BOOT CAMPS MIGHT REHABILITATE SOME STUDENTS

Boot camps have expanded beyond the no-nonsense initiation for recruits entering our armed forces. The regimen, discipline and skill attainment of rigid military training have turned many a lad into a man. And, in recent years, many girls have matured into women after a stint in boot camp.

The civilian boot-camp concept has been adapted for other uses, most often as a way of getting young offenders to develop enough self-sufficiency without drugs or crime to make it in the real world. Other models have successfully given young men and women a new perspective on lives that otherwise might have ended in prison or in the abyss of alcoholism and addiction.

One program that has attained a certain level of success is operated at Camp Clark near Nevada, Mo., on the western edge of Missouri. Juvenile judges give some offenders the option of going to a special boot camp rather than a detention center. Not everyone successfully completes the program, but those who do have praised the idea and have credited the boot camp with giving them a new lease on life.

State Sen. Jerry Howard of Dexter wants to take boot camp even further. He is sponsoring a bill in the Missouri Senate to establish a pilot military-style program for eighth- and ninth-graders in the state's public schools. This would be a joint effort between the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Missouri National Guard. The program would target at-risk students, but it would be open to anyone who wanted to participate.

Howard's idea, which has considerable merit, may sound familiar to lots of folks, particularly those old enough to remember when schools were bastions of discipline and regimentation. In those days, justice for school infractions was swift and sometimes painful. Rules were rules, and students were expected to obey. The notion of showing up for class with green hair never entered anyone's mind (see below).

There are several reasons strict order was maintained in schools of yesteryear. The most important was parents. Every student knew if he or she got in trouble at school, there would be trouble at home too. Parents demanded that their sons and daughters show respect for teachers, and teachers knew their efforts to keep Johnny and Sally on the straight and narrow path would be bolstered at home.

It would be wonderful if we could legislate parental responsibility and involvement, but we can't. So we are faced with asking the National Guard to step into some of our schools to provide the role models and authority figures youngsters so desperately need.

As we said, boot camps work, and they succeed in ways other programs have failed too often. Let's try Howard's idea and see if it works.