The military is not the enemy at the school gate

To that end, it established a curricular innovation that required the presence of someone oddly known as an "AOT" - anyone other than a teacher. Their task was to bring the realities of business into the classroom, to assist learning and to serve as role models.

Their contribution was, perhaps inevitably, difficult to anticipate and often at odds with the values being cultivated elsewhere across the school timetable. Some teachers became angry at the use of "their" school for the peddling of untrammeled capitalism, the inherent merits of competition, and the implied rewards for those who "push" their way to the top. They wanted such rabid Thatcherites out.

Now it's the armed forces that teachers want out. They say, quite correctly, that schools should not be a recruiting ground for the military. But the military, like business, exists just outside the school gate, whether we like it or not. Surely the issue for schools, as with the best approaches to non-formal education, is to manage the contribution of external speakers - whether captains of industry or troops - to generate an educative experience. Schools should welcome alternative positions and perspectives, but make it clear to young people that there are many of these.

With regard to serving with the armed forces, or the role of the military in politics, young people could undertake practical projects to explore family histories of military involvement or contemporary zones of conflict. After all, Iraq is a very different scenario to that of Darfur, where the UN is endeavouring to keep the peace. Why did anti-war protagonists end up as anti-fascists fighting in the Spanish Civil War and then, des-pite this military experience, being precluded in cases from fighting in the Second World War?

If a tub-thumping, uniformed officer steps into school promoting the armed forces in a thinly-veiled recruitment drive, then it is the professional - and indeed moral - responsibility of teaching staff to provide a counter-balance. If, however, the presentation is clear and honest about the dangers of warfare, then teachers may wish to explore the cultural and economic drivers that still encourage some young people to consider the forces as an occupational pathway.

Keeping the military out, especially in today's war-ravaged world and against the labour market challenges for young people with few qualifications, is not the way to address key issues in their lives.

- Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan, and a member of the Youth Justice Board. Email howard.williamson@haymarket.com.