What Next

Fife & Drum boys? &, of course, they'll need to be trained in the proper use of a weapon.

What began as an attempt to educate middle-school students about the military has set off a string of complaints from parents and teachers that new learning materials designed by a New Hampshire publisher for 9- to 14-year-olds amount to little more than an early recruiting pitch for the Army.

The latest issue of Cobblestone magazine, distributed nationwide to schools and libraries, is dedicated to the Army, a first for the popular periodical.

Titled ``Duty, Honor, Country," the issue depicts a soldier in Iraq manning a machine gun on its glossy cover and includes articles ranging from what it's like to go through boot camp -- ``You're in the Army Now" -- to a rundown of the Army's ``awesome arsenal," to a detailed description of Army career opportunities.

But most controversial has been the pair of teacher's guides prepared in conjunction with the magazine, which is touted as meeting national middle school performance standards for English and language arts. The classroom guides suggest that teachers invite a soldier, Army recruiter, or veteran to speak to their class and poll students on whether ``they think they might someday want to join the Army."

``Some of the teachers were like `Holy cow, look at this,' " said Francis Lunney , a sixth-grade English teacher in Hudson who said he found a copy in his school mailbox in May and quickly lodged a complaint in a telephone call to Carus Publishing in Peterborough, N.H. ``It looked exactly like the [official recruiting] material you get in high school. It didn't seem to be that different the way it was packaged."