "Well, they interact with everyone. Actually, I don't know anyone here who's straight as an arrow. Mott is a good place to bring out the parts of you that make you different. This is a place for letting your Inner Light shine." A young Dyer student said the school had taught her to accept "nontrendy people" who "dare to be different." This emphasis on the importance of expressing one's inner self and "daring to be different" was not

confined to the students; teachers, too, stressed their school's tolerance for eccentricity. One young teacher, a Mott alumnus, said, "Here you can be the person you want to be, and be safe. No matter where you are in the Breakfast Club,^[9] you're okay."

Students and teachers at the Quaker schools frequently use words and phrases having to do with being receptive and expressive, such as openness, listening, speaking out, feeling comfortable, sharing, accepting . To some extent this is simply the fashionable "let's communicate" vocabulary of the 1970s and 1980s, an outgrowth of what the authors of Habits of the Heart call "expressive individualism."^[10] But images of opening oneself, sharing thoughts, and listening have been part of the Quaker vocabulary for generations; they reflect the importance of trying to get access to one's own and others' Inner Light. For some, this emphasis on the internal is religious. A Fox administrator valued the silence that is a key part of the Quaker experience because "it is very important to live in a listening mode. I have a belief that God really does communicate with us directly. . . . It's the responsibility of each individual to make his or her own contact, to listen in his or her own way . . . and seek to serve God." For others, especially students, this emphasis on listening, feeling, and communicating has little to do with God and a great deal to do with trying to understand oneself and one's peers. When a boy in his second year at Mott was asked what he had learned there, he answered, "I think you learn how other people feel"—like punks, for example. "After speaking to someone, you get to know why they want to do that, spike their hair or wear clothes that are torn. . . . Unless you speak to them, you just think they are weird and dirty, so you have to ask them how they feel." Different as their viewpoints are, both the Dyer dean and the Mott sophomore, along with many others at the three schools, believe that listening and expressing feelings have to do with discovering an inner truth about oneself or others. To be faithful to this truth is to acknowledge the internal source of morality that is so important to Friends.

Flaws and Failures

The Quaker focus on the inner self has its negative aspects. One is that it can be intrusive. A shy new teacher at Mott was afraid she would not be able to handle the degree of openness required by the community. I asked her, "If you had to tell an outsider one thing about Mott,

something the person ought to know before coming to work here, what would it be?" She answered that she would warn the person that "they could not expect to be able to hide anything about themselves from anyone else in the community." First of all, you are "exposed in everything you do"; second, she felt that you could not teach well unless you were willing to confide in other teachers and ask for their help. "You need to get their advice . . . and you can't do that unless you are very open about what you are struggling with and what you're successful with. Which is new for me. I'm a fairly private person and I like my privacy, but I couldn't get by here if I just kept to myself."

The faculty's desire to encourage the Inner Light can also lead to various forms of well-intended deception. One Mott teacher, although a strong supporter of the Quaker educational philosophy, described "the other side of the coin":

Because of this need for each person to feel good about themselves and feel important, we praise people who are really mediocre or poor. And sometimes the real education would be to say, "You really can't sing; you should give it up." . . . I think sending people out of here thinking that they are very, very special when they are really very ordinary—that's what nervous breakdowns are based on.

In handling students' misbehavior, another kind of deception can arise. A disillusioned young teacher at Fox who assured me that "Friends' philosophy is marvelous" nevertheless felt that its "spiritual, very positive, pro-individual perspective" led many Quakers to believe that "people just somehow accidentally do bad things—it's never intended at all." At Fox this "very liberal educational line" could become "the argument for why you never deal with anything." Much as he, too, respected the individual, he didn't think it was respectful "to deceive yourself or someone else. I'm not going to pretend I don't know what kids are up to."

At its worst, the Quaker concern with the inner self, the desire to care, and the tolerance for difference can lead to a show of favoritism toward the odd, the disturbed, and the loudly needy. A member of the Dyer community said bitterly:

This school . . . had a reputation of being a school for misfits, and I think that attracted faculty and staff who felt that they were misfits and that somehow by being leaders in a school for misfits they would work out their own feelings about [themselves]. . . . Some of the strongest teachers in the school, profes-

sionally competent people who don't bring their personal problems to the job, are poorly treated, whereas some people who are far less competent get a lot of TLC . . . because they seem to require it.

The Quaker Story at Its Best

The Quaker story of furthering the Inner Light can become an excuse for poor education, poor discipline, and poor management, but it can also bring out the best in school life. The Mott advisory meetings exemplify this value.^[11] Held quarterly, they consist of a group of twelve faculty members discussing every student with academic or disciplinary problems. Other teachers besides the core twelve come and go during the discussion; some are present for the whole meeting, others only to talk about students of special concern to them. This is no gripe session, but a period of real knowledge-sharing, in which the adults, with an astonishing amount of humor and sensitivity and very little in-fighting, do their best to understand, but not to excuse, students' behavior and to come up with practical solutions to their problems.

Although the meeting is informal, the academic dean keeps it running smoothly. As each name on the list comes up, the student's advisor describes him or her, referring occasionally to notes. The presentation goes something like this: "Well, David is still a problem. He has an F in American history from not turning in his work, a D in Track II Math, a C- in physics. He seems to be doing okay in his other courses. This kid is just too easygoing. He has the capacity to do well in everything, but he can't seem to focus. We've talked about it, and he admits he doesn't study well. We had him in monitored study hall most of last year, and it helped. At least he didn't spend all his study time socializing. So I think we should put him back there again."

After the advisor's presentation, other people give their opinions about David. The academic counselor: "I think monitored study hall really was a big help to him; he thought so, too. He needs to have study guidelines laid down for him." David's dorm head: "He doesn't misbehave in the dorm, but he sure isn't working. His room is a real social center." Another dorm resident: "I've had a little trouble getting him to keep the noise down, but he was good about being quiet once I spoke to him. He's never rude." David's English teacher: "I want to say that he's doing very well in English, especially compared to last

year. I don't think he's getting enough sleep, though; he's fallen asleep several times in class." Soccer coach: "You'll all be glad to hear that he's performing extremely well for me, and not just as a player but as a supportive member of the team."

