West Point, N.Y. ? Cadet Corrie Hanson opens an anthology of American Indian literature and rests her thick fingers upon “Indian Boarding School: the Runaways,” a poem by Louise Erdrich. Hanson, one of eight West Point students enrolled in “ethnic literature,” reads the opening passage:

“Home’s the place we head for in our sleep.

“Boxcars stumbling north in dreams

“don’t wait for us. We catch them on the run.”

Cadets take turns with the poem, impressed by lines such as, “All runaways wore dresses, long green ones/the color you would think shame was.” Their teacher, Col. Janice E. Hudley, notes that boarding schools were meant to “civilize” Indians and that the unofficial motto for one institution was “kill the Indians.”

Comments Cadet Pearl Phaovisaid: “It’s like an alternative reality.”

As West Point celebrates its bicentennial, it maintains much of the discipline you would expect on a military campus: the BDU’s (battle dress uniforms) and black boots; men with buzz cuts and women with hair pulled back and knotted; teachers addressed as “sir” and “ma’am”; cadets standing at attention as a video monitor marks the precise starting time of class.

But students now read books once unthinkable for such a setting  anti-war classics such as Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” and Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” banned by some school libraries for their themes of incest and lesbianism.

“We’re not trying to indoctrinate them,” says Col. George Forsythe, vice dean of academics at West Point and a student at the academy in the 1960s. “We’re trying to educate them so they can think critically about a variety of perspectives and form their own judgments.”

New perspectives

In a recent class taught by Hudley, students read a poem by the American Indian writer Sherman Alexie about Crazy Horse, the Oglala Sioux who defeated Gen. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Although Alexie sympathizes with Crazy Horse against the Army, students found the poem both interesting and useful.

“One of the main reasons I wanted to take the ethnic literature course was to see a whole different perspective rather than the white, Anglo-Saxon male perspective, which is a lot of what you get in the Army,” says Hanson, an English major in her senior year.

“You realize that the policy of the Army isn’t always going to be right,” says Phaovisaid, a geography major in her junior year. “You’re not blindly following.”

The events of Sept. 11 and the subsequent war in Afghanistan only reinforced what West Point and other military academies had been implementing. There’s an increased emphasis on foreign languages, including Arabic, and nonwhite cultures. A course on Eastern philosophy was recently created at West Point and one on Eastern art is being added.

Officials at West Point and elsewhere emphasize the need to change with the times. West Point’s student body  about 4,000 cadets  is far more diverse than a generation ago. Seventeen percent are women, and 25 percent are of black, Asian, Hispanic or Indian background.

Military education itself has been transformed since West Point’s founding. The United States Military Academy has evolved from a technical school to an institution of both arts and sciences, from imparting a single point of view to analyzing many.

“When I was a cadet … you sort of acquired information; it was mostly reciting what you had learned,” says Forsythe. “Our model for today is you acquire the knowledge outside of class and inside debate it and look for nuances.”

Changes have been similar at the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy, both of which teach books you wouldn’t expect on a military campus. At the Air Force Academy, students have not only been assigned “Catch-22,” but Heller himself spoke there.

“We’re looking for critically acute officers in an ever more complex time,” says Col. Thomas G. Bowie, chairman of the Air Force Academy’s English and fine arts department. “Afghanistan is another reminder of that very thing.”

Evolving curriculum

West Point, the country’s first military academy, began in 1802, and the first students received instruction in science and math. Classes in history, law and ethics were added later and, by the 1840s, cadets were receiving instruction in speech and composition.

For a school project, Cadet Andrew P. Askell compiled a list of books assigned over the past 200 years. Early texts had practical titles such as “The English Reader,” “The Standard Speaker” and “English Lessons for English People.”

Shakespeare, Chaucer and Tolstoy were often assigned in the 20th century, but by the late 1960s, some modern texts were being read: “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison’s chronicle of racial tension and identity; Albert Camus’ existential “The Stranger”; Edward Albee’s despairing “The American Dream” and “Zoo Story.”

Until the 1950s, all cadets took the same classes, with no electives. But in the late ’50s, an internal study urged greater flexibility and students soon were allowed a small number of choices. The number of courses offered has grown from 67 in 1955 to 450 this year.

In the 1980s, an even more dramatic change was introduced: majors. Cadets still had required classes, but could specialize in English, history or other fields.

“We wanted to challenge cadets beyond the surface,” says Forsythe, the dean of academics. “The best thing we can do is give them a … basic foundation of information, teach them how to read, teach them to write, have them read some books so they’ll continue reading and then cross our fingers in the hope they’ll continue educating themselves.”

Forsythe recalls few literary discussions among cadets when he was a student, but West Point now offers a notable community for the arts. There’s a small campus bookstore, where science fiction and military history are popular buys; a literary magazine called “Circle in the Spiral” and online forums for drama, philosophy, art and African-American literature. It also has a creative writing club that meets twice a month and makes a knowing pitch to the latent novelist or poet.