A university commitment to the liberal arts can take many forms, but more often than not it attempts to ensure that all students, regardless of direction or professed major, become educated in some form about the defining events of Western Civilization. There are many specialized History and Global Studies courses that educate students about…

This paper examines militarisation in child culture in Israel's transition from a pre-state society engaged in the nation-building process to statehood. The paper studies children's culture and the literary corpus for children created in the 1940s and 1950s in Jewish Palestine, before and after Israel's establishment. It investigates the main…

From September 2008 to July 2009, the author traded academic robes for the Army Combat Uniform issued to US Navy personnel deploying to Afghanistan. Along with using the ceramic and Kevlar body armor he learned to don at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he metaphorically defended himself from the disruption to his personal and professional life that…

The author read with interest, and concern, the January 2011 issue of the "American Psychologist". The "Special Issue on Comprehensive Soldier Fitness" addressed a hugely consequential national issue and offered a vision for psychological resilience along with an elaborate set of supporting articles, concluding with some comments on "Objections"…

The author was disappointed to see an entire special issue of the "American Psychologist" (January 2011) devoted to military psychology, but he was especially concerned about the one-sided moral justifications presented by Seligman and Fowler (2011) in the final article of the issue. The author feels they misrepresented potential objections to…

Does the country's national security rely on top-quality early childhood education? Yes, say the military leaders of Mission: Readiness, an organization led by retired military commanders that promotes investment in education, child health, and parenting support. Actually, the generals are right, but for all the wrong reasons. The generals' aim is…

This article presents an interview with Barbara Thompson, the Director of the Office of Family Policy/Children and Youth in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In the interview, Thompson talks about trends in military child care in the United States. She shares when the military got into the business of providing child care. She also talks…

In January 2011, the "American Psychologist" ran a special issue on "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness," edited by Martin Seligman and Michael Matthews. Thirteen articles described a collaborative effort by the U.S. Army and positive psychologists to "improve our force's resilience" (Casey, 2011, p. 1). If successful, one assumes, these efforts will…

In this semi-autobiographical short story, Malcolm Reed writes about English teachers' responsibilities towards the pupils they teach. This work grew from his insight that the armed forces have traditionally recruited from areas of high unemployment and low literacy. Reed taught for many years in an all-boys, secondary school in one of London's…

The idea of providing returning veterans with benefits as both a reward for their service and as a means of enabling them to reintegrate into civilian life dates to the early history of the United States. Revolutionary War soldiers received military pensions, land grants, and other forms of care, depending on their service and its location. After…

This article addresses the thorny question of military discipline vs. academic freedom, demonstrating that the military academy is the perfect proving ground if you want to test the value of academic freedom. The authors, who are also Air Force officers, embarked on a two-year quest to determine what place academic freedom has at a military…

The idea of creating a national university is not new. More than two centuries ago, George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson advocated for a national university. Today--energized by concerns about the performance of civil servants and the need to recruit a new generation of talent into key federal, state, and municipal positions--a…

The author, a captain in the U.S. Coast Guard and professor of English at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, argues in this article that, contrary to images perpetuated in popular culture, military officers do not eschew the arts as exemplified in such films as "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" where the…

In the next decade, the military will rely on aggressive marketing to battle the nation's businesses as both search for the best entry-level employees. (Author)

Different kinds of wasteful spending of federal money are discussed, e.g., automatic distribution of public money to political organizations, administrative inefficiency, military spending. The frivolous spending of billions of hard-earned dollars is a larceny that threatens everything Americans have worked for all their lives. (RM)