Student after student is discussed in this straightforward, caring way, and their behavior is analyzed: "She's always testing the limits." "He's in his thirteenth year of school and sick of being institutionalized." "I find him brilliant, but he won't work because he's so afraid of failing." Frequently the conversations focus on students' relationships with their parents: a girl's mother didn't have time to come to Parents' Day and sent her secretary instead; a boy's mother just died after a long illness and his father is an alcoholic; kids' parents are divorcing; others are having problems with stepparents. There is much affectionate laughter, as well as exasperation, over some of the incorrigibles on the list. As sensitive to extenuating circumstances as the teachers are, however, their analyses contain little wishy-washiness. They tend to fall back on psychological counseling, sometimes rather desperately, but they do not offer this step as an excuse for ignoring reality. Teachers say bluntly that someone "hasn't cracked a book," "needs a swift kick," or "stinks of marijuana." The praise that balances these forthright comments sounds genuine: a kid may be failing but is good in chorus, helps her dorm mates, deals with adults more maturely than she did last year.

The academic dean moves the discussion along, pushing the group to make recommendations. "So we agree to keep him on the problem list and assign him to monitored study hall, and I'll write a letter to his parents saying that if he continues this way he won't graduate." Other specific follow-ups include notes to teachers, meetings with the headmaster, tests for learning disability, a stint in disciplinary study hall, a special tutor, therapy. The process falters only when the committee is faced with a student who has been officially threatened with expulsion. There is a moment of silence, a kind of collective holding of the breath, when the word expulsion comes up. Then several people dive in to try to find an alternate solution.

These sessions are like a Quaker narrative unfolding, with the story's protagonists working toward a common goal. In the teachers' and administrators' respect for each other and attempt to reach a consensual decision, in their shared affection for a student or sympathy with a dorm resident's problems, in the straightforwardness of the

advisors' reports, and in the lack of animosity among committee members one can see the Quaker virtues of equality, community, simplicity, and peace being devoted to the search for that of God in every one of the teenagers under discussion.

The Military Virtues at the Schools

Loyalty

Loyalty is the preeminent military virtue because loyalty to country, commander, and comrades forms the basis of so many other soldierly qualities: courage, obedience, selflessness, pride. The military-school faculty envision loyalty as owed to the school and to the ideals it seeks to uphold. One administrator at Pershing called the feeling of deep attachment to the academy the "Pershing mystique." When asked what was expected of student officers, the commandant of cadets at Sherman answered unhesitatingly, "I expect them to be loyal to the policies of the school. By the time they are seniors in high school, if they can't support the school program, they should admit it and resign their command."

Students are tremendously attached to the military academies, and most are eager to preserve the traditions that they consider crucial to the success of the military program: the plebe system, the drills and parades, the JROTC classes in leadership, the uniforms. "The school is built on tradition, and all the tradition has to do with the military," said a Pershing sophomore. He admires the plebe system because it reinforces unit loyalty. "The Old Men . . . always told us, 'If someone picks on you from another unit, tell us, because that's not their job, it's our job.' They said . . . they were there to stick up for us. . . . I've never had any brothers or sisters, and now I have a huge family." Another Pershing cadet, a freshman athlete who was a member of Band—a separate military unit—said that many of his athlete friends had urged him to switch units, since Band members were infamously bad at sports. But he staunchly insisted that Band cadets were "the best" and had a lot of unity, too. "Even the meanest guy in the unit stood up for a Band freshman against a Trooper one time."

Another important kind of loyalty is that between subordinates and officers. The retired NCO who heads Jackson's military program said he expected student officers to earn the respect and loyalty of their

fellow cadets. "It's easy to say . . . 'Let me tell you right now—I'm a company commander and you're going to respect me,' and that doesn't mean anything. You can never demand that anybody respect you; we would hope that the officers would command the respect of their subordinates through their own actions, whether off campus or on campus." Cadets at the military academies do indeed feel this kind of respect for the best of their officers. At Pershing many looked up to the top-ranking cadet, battalion commander Tom Hurd. A freshman rejoiced at finally being allowed to drop the "sir" when talking informally to student officers but admitted, "There are certain people I sometimes still hesitate to call by their first names, the people I respect the most. Especially Tom Hurd, because he's always setting a good example." Another cadet, a senior private with too many demerits to get any rank, would have had every reason to resent Tom's success, but instead he called him "the nicest guy," mainly because "he's fair . . . not a hypocrite at all." Tom "expects you to do stuff that he'll do—that's what I really like. Like he's always all shined up, and if he's got 'em shined, he'll expect you to be shined." Admitting that Tom is "a goody-goody," the private nevertheless respected him for living up to the rules and thought other students did, too: "I don't think you could go up to anyone on this campus who wouldn't say he's a nice guy."

When asked what he thought the school had taught him, this senior private said, "Responsibility and respect . . . respect for the system, respect for your fellow man, respect for people older than you. It can go on and on, the respect, but especially respect for discipline. You discipline yourself to know what's right and what's wrong." Clearly he himself, with all his demerits, would not stand as the school's best example of someone who had learned to discipline himself, but he felt he had gained a lot of self-control during his years at Pershing. This loyalty to standards and to the people who uphold them represents a devotion to the system as a whole that many students expressed, in spite of their complaints about a particular rule or teacher. Erik Bergstrom, a platoon lieutenant at Sherman who was busted to private for a hazing incident in which he said he hadn't taken part, was committed to the military system despite the injustice he felt he had suffered. He believed that people came to the school "to learn about discipline," and even details like shining shoes were a vital part of that discipline, because "shining shoes teaches you to take care of the

whole job, instead of just part of it. Who cares if you're awesome at rifle drill, because if your shoes aren't shined . . . you're going to look really bad." Discipline was important at Sherman because it was important in life, since "eventually you're going to be at a job where the details are going to matter."

At Quaker school kids are fond of friends, teachers, and the community as a whole, but they do not have the same devotion to their school and its traditions that military-school students have. They also have no equivalent to the military units—Band, Company A, Troop, and so on—in which to invest their loyalties. The only similar subgroups in a nonmilitary high school are the different "hang-out groups" and, as a Mott senior put it, "You've got the preppies, punk people, trendy-wendies, and all the rest, but most people move from group to group. Only a few people are confined by it."^[12] Quaker students also treat their prefects with much less respect than cadets do their officers. A good prefect is rewarded with the trust of his or her charges, but not with heartfelt loyalty.

