ABSTRACT
Although based strictly on military service ranks, the procedures for awarding rank and the duties assigned to specific ranks vary from one school to another. Most schools follow the ranks of the U.S. Army, but a few use those of other branches of the armed services. They are traditional, but still serve their purpose well. In the earliest days of the military school, when some were hardly more than Christian work houses for orphans and minor delinquents, there was little purpose to be derived from awarded military ranks; the boys’ labors were overseen by taskmasters for work and disciplinarian teachers, at least for reading and writing. These were small institutions, seldom housing more than fifty boys, and their very existence often depended on the farm work that provided the food for the school, or light crafts and manufacturing that supplied necessary operating money. Those of more genteel status, founded by civilian educators, may have had one or two student “leaders,” but in the main, both the school and the students’ lives within it were directly overseen by the superintendent and his small staff of teachers. In the decades after the Civil War, there was a remarkable growth in the number of military schools; some were established by former officers in the Union or Confederate armies. Many of these schools accommodated larger numbers of boys, and the assignment of military ranks became the norm in these institutions, not just to worthy cadets but to faculty and staff as well, many of whom had had prior military experience.
