The Pentagon currently spends around $1.4 billion per year on recruiting and hundreds of millions annually on other marketing initiatives intended to convince the public to enlist-costly efforts to ensure a steady stream of new soldiers. The most important part of this effort is the Pentagon's decades-long drive to win over the teenage mind by establishing a beachhead in American high schools and colleges.
Breaking the War Habit provides an original consideration of the militarization of schools in the United States and explores the prolonged battle to prevent the military from infiltrating and influencing public education. Focused on the Junior Reserve
Officer Training Corps (JROTC) in high schools and the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) in higher education, the authors expose the pervasive influence and economic leverage bestowed on the military as it recruits children and youth.
Breaking the War Habit highlights those who have resisted the privileged status of the military and successfully challenged its position on campuses across the country. A "scrappy band of activists," the Committee on Militarism in Education (CME) initiated this work following World War I, publicizing the rise of school militarism and its implications. For two decades, CME's activism shaped public debate over the meaning of militarism in U.S. society and education settings, resulting in numerous victories against ROTC and JROTC programs. The authors also explore how, since the mid-1970s, military "counter-recruiters" have contested military recruiters' largely unchecked access to high school students, raising awareness of a "school-to-military pipeline" that concentrates recruitment in urban (predominantly Black and low-income) regions.
"This is a really interesting book that skillfully examines the history of resistance to the ROTC in the United States and, equally importantly, places the many points of resistance in their historical context. The scholarship is sound, and the use of oral history and archival sources make for a series of convincing arguments about the nature and scope of resistance to school militarization."
David M. Rosen,
"A clearly organized and well-articulated book that offers a contribution to the history of anti-JROTC and counter-recruiting activism across U.S. history. . . . The authors engage a range of materials, particularly from the archives, that make their contributions especially unique and compelling."
Nicole Nguyen,
"Breaking the War Habit enlightens on many levels, since few scholars have addressed the history of antimilitarists' efforts to shape American education."