Competence

When a Mexican junior at Pershing was asked what she had learned there, she answered, "How anyone that works hard enough can get what they want through hard work. . . . In America everything is pretty fair and straightforward—if you work for it, you'll get it." This quintessential conservative credo, that hard work will bring success, prevails at all three academies. Sherman bills itself as a place "that trains winners." At Jackson, the headmaster considered his school a strict meritocracy; since competence was rewarded, you had only yourself to blame if you failed. First you "learn what it takes, and then, if you really want it, . . . go for it." He thought there were "too many people—not just cadets but adults—who are always blaming external factors for what are their own failings. It's always the system or someone doing something wrong, when in fact they haven't met the requirements."

All three schools had a number of competent cadet officers and NCOs. Each company included sergeants who assigned clean-up jobs, distributed supplies, and inspected rooms; lieutenants who coached drills, organized hall activities, recommended people for promotions, and trained plebes; and a first sergeant, executive officer, and captain

who were in charge of shepherding between twenty and fifty cadets through each day's activities, from reveille to taps. One of the most professional NCOs was seventeen-year-old Lamont Sandler of Sherman Military Academy. Lamont was considered such an excellent first sergeant that, three months into the school year, he was suddenly taken away from his own company and put in charge of another, the most difficult of all the units. He said that the change had been hard but not unmanageable. His approach, he explained, had been to "go in there with a positive attitude, be very optimistic. . . . Now we're striving to be the best in the corps." Lamont's "ideal in life" was "to be the best you possibly can and then try to be a bit better." He described the care with which he handled company meetings, writing down what he was going to say beforehand and keeping his remarks as short and to the point as possible. He was proud that, although "I've not used my hands to discipline people this year" (a fault for which he had been put on probation the year before), cadets knew he was "tough." "They know I play football, they know I do 100 pushups a night, and when I drop them [discipline them by making them do a specified number of pushups on the spot], I go down with them, and I do twice or three times as many as they do."

At military school the desire for competence shades easily into an emphasis on competition. According to the headmaster, "Pershing is about initiative and striving and constantly seeking to be better." In other words, said another faculty member, "the youngster must thrive on competition." A similar point was made with less optimism by a cadet captain at Sherman. Asked what lessons the school had taught him, he said, "This will sound negative, but I think the main thing you learn is a sad lesson—that people are in a rat race, always competing with each other. This school has taught me the importance of cutthroat competition." At Jackson, the retired NCO in charge of military promotions encourages strenuous competition for rank among the students: "Junior and senior year are really tough because it's the old pyramid; you're getting closer to the top and those positions are getting fewer and fewer, up to the battalion commander who is sitting on the top." Ideally, there should be lots of cadets who are good enough to be considered for BC, "making it rough on us selecting someone." From the first day at Jackson, a cadet's primary goal should be "to wind up being battalion commander in his senior year, and to

demonstrate that through the ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades—that he feels he's the best qualified and should be BC."

For the unit counselors at Pershing, who oversee companies of about fifty students each, the relationship between competence and competition, when well handled, is the best aspect of the military system. The students' desire for rank, said one counselor, "is an incredible motivating machine":

You tell a kid that unless he gets his grade-point average up, he's never going to get a promotion and be an officer, and if he cares about that—and most of them do, even if they won't admit it—he will become a better student. It's just incredible how badly they want that stuff.

No matter how hard cadets work, however, not everyone can get to the top of the hierarchical pyramid, and several counselors regretted cadets' distress when they didn't achieve the rank they had worked for—and sometimes deserved—because someone else got it first. At military school, learning to live with failure is an important lesson. In the words of Sherman's commandant, "I'd like [cadets] . . . to learn disappointment: that life isn't just a bowl of cherries."

In Quaker classrooms and art rooms, on sports fields and stages, there are talented young people working hard and performing well, and the academic standard at Mott is higher than that at any of the three military academies. Nevertheless, striving for excellence is not emphasized at the Friends schools. A relaxed attitude toward excellence goes deeper than a mere distaste for awards. At Mott, where four years of art are required, students are encouraged to try lots of different media rather than acquire expertise in one. The baseball coach at Dyer, deeply frustrated, said, "The kids just don't care about sports. . . . The whole Dyer attitude is that winning isn't important as long as you're having fun." When a group of juniors were asked how they thought they had changed since they'd come to Mott, they all agreed that they'd become less competitive. One girl confessed, "I think I did get more lax. I mean, academically. I notice I can get away with a lot of things here." Perhaps that would have happened eventually at her old school, too, she said, but there she had cared about grades: "If I'd gotten a D in my public school I would have cried, but now I say, 'Oh well.' . . . And I say, 'Good for you,' if someone else gets an A." She wondered aloud, her friends nodding in agreement,

whether the lack of competition at Mott was good for students: "I think it has to do with being a Quaker school and I think that's good; it's supposed to be that type of school. But it's also supposed to be a prep school: is it really preparing us?" Asked if Mott taught any vices as well as virtues, a key staff member said ruefully, "I'm going to sound old," and then echoed the juniors' concern: that Mott didn't "place a high enough premium on competence among the students":

I don't think we demand enough of them, so that they will be able to achieve at the level that they are capable of. We as a faculty are lax in enforcing our requirements on kids, from minor things to major things. We don't demand that they do homework here [or] that they do some of the things that we all agreed they should do—wear shoes in the hall, dress a particular way, and things like that.

He worried that students would leave Mott with the idea "that it's relatively easy to slide by" instead of taking away "a need for competence." He found it particularly puzzling that adults whose personal commitment to the school showed that they valued their own and their colleagues' competence and hard work did not communicate these values to students.

Selflessness

In the professional military, selfless service is owed to one's country, superiors, subordinates, and comrades. Ultimately, selflessness means willingness to die in battle. The military school's closest equivalent to this virtue is service to the school in a leadership position even at the cost of one's independence. First sergeants like Lamont Sandler at Sherman or Gail Callot at Jackson devote an enormous amount of their time to the students in their dorms. Gail had twenty girls to discipline, drill, and counsel; as she put it, "I'm a sixteen-year-old Mom"—and that to several girls whose real parents had refused to have them home. Student leaders sacrifice more than just time and fun. Chapter One quoted a leader among the Pershing girls who felt that because of her position she could never relax. Similarly, the highest-ranking girl at Sherman said, "I feel like I can't be myself here. . . . The person I'm supposed to be is perfect. I should be overbearing and domineering and on top of things all the time, but I'm not really like that. I like to compromise, but here I can't." This is a selflessness

that entails a genuine sacrifice of a coherent identity. One of the Pershing BAs (short for both bad attitude and, more admiringly, bad ass ), a senior with the rank of private and a reputation for hitting younger cadets, said, "Most people around here have two totally different sides. They try to be perfect around grown-ups, because so much is at stake. I'm probably one of the few people that doesn't try to act different to make the grown-ups happy—and I have no rank!"

