As the investigator, I became interested in finding out more about why Miranda’s mother called Mr. Tompkins a “frustrated architect.” Her mother explained that teachers didn’t have to go fight in Vietnam, so men that didn’t want to fight became teachers.
I knew that there were different reasons that exempted men from the draft, but never thought that teaching was one of these exemptions. Because teaching exempted men from the draft, the percentage of male teachers increased dramatically in 1970. At that time, 32.5% of teachers in the US were men. After the war was over, many of those men left the teacher profession to pursue their other careers.
A total of 1,857,304 men were drafted between August 1964 and February 1973.
When I asked my father if any of his friends had become teachers to avoid the draft, he could not recall anyone. However, he did remember many of his friends that enrolled in college to dodge the draft.
Did you know that male teachers were exempted from being drafted during the Vietnam war?
Do you have any experiences involving people who were exempted from the draft?
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