Military Style Schools: An Advance In The Right Direction?

I was reading on the BBC website a few days ago that there are plans to introduce a military style school in Greater Manchester. Whilst some are fully behind the proposal, others find the idea ‘deeply worrying’.

 At first glance, the idea of our children being educated under a strict, disciplinary regime can seem disturbing.  However, are the methods of discipline in the army fundamentally that different to the methods of discipline in our present schools? The average state school child has to line up in a prescribed way, dress smartly, plan well (i.e. hand their homework in on time) and be courteous to all. I don’t know about you but, to me, this seems positively military already. In my view, the only difference between the two systems of discipline would be that the military school’s system would be stricter, eliminating situations where parents have trouble with their child’s behaviour at home, simply because their school does not come down on them hard enough.

The teachers at the proposed military school would be service men and women. Although some parents may consider this a dangerous concept for the fear that these people would drastically skew their child’s view of life; I personally think that these teachers may be more effective than the average PGCE holder. Having a positively more varied life experience, they would be able to come up with more creative and well-informed ways of dealing with the issues that face the average child or young person today

Furthermore, having children in a military environment during the day may act as a deterrent from today’s ever- growing gang culture – young people simply wouldn’t need to find a gang as they would already be part of one collective, elite body of people who know how to fight to defend themselves.

Therefore, despite the fact that some dismiss military schools as being merely a scary, fleeting idea, they could actually benefit our children a lot more than we would initially think and really do make a lot of sense.

By Ash Nolan