Promotion of selflessness as a virtue at military school can lead to glorification of suffering. At Pershing, for example, where only boys are cadets, the military system is closely linked both to pride in suffering and to a sense of manhood. This was clearly demonstrated in the 1970s, when girls were first admitted. Then, as now, the cadets' graduation from the academy involved a ceremonial passing of a sword from the headmaster to the battalion commander and then on from senior to senior. A woman teacher who was involved in Pershing's transition to coeducation remembered that when it came time to plan the first graduation for both sexes, the cadets were adamant that

the girls should not be given the sword . . . because they hadn't suffered . . . the way the boys had. There was a great suffering theme there that intrigued me, and I think it's still there. In other words, "We have to get up early and stand out in the cold, and we have to march, and that's all part of suffering, and we love it" sort of thing, you know. A sort of a stoicism.^[13]

Even without a plebe system and military discipline, however, Pershing girls feel that they, too, suffer. One senior mentioned a talk given by an early graduate of the girls' school who had compared Pershing to Vietnam. The senior laughed over the extremeness of the comparison but nevertheless saw truth in it: "Of course it's not anywhere near that drastic, but when you graduate you have a kind of bond, because you've been through the same thing, you've been through leaving home and the rules and regulations." For the girls at Sherman and Jackson, who are cadets, stoicism is a central lesson. A Sherman sophomore said the school had taught her "how to be able to take things. . . . A lot of times I'm exhausted and fed up, but I'm not going to give in."

The bond created by the shared suffering experienced in military school produces another kind of selflessness as well: the cadet's identity as a member of the group becomes prominent, while his or her

sense of individuality recedes. As a plebe, recalled one Pershing senior, you are called "pond scum and low life and dirt." At the same time that you are being denigrated, however, you are being encouraged to seek the support of the other new cadets:

I realized that while other people were out doing things they wanted to do, we were washing the floors and getting ready for GI [general inspection], and it was really a time to be together, and all the new cadets became a tight unit. . . . Some of those guys I still hang around with after four years.

Not all the selflessness experienced by the cadets is tied up with matters of military discipline; some of it also has to do with the tremendous pressure they are under from their parents, teachers, counselors, and coaches to perform well as scholars, athletes, and leaders. One Pershing counselor worried a great deal about the stress the cadets in his unit endure. In the name of "standards," he said, "we bring them in here, beat the hell out of them, and ship them out. . . . These kids have seen more stress! I tell you one thing, they leave here so battle-ready, it's frightening. If anyone is ready for a tough position in life, where there are tough choices and no clear-cut answers, it is our kids." They do not have the time to work equally hard at everything, yet "each one of those coaches or teachers is going to say, 'Do my thing.'" This counselor feels that although Pershing has "a bunch of average to above-average kids who really work pretty hard," it is not a school that attracts or produces top-level scholars. Many parents, unfortunately, don't recognize this:

The parents are trying to make their kid into an academic stud, and it's not going to happen. The kid is just never going to be number one in his class; he can't. . . . As for my role, I sit there a lot of times and say, "You're right, you did the best you could; feel good about it. And even though I'm asking you to do this awfully early in life, be mature enough to understand that people can make unreasonable demands of you."

Students at Quaker schools also suffer stress: they have tests, term papers, soccer and field hockey games, play rehearsals, and other commitments that sometimes tear them apart. But none of them shows the kind of selfless devotion to duty exhibited by some of the cadets. In addition, not one adult or teenager at Mott, Fox, or Dyer suggested that suffering is productive for students. They are taught that it is important for them to learn about others' suffering, and this

apparently makes an impression on a number of them. Charlie McDowell, head of Mott's religion department, said, "It seems like John Woolman [an eighteenth-century American Quaker who opposed slavery] is consistently the one who really grabs students and makes them think, because he is so willing to take suffering upon himself, as his personal way of avoiding contributing to evil." And a sophomore girl thought one of the benefits of going to Mott was that "the things you study make people liberal. I don't mean exactly open-minded, but aware of the point of view of those who are suffering. . . . In English class, for example, we read Black Boy, To Kill a Mockingbird, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings : books that make you sensitive to others' needs." But selfless sacrifice and suffering were not expected of the students themselves. In fact, they were encouraged to feel that the school was a very safe place. Said one Mott teacher, "I tend to view the students here—with quite a few exceptions, but if I can oversimplify—as somewhat spoiled, somewhat coddled by us. The world is colder and crueler than we let our kids know."

Integrity

At Jackson, a teacher has a quote on her wall: "Confidence, once lost or betrayed, can never be restored again to the same measure." The importance of being honest is enshrined at Jackson—and at the other two military academies—in the form of a cadet honor code by which all students promise to abide: "I will not lie, cheat, or steal." If a cadet is caught breaking this code, he or she goes before a student honor council, which tries the accused cadet and, if he or she is found guilty, recommends an appropriate punishment to the commandant. At Pershing I saw the honor council try two cadets. One was a new sophomore accused of stealing several books and a hat insignia from friends. He sat in front of the council and, in a voice that could barely be heard, tried to defend himself, saying that he had merely borrowed the books and pin. The officers who were trying him did not believe him and berated him for the theft. "There is nothing this school hates more than a thief. Thieves are the lowest people on the totem pole. You destroy the sense of unity so the cadets can't pull together," said one. "You've got a hard row to walk now," another told the boy. "Everyone in the unit looks at you as a thief and a liar. When you walk

into the shower, that's what they see. What are you going to do about that? You have to take responsibility for your actions."

The second cadet to come before the court was a four-year senior who was supposed to have taken $10.00 from a friend in his unit and then, when challenged, to have lied about how he had acquired the money. Discussions among the honor representatives before the accused cadet entered the room indicated that they were not only convinced he had committed this theft but also believed he was responsible for past thefts in his unit that totaled hundreds of dollars. They recommended his expulsion. From what the honor reps said, it was clear that stealing from members of one's unit was considered not only a crime but a terrible betrayal of trust. They could scarcely contain their anger against the accused senior; "I want to nail him; I want to punch him," railed one boy.

