War Is Lesson at This School : Education: Instructors at the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad are grappling with how to teach young cadets about events in the Persian Gulf without glamorizing war.

With their crisp gray uniforms and bright ribbons, the cadets--sharply saluting and bolting off when the bugle sounds--look like promising disciples of war.

But these are boys, and rather nervous ones at that, as the Gulf War has invaded their orderly military academy in Carlsbad with visions of death and suffering.

True, the cadets learn military ways here at the Army and Navy Academy, where the manual of arms, discipline and respect for rank are strictly practiced. Founded in 1911, it is the only high school military academy in California.

Yet now that talk of real war has blurted into the classrooms, some faculty members are making sure the 275 boys learn there is no glory and no romance to the vicious clash between America and Iraq.

“At this age, there’s a certain morbid curiosity about death and shooting,” said Joe Bagnall, chairman of the Social Science Department. “To me, that’s trash barrel; that’s a waste of time academically.”

When the war erupted, Jack Cargile, an assistant dean who teaches history and geography, hauled a television into the classroom so students could watch the stunning events unfold on CNN.

He also launched into Middle East studies, a topic he normally would have saved for next semester.

“The boys have a deep interest in what’s going on in the Middle East and military maneuvers. It’s educational,” said Cargile. “We are spending a lot more time on geography and history and military operations.”

But for Cargile--especially for Cargile--the great balancing act is to teach about war without glamorizing it, to tell about military action without necessarily extolling it.

He takes scrupulous care what he says about war because Cargile, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, saw enough of it in Vietnam to haunt any man’s dreams.

The boys, 7th through 12th graders, pry to find out what Cargile saw and did in combat, but he strives to give them only what the cadets need to form intelligent views.

“I try for the boys to understand, not from my perspective, why the U.S. feels it’s so important to get involved and why Saddam Hussein is doing what he’s doing,” said Cargile, who wears preppy two-tone saddle shoes and a close-cropped military-style haircut.

He strives for objectivity.

“Some of the kids may feel strongly we shouldn’t be there. I don’t tell them they’re wrong,” he said. “You’ve got to get them to think and reason.”

Especially in these times, when emotions are running strong among cadets at this 13-acre, beachfront campus.

Joe Egan is a 16-year-old junior from Leucadia who wears braces on his teeth and the insignia of a staff sergeant on his shoulder tabs.

“Everybody on campus, they are tense,” he said, but the teachers are trying to make sure the war is used in the classroom to deepen knowledge and not inflame feelings.

Egan said, “To say something like Hussein is going to drop chemical weapons and there’ll be a lot of death, that would just disturb people.”

And surely, many of the cadets are distressed enough already by the vivid reality and talk of war. Charles Lee, 17, a junior from Los Angeles, said, “When you see one person worried, it kinda affects the whole class.”

Although the cadets march, drill and wear uniforms, they’re just like any other boys, frightened for themselves, their loved ones and the world.

Most of the cadets are here for structure and discipline and have no desire to spend even one stint, let alone a career, in the military.

The academy, with a 23-member teaching staff, is a college prep school that emphasizes the three Rs within a system of self-mastery. Beds are to be made perfectly, uniforms correct, and punishment can range from push-ups to dismissal--the latter in cases of alcohol or drug use.

It costs about $12,000 a year to board, feed and educate a boy here, but the cadets have an almost tutorial, 1-to-10 teacher-student ratio and usually earn better grades than they previously had in public school.

“We don’t try to get people in the service, although we do have boys apply for the academies,” such as West Point and Annapolis, said Cargile.

Neither Egan or Lee yearn to wear uniforms for life. Egan wants to attend Notre Dame and Lee wants to join his sister at UC Berkeley and eventually become an pediatrician.

Those are hopes for quieter times. Right now, war can’t help but occupy their thoughts--and those of their teachers.

Cargile said, “I sincerely feel they sense the apprehension of the adults around them. They can feel the tensions of the parents, and certainly from us.”

Just what to tell the boys sometimes is different from what they want to know.

Bagnall said, “I don’t ever teach military history. I talk about causes of wars and results of wars.”

He believes battles and strategies “are pretty much extinct in the nuclear age,” and cadets are better served by understanding alliances and global friction caused by such things as dependence on oil.

Even one teacher who gives some cadets a first-hand look at the military is guarded about what he reveals about his own experiences.

Denis Anderson, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade math, is faculty adviser to the Navy & Marine Club, which takes interested cadets on tours of military facilities.

Like Cargile, Anderson is a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who fought in Vietnam, and he, too, won’t indulge cadet curiosity about his experiences.

“They don’t need to know if I shot and killed anybody. It doesn’t prove anything. It’s a meaningless piece of information,” said Anderson.

Rather, he relies on his military background to give his words credibility.

“I told my class last week, if you think getting shot at is fun, it will soon go away,” said Anderson, who has asked his students to write letters to troops in the Middle East.

Cadets seem to appreciate the balanced teaching approach to the Gulf War, the discussion of weapons and tactics offset by the history, geography and policy aspects of the conflict.

Egan said the teachers “leave us to our own opinions.”

There’s only one thing he wants to know about the war that nobody can tell him. “I just want to know how long it’ll be, because I have family (in the military) over there.”