A PRETTY GOOD ARGUMENT FOR THE DRAFT:

Discipline of Military Redirects Dropouts (ERIK ECKHOLM, 3/08/.09, NY Times)

By his own account, Donte’ A. Dungey had no motivation in high school, sleeping through classes and sometimes showing up only for the free lunch to reduce the burden on his mother, who was struggling with nine other children. Held back three times and scheduled to enter the 10th grade at nearly 18, he knew that “high school just wasn’t going to work for me,” he said.

But he was also ready to change. More than five months ago, Mr. Dungey took up residence in a program for dropouts called Youth Challenge, run by the National Guard, that is proving effective at using military atmosphere and discipline to turn around at-risk teenagers.

Mr. Dungey is one of 203 youths who graduated from a grueling physical and educational program on Saturday. Here at one of two Youth Challenge camps in Georgia, he rose at 4:30 a.m. each day, made his bunk with neat corners and sweated through an hour of calisthenics or running.

He has worn a uniform, marched in step with his platoon to the dining hall, completed 50 hours of community service, and spent long hours studying for the General Educational Development diploma that opens the door to college or career training for dropouts. The camp bars cigarettes and alcohol.

“It feels good to have discipline,” Mr. Dungey said. Sooner than most of his fellow cadets, he passed the G.E.D. exams and began tutoring others. Like all the youths, he has a personally selected adult mentor in his hometown who will advise him over the year ahead, and this one-time aimless school dropout now hopes to join the Air Force.

President Obama’s urgent call for every student to graduate and receive higher training has put a new spotlight on programs like the Job Corps, the government’s education and career-training program; YouthBuild, a group that helps dropouts earn G.E.D. certificates as they rebuild urban housing; and the smaller Youth Challenge program, which graduates more than 7,000 teenagers each year — a large majority of them male — from sites in 28 states.

The early results of a national study comparing youths who qualified for the program and were then admitted or denied on a random basis suggest that Youth Challenge may be the most successful large-scale program yet evaluated to help dropouts.

Who else teaches kids discipline?

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Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2009 8:08 AM