A more abstract form of integrity than the injunction not to lie, cheat, or steal is preached and practiced at the military schools. This involves a view of life as an honest exchange, where good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior punished. "If you break the rules, you pay for it" is a disciplinary theme heard frequently at all three schools, and from no one said more clearly than the retired general who headed Jackson. "The military system . . . impresses upon the young the idea that if they don't obey the rules and regulations, they pay a price," he explained, prior to listing the different types of punishments practiced at the school. As a result of this philosophy, the academies teach that one of the most virtuous actions a student can take is to own up—in other words, to play fair in the system of honest exchange and take his or her due punishment. Lieutenant Duncan Graham, the idealistic commandant of cadets at Pershing, felt strongly about the importance of confession. He worried that the military code he believed in was "not translating very well" into the school environment, since it was such a "demanding set of values by which to run your life." And yet he took hope from "the fact that people are saying, 'Yes, I did it and I'll take my lumps.' And telling the truth. . . . That's what this is really all about."

Many of the students like this emphasis on fairness, because it means that they know where they stand. It makes sense that if you break the rules (or, some would say, get caught breaking the rules), you pay a forfeit. As a girl at Pershing said, "It's up to you [to do your homework and clean your room], and if you don't do it, you pay the

consequences, not anybody else. You learn that here." One of the most popular cadets at Jackson said something similar when asked how he had changed as a result of being at the school: "I've learned to discipline myself, and to accept what I do as my own. Like, if I get in trouble, it's not a matter of 'Well, it was his fault because he made me do it.' I've learned that if I do something, it was my actions that brought it about."

Although Quaker schools have no honor code, lying, cheating, and stealing are—not surprisingly—serious offenses there as well. Yet there is much less emphasis on the "honest exchange" view of life. Most adults do not seem to expect students to confess to wrongdoing and take their punishment; dorm heads hope students will tell their problems to the prefects and do not ask prefects to betray these confidences. Students, too, do not place the same value on the importance of paying the price for one's actions. At Dyer, when the students responsible for stealing a school video recorder were finally discovered, the dean refused to reveal the culprits' names to anyone, teacher or student. Teachers were angry, but a number of students agreed with the dean's decision, such as the girl who said that she didn't want to know who the thieves were, because it would destroy the unity of the school. Said another girl, "Until I know what happened, I can't judge. . . . [If they were known,] the thieves wouldn't be ostracized. They should have been punished, but they're probably not bad people, or at least no worse than anyone else."

Pride

Military pride is the outcome of practicing the other four military virtues, and it should show in a soldier's bearing, enthusiasm, and esprit de corps. One way the professional military instills this pride and sense of unity is by putting its new members through rituals of shared suffering that make them feel toughened and transformed. The military academies attempt something similar with their plebe systems. Cadets carry away from this rite of initiation a pride in themselves for having endured it and a sense of comradeship with their fellow sufferers. When asked how he had changed, a junior at Pershing answered, "I have a new respect for myself; it's a pretty big thing to go through a plebe system, being put through the torment and saying, 'I survived this and here's what I have to show for it.'" But

simple endurance is not all the students are proud of. Many of them—especially the high-ranking cadets but also some of the less successful ones—are proud of their units and of their school and its traditions. A tough Sherman captain who was planning to join the marines upon graduation articulated this pride very clearly:

There's a feeling that you get . . . after Sunday parade when you're standing there waiting to see who won the parade. And all of a sudden they say your name. . . . There's just this feeling inside of you: " . . . Yes , my company did it! We won, we were good, we were the best out there today." And it's really a good feeling when your parents are out there . . . watching you. There's no other feeling like it in the world.

Lamont Sandler, the top-notch Sherman first sergeant, is proud, too, and his pride in the school, his company, and his ability to command is bolstered by his pride in his family and his Native American heritage. He plans on a military career because it is a tradition in his father's family, and he feels "it's the least I can do to live up to my name." On his mother's side he is an Indian:

People here think Indians weave baskets or something and live okay, but lots of Indians are living worse than in Harlem or the South Bronx. . . . But still . . . [they] stand tall, everything they do they are very proud of. Pride! I have a picture in my room of Sitting Bull, and the expression on his face and in his eyes—you can just look at him and see all that strength and pride and power and loyalty to his people and himself. He was great.

Both of these Sherman cadets have high rank, which could explain their pride, but even students without prominent leadership positions feel proud of their accomplishments. Explained one Jackson girl, "I say, 'Yes ma'am, no ma'am'; I feel proper now. . . . When I go back home I see how much better I am than a lot of the kids I used to hang out with. I'm not a low-life scum anymore."

In Quaker-school admissions catalogues and among teachers, there is a great deal of talk about bolstering students' self-esteem or bringing out their Inner Light, but little mention of pride. Pride is not a Christian virtue; Quakers are more concerned with the practice of humility. Mott's Charlie McDowell tried to explain the value of humility to his Quakerism class. "The kids in Quakerism were asking the other day, 'Why do all these people like John Woolman and George Fox think humility is important? Why is being rich an impediment and

being poor supposed to be good?' Those are really important issues." Mott prefect and athlete Mike Dugan felt Mott had taught him to be more humble. "I have this incredible pride and cockiness. Not incredible, it's getting better." People have told him that his ego is a problem, and "that's blatantly obvious, even to myself." Mike says the challenge is trying to figure out "when I'm going overboard and looking for attention and when I'm just happy about where I am." He thinks "there is a pressure here to be over-humble, but I don't know if it's Quakerism or Mott." Yet he praises the school's efforts to tame his ego. For example, not being allowed to join a varsity team as a freshman, despite his skills as a player, taught him "that I needed to be a bit more humble than I was."

The Military Story:
Shouldering Responsibility

A Struggle for Success

At Quaker schools, the goal of bringing out the Inner Light applies to adults as well as adolescents, both of whom reject the idea of self-transformation in favor of nurturing what is believed to be already within. In contrast, the military-school project applies exclusively to the adolescents and emphasizes change. By learning to be loyal, competent, selfless, honest, and proud, a cadet becomes a leader and a bearer of responsibility. The focus is on acquiring something external to the individual: manners, rank, a code of behavior. A cadet is transformed through what he or she learns to do: stand straight, follow and give orders, keep a clean room, polish brass and shoes, be punctual, be courteous, obey the honor code. As one long-time Pershing teacher explained, "I've always felt Pershing . . . took an average kid, and turned him into an exciting person. . . . I've seen kids here do things . . . better than adults could do them: make good decisions, command, persevere . . . and I can only attribute it to the system." The key lesson the system teaches is responsibility, as both students and adults said again and again. The Pershing counselor who called the military system "a tremendous motivator" felt that it had "nothing to do with right face and left face and the manual of arms"; rather, it was a matter of "some kids being responsible for other kids." He called it "a kind of civic-mindedness" that one seldom found in the world outside the

school. "In fact, very often the kids come here with values that are diametrically opposed to ours. But our values are spelled out explicitly in the Code of Conduct, and if we reinforce . . . [them] with all the goodies that we have to offer, the kids can change."

