Seniors in New York high schools have a choice between enrolling in college and enlisting in the armed services. One can debate which is the better option, or whether there are better options still. Many students doubtless do sort these matters out, with the assistance of their parents, teachers, and friends. What would seem un-debatable is that students should have all the information necessary to make the right decision for them.

That’s not the situation that obtains at Boys and Girls High School, a public school in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. There, as our Lauren Mechling reports at Page 1 of today’s New York Sun, a principal, Frank Mickens, is keeping military recruiters away from even the sidewalk outside the school. Marine Major J.J. Dill, commanding officer of the New York recruiting station, told the Sun that Mr. Mickens did not provide his recruiters with a list of seniors this year. That’s worse treatment than the high school gives colleges, which get such lists so they can send students mail enticing them to apply.

Mr. Mickens, a much-admired educator, declined to explain his reasoning. But so far as we can tell, there is at the heart of the high school’s reluctance a view that poor black students need to be protected from being used as cannon fodder. It’s a patronizing view. The military in this country can be a powerful engine of upward mobility, as useful in certain ways as some colleges. Just ask Secretary of State Powell.

The notion that the students need protection from the military is being advanced in the face of the fact that the rest of the country needs protection by the military. Depriving America’s armed forces of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s best and brightest will in a small but nonetheless significant way make our common defense weaker.

Given the way this city was attacked in September 2001, the patriotic impulse to de fend America through military service is strong around town. Some students at Boys and Girls High, Ms. Mechling reports, have been agitating to gain access to recruiters. By denying the students access to the information necessary to make an informed decision on enlistment, the Boys and Girls High School does a service to no one besides Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Kim Jong Il.

As it happens, there’s a question of federal law here. The No Child Left Behind Act states: “Each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide military recruiters the same access to secondary school students as is provided generally to post secondary educational institutions or to prