This chapter examines the redefinition of “youth” that occurred during World War II as a result of young men’s conscription and the rise of the United States as the global superpower, as well as its consequences for young Americans. It specifically looks at the creation and implementation of federal educational programs for soldiers, such as the Army Specialized Training Program and the educational provisions of the 1944 G. I. Bill of Rights. The chapter also demonstrates how these programs built upon the framework that had been developed in earlier decades, which categorized youth according to their value for national security and established military service as a “democratic” educational opportunity.

This final chapter summarizes the key points discussed in the previous chapters. It illuminates how diverse adults in the United States helped to build the link between youth, education, and national security from World War I to World War II. The chapter also discusses how this connection both changed and influenced developments in the second half of the twentieth century, when the Cold War changed American ideas about who should serve militarily. Nonetheless, the relationship between youth, education, and national security has remained powerful and continues to influence young Americans today.

This chapter provides readers with an overview of the book, as well as its major argument. It argues that, while historians have traditionally treated war and military issues as temporary issues that affected American society only during wartime and had little impact on society during peacetime, the issues were, in fact, fundamental to political and cultural changes in American society during the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter also outlines how the remainder of the book will support this argument by focusing on how the relationship formed during this time between national security, education, and the cultural conception of “youth” strongly influenced young people’s educational experiences and had significant social consequences that still exist today.

This chapter examines the debates in American society surrounding the conscription of young men, particularly those under the age of majority (age twenty-one), for World War I. Before the war, men under the age of twenty-one had served in the U.S. armed services, but mainly as volunteers. The necessity to establish a selective draft system in 1917 sparked an intense debate in American society about whether minors should be drafted into the military. This chapter also explores how military training programs for soldiers were established on civilian college campuses during the war, most notably the Student Army Training Corps, and how the educational elite played an active role in doing so and established educational institutions as military training sites during wartime.

This chapter explores how selective service laws for World War II both built on and changed the relationship between youth, education, and national security that had been developed in the preceding decades. Through nationwide debates over what made the disproportionate draft of young men aged eighteen to twenty-five as American and democratic, adults reinterpreted the characteristics of “youth” that had been deemed serious problems in the 1930s. That is, the lack of advanced work experience now indicated immediate availability for military service, unstable lifestyle meant mobility, and mental malleability now signified adaptability to military discipline. The supporters of the youth draft also formalized the link between military duty and education, advocating for the formation of military-educational training for young soldiers with military value as a democratic and American method of conscripting youth.