For those who care about it—and the majority of the students do—the goal of learning to shoulder responsibility means becoming a person others look up to, who gives orders and has power. At the very least it means becoming a different kind of person. A new Sherman sophomore, a huge, tough-talking boy who intimidated almost everyone, had been "marching tours" (marching back and forth in the yard as a punishment) every weekend since his arrival at the school because, as he said more sadly than proudly, "I'm bad. . . . I can't control my temper. . . . I talk garbage to everybody—I have a street mind." Yet he felt he was improving:

I've learned to listen to people and do what they say. . . . This school will make me make something of myself. . . . I don't really like not having friends—I try to please everybody. . . . I cried the first day I was here, but . . . I know it's good to be away from the trouble in the street. . . . What's going to enable me to stick it out is if I get rank. I'm making over 80s in all my classes. My father told me he was proud of me!

Another Sherman sophomore said, "Being here—it's like a prison without bars. . . . It will straighten me out."

While Quaker-school students emphasize being able to be themselves, cadets' statements show that they want to transform themselves. During her years at Jackson, first sergeant Gail Callot had given up her punk appearance and attitude, because "I've understood that you can't be rebellious all your life, especially in a military school! You've got to kind of conform. . . . I've blended in." When asked, "Do you feel like you've changed on the inside?" she answered, "I have changed. . . . I learned to accept the fact that I have to go along with society. Before, I used to say, 'Well, if people don't like the way I am, that's just too bad."' Then she said something that few Quaker-school students would ever say: "My values haven't changed much. I've just accepted that I can't just be me."

Adults at the three academies echo these themes of transformation and self-control. Jackson's Henry Sedgefield, a retired army major,

has seen a number of students through bad times and helped them change. One of them is Chip Lang. "When Chip came here I thought, 'Boy, here's trouble.' But he got himself turned around. He comes from . . . a real problem family. I've helped him arrange to go to college on the National Guard GI Bill, and he's going to a good college. Now he thinks he wants to be a career officer. . . . It makes me feel good." According to Chip, "Who's helped me the most while I've been here is Major Sedgefield. . . . He has a lot of patience and he always wants to help, but he won't take any crap." Although Major Sedgefield didn't know it, he had even provided Chip with a long-term goal:

It sounds kind of dumb, but I want to go into the army for twenty years and then come back and teach here, because I want to take over Major Sedgefield's job. Because he's helping kids like me, who have really no sense of what they are going to do in their lives at all, and turning them around to where they have something to shoot for.

Adults and adolescents at military academies use words and phrases like respect, duty, the system, the chain of command, having a positive attitude, setting an example , and keeping up standards , all of which reflect the desire to live by a code of behavior. Pershing's headmaster talks about "reaching for a star"; the head of Jackson, about "accountability." Said one Pershing senior, "They teach you to keep the right attitude and live by the right standards; basically, they program you to be a success. When you leave here, you have so much confidence and maturity. You can recognize a Pershing person anywhere, because they have such an air of assurance about them—people notice it."

Because striving to be a success is so important, one of the worst offenses in military school is to have a bad attitude—to be a BA. A person with a bad attitude doesn't even try to live up to what is expected of him or her. "A BA," explained a cadet, "is somebody who just doesn't do anything. You can be cocky and still have a military attitude—it's how you approach things. But a BA just keeps his attitude all the time." A freshman felt the BAs were bad for the morale in his unit. "The people who have bad attitudes I'd like to see get punished, to better them. Like, if your room's not clean or your shoes aren't shined, you should march tours. . . . If the military system's here, you should at least take it seriously."

Flaws and Failures

The military emphasis on an external standard of morality also has its negative aspects, even in the eyes of many of its supporters. One possible danger is an overemphasis on appearances. A long-time teacher at Pershing worried that "what some people think of as important—how shiny your shoes and brass can be—could cause us to lose sight of our academic priorities." A Sherman teacher felt the cadets had learned their lesson about appearances too well. "If you look at our kids, you'll see that they are very good at making you think one thing when something else is true," he said. "They are good actors, very good at presenting an image."

Another problem with teaching a strict set of standards is that sometimes the official code is too simplistic for the kinds of problems it has to address. A Pershing faculty member criticized the way leadership classes were taught, because the lessons seemed "canned," with all the teachers going through the same set of readings in the same way to reach the same conclusions, instead of "having confidence in the process of thinking itself." What emerged from the leadership readings was, in a nutshell, that "the Pershing Code of Conduct is the way we've got to behave." Such pat conclusions alienated students, particularly when the moral message was "the Boy Scout Oath writ large. They fight that: 'Well, I don't want to end up there.' . . . And I think they tend to view it as mickey mouse. 'That's what you want us to believe?—well, everyone knows that anyway.' . . . That you ought to be honest, that you ought to not steal, that you ought to not lie. 'Well, of course not.'"

Still another problem is that sometimes the system upholding the standards becomes a crutch rather than a base of support. An administrator at Sherman, a decorated Vietnam veteran, hoped that cadets who passed through the school became "more independent [and] politely assertive" but feared that "because the school is so structured, many of them become institutionalized and then they can only work in this kind of system."

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect to this emphasis on structure and continuity is the possibility that abuses will become self-perpetuating because they are part of the system, and abusers will be protected because they symbolize order. A cadet at Jackson and I discussed how another boy's arm had come to be broken a few nights before. The injury turned out to be the result of hazing, which the cadet felt had

"stopped being a constructive thing" three or four years earlier, when the current officers were themselves new cadets. Since they "just got beat up for any stupid little thing, now when a new student comes and does stupid things, they give him a real hard time for it." I asked if anyone was going to lose rank for breaking the new boy's arm. My informant said he didn't know who'd done it, but he added that if it had been the BC, probably nothing would happen to him, but if it had been another boy who was a notorious troublemaker, "they'd probably bust him and try to kick him out." "Is that fair?" I asked. "I don't think so," he answered. "In a small way it could be, considering that the BC is supposed to have better judgment, so if he did it, he probably had a good reason. But I think they watch out more for their better students—better academically—because they make the school look good. So they try to keep them out of trouble."

The Military Story at Its Best

These statements show that the military-school emphasis on structure and standards can become simplistic, oppressive, and hypocritical rather than inspiring. At Pershing, however, I saw a military ceremony that showed how much the system can teach: pride, enthusiasm, hard work, team spirit, determination, poise. This ceremony is "BCI" (Biennial Corps Inspection), the official formal inspection of the school's JROTC program by a group of military professionals, who determine whether the school will get an honor rating from the army. The inspection itself takes only part of a day, but preparation takes weeks. It is a project that the unit counselors are told to "let the kids handle."

In the two weeks before BCI, drills, parades, and inspections of uniforms and barracks were conducted with even greater rigor than before, and faults were analyzed with an eye to timely correction. By Friday night, with the inspection only a weekend away, Pershing crackled with excitement. Few cadets were hanging out in the snack bar or whispering on the mess-hall steps with their girlfriends; most were in the barracks, straightening their rooms, checking their uniforms, and telling new cadets horror stories about the strictness of the inspection team. Rumors spread of a marine drill sergeant showing up to inspect the ranks, of army officers who would run white-gloved hands across surfaces to reveal dirt in the rooms. By Sunday the mood was euphoric. Walking around late on Sunday afternoon, I saw clean-

ing going on everywhere. Boys swarmed over the dorms, wiping windows, mopping stairs, raking yards, carrying out trash. Music blared from countless sound-boxes and stereos, and adult supervisors lay low. Five boys sat on the steps of their dorm, laughing and talking and polishing their shoes and belt buckles. Cans of shoe polish and bottles of Brasso were everywhere, but saliva was also much in use. A boy spat carefully onto his shoe and rubbed that spot for at least a minute before spitting again. Through the open door of another dorm I saw water cascading down the stairs, and from within I could hear boys sliding gleefully on the wet hall floors.

Eight o'clock on Monday morning: the formal inspection begins. Battalion Commander Tom Hurd and his staff arrive early at the JROTC building, looking magnificent with colorful sashes and swords setting off their dress uniforms. They are surprisingly self-possessed, talking quietly among themselves and with members of the visiting team of military men. The retired colonel who heads the JROTC program is there, looking correct but relaxed—he and his staff have been through this countless times before, not only at Pershing but in the service. Shortly after eight the briefing begins: speeches and slide shows about Pershing from the BC and several cadet captains. Tom is calm, serious but not stiff, and beautifully organized; his fellow cadets' presentations are almost as smooth. Afterwards comes the inspection of the barracks, which smell overpoweringly of lemon-scented furniture polish. The rooms look immaculate, but cleanliness is not the only requirement: the military inspector immediately spots an unlocked rifle lock in one room. The mood is not punitive; the cadets conducting the inspector through the dorm are earnest but not scared, and this inspector is not the terrifying martinet that rumor has led the plebes to expect.

Finally it is time for the parade. Each unit marches out onto the field in turn, and all 390 cadets show their paces: attention, present arms, parade rest, and so on. Then the entire battalion marches past the reviewing stand. Not just the visitors but the headmaster, faculty members, and all of the counselors are on hand to see them pass. After the parade most of the kids are done for the day—they break ranks and run off, yelling and jumping with relief. All that are left are the precision marching, driving, and riding performances by the honor organizations of the infantry, artillery, and cavalry units. These are

executed with pizazz; the kids have been practicing for months. The day is supposed to end with the BC and his staff receiving the inspection team's formal comments on the cadets' performance. This is, sadly, a total letdown; the military team leaves early, after just a few words with the head of the military department, so the cadets get no feedback. The colonel, the counselors, and the commandant are furious for the kids' sake at the inspectors' insensitivity, but it seems that nothing can dampen the cadets' spirits. By evening many of them are punch-drunk with excitement, relief, and lack of sleep. I hear them telling and retelling stories about the events of the day, creating legends that will have become traditions by the time the next BCI rolls around.

Here is a narrative in the military moral tradition that depends not on the adults, the official upholders of the virtues, but on the adolescents they have worked to transform into responsible leaders. Without the cadets' loyalty, competence, selflessness, integrity, and, above all, pride, the inspection would never have been such a success—nor would it have given the students so much pleasure.

Two Visions of Change

The idea that life in a moral community is part of an ongoing story implies that some sort of change must be taking place. Obviously, at both sets of schools adolescents grow and mature, and in the process they are influenced by the traditions that surround them. But that maturation process is envisioned differently in the two traditions—and the visions are to some extent illusions. An analysis shows that change is a moral imperative in both environments. But the kind of change that is acclaimed is not always that which occurs.

Quaker Schools:
Changing the Community to Meet Members' Needs

One of the goals of Quakerism is to change society to make it a better place for nurturing the Inner Light in all people. This is why Quaker virtues—equality, community, simplicity, and peace—describe an environment, not an individual. Education at Friends schools encourages a process of eternal searching. "Fish gotta swim; birds gotta fly. Man gotta sit and wonder why, why, why." Kurt Vonnegut's words,

written on a blackboard as a thought for the day, sum up a tenet of Quaker education that members of the faculty take to heart. They are constantly questioning the givens of the school community. Why can't we involve students in a work camp in Nicaragua? Why don't we change the schedule to make classes longer? Why not start a drug-counseling program? The emphasis is on improving the school, not the students. A Dyer student rejected the idea of moral socialization completely. When asked what lessons she thought the school wanted her to learn, she snorted with contempt. "I don't think there are any lessons. They want you to leave [here] with yourself. I don't think they want to influence anything . . . they just want to let you develop in the way you are going to develop and show you how to take care of yourself."

The clearest expression of this ideal of questioning conventions and creating a community that nurtures the best in everyone came from the headmaster of Mott. When asked what decisions had been particularly difficult for him, he told about his support of a gay woman teacher, the first faculty member in the school's history to come out. She wanted her lover to be allowed to live with her in her on-campus apartment. Mott rules say that unmarried teachers cannot live together on campus; yet these two women, who have been together for years, cannot legally marry. The headmaster described his conflicting goals: to enforce school policy consistently, keep a good teacher at the school, protect Mott from criticism, be able to defend his decision to the board, and also ensure that everything was "done in a way that's constructive, so that everyone's learning from it." In the end, the teacher's partner moved officially into the school apartment. "It's a challenge and a difficult thing that we probably haven't seen the end of," concluded the headmaster. "But . . . why the hell take up all this time and money running a Friends school if you are not going to try to struggle with real issues?" He felt that he and the school as a whole had "an obligation to help teachers and students celebrate their lives and their skills." The other side of that obligation was

to help people struggle with the pain in their lives and do it in a way that . . . produces wholeness rather than more brokenness. Anybody in this society who's gay has got a little more struggle than someone who's not, and . . . anyone who has the courage to struggle publicly needs to be supported by the people who care about them. So then that's what the school is all about. Whether we do it well or not, that's what we're trying to do.

His story expresses well the official Quaker-school attitude toward growth and change. From a Friends perspective, growth consists of finding out who you are and learning to show your real self to the community. It is then the responsibility of the community to receive you lovingly and, if necessary, adapt to fit your needs.

Military Schools:
Changing Students to Meet Community Standards

Members of the Quaker-school community see themselves as faithful to the Inner Light and critical of the school. The majority of the staff and students at military academies try to be faithful to the traditions of their school and are critical of those who do not live up to them. Military academies are not as concerned about process as they are about product: they want to produce an adolescent who is as loyal, hard-working, responsible, brave, honest, and proud as possible, and they use the military system as a framework for meeting that goal. Cadets did not talk about learning to question; over and over again, they described learning "respect": respect for their officers, their teachers, the rules and traditions of the school, and themselves. A Sherman teacher said, "Our main goal is to mold the students," and students at the three academies do see themselves as molded by their education. Many described with great pride the kind of person they had become during their years away from home: more studious, more responsible, less of a troublemaker, better-mannered, more mature. "I've got a different outlook on life," one of Jackson's cadet captains said confidently.

The corollary to changing oneself is accepting the school. A Pershing cadet explained this succinctly: "People here complain about each other, not about the school. Because the school's the school; it's not going to change, and you can't fight it, because you're not going to win. That's a lot of energy wasted. You might as well go along with it and see what you can learn." For some teachers the apparently unchanging nature of military schools is frustrating. "I'm a tinkerer," said one. "I like to try different things." But at Pershing, he found, the attitude was often "we've always done it this way, and this is the way we're going to do it." But many other faculty members see loyalty to the past as an attempt to maintain high standards in a world that has lost them. Change occurs at the military academies—in the past

twenty years, all three have begun to admit girls, for example—but change must occur in the context of respecting the past. For Pershing's headmaster, this is a matter of preserving values: "You can't attack the core tradition."

The Two Visions Compared

These two different visions of change stem from the Quaker belief in an internal morality and the military belief in external standards. The Quaker schools focus on conscience, for which a nurturing environment must be created, while the military schools focus on character, which must be transformed to match institutional requirements. Another way to describe this difference is to say that Friends schools support the "real" self and military schools, the "role" self. According to the Quaker viewpoint, adults' and adolescents' first identity is as persons, whose unique qualities must be preserved, while, according to the military viewpoint, adults' and adolescents' first duty is to learn to fulfill a carefully defined role as teacher or cadet.^[14]

Although their goals are different, both sets of schools probably achieve similar results: they change the receptive students, teach another group to blend into the environment, and drive a third and smaller group to open rebellion. Ironically, however, in spite of their official aversion to transforming the characters of their students, Friends schools are probably more effective agents of change than are the military academies. No matter how strongly Friends insist that they wish to leave the individual intact, the kinds of demands their schools make on adults and students are bound to affect the inner self. In a place where the most valued learning devices are speaking out in Meeting about your innermost concerns, keeping a journal, participating in group counseling sessions, presenting your ideas in class, helping your peers with personal crises, arguing with teachers and fellow students about current events, and questioning the status quo, your "real" self is a constant target for analysis and, in spite of genuine attempts to respect differences, for judgment and criticism. A similar process in utopian communities is called "mortification," which involves "the exchanging of a former identity for one defined and formulated by the community."^[15]

At military school, by contrast, although the staff say they wish to change the individual, the demands the system makes can be met

largely by changing appearances and behavior. If cadets learn to wear their uniforms correctly, keep their rooms clean, salute, be on time, and demonstrate a positive attitude when asked to do something, then they are perceived to have changed—as indeed they have, but perhaps not in a way the school would approve of. Learning to look military is considered by some students to be, not a transformation, but a form of "beating the system." Sherman cadet Erik Bergstrom—a strong supporter of the military—explained that the kids who suffered most in the hands of NCOs and officers were the ones who hadn't mastered this lesson:

They didn't learn how to beat the system. . . . It's like this. If the first sergeant is complaining about your shoes and your brass and your uniform, well, make sure that next time your shoes are shined. Then he can complain about everything else, but he can't complain about your shoes. . . . The next time, have your brass and your shoes shined, and eventually, you get to the point where you do everything. Everything he complains about, it's done. Then one day, he's going to be in a bad mood and think, "Hey, let me pick on that . . . kid," and he walks into that kid's room and his room is perfect, everything is done. What's he going to yell at him about?

Of course, Erik went on to say, the sergeant could still try to "get" the kid for "military respect." But "all you have to do is stand up at attention, keep your mouth closed, and say 'Yes, Sergeant; no, Sergeant; no excuse, Sergeant.' And that's it. You just beat the system. It's as simple as that."

The practice of the moral traditions at the two sets of schools has been portrayed thus far as orderly and coherent: a story with a clearcut plot and a moral message. The virtues structure school life: they define how to act, describe how relationships among individuals and groups should be conducted, and help determine how the business of teaching and learning should proceed. Under these conditions, it should be easy for the appropriate moral narratives to unfold smoothly at the schools. As Chapter Two has shown, however, there are inherent conflicts in the two traditions, conflicts in particular between individual and community, that seem to threaten the moral projects envisioned by their adherents. An analysis of the schools' visions of change has shown that harmonious coexistence can be the product of shared illusions as well as shared virtues. The following chapter shows

that even shared virtues can be an illusion, since they mean quite different things to different people. To share the virtues is to debate them, and to debate them is, in the long run, to strengthen them. In the short run, however, controversy over the nature and practice of the virtues causes anger and pain. Chapter Four discusses the origins and consequences of conflict at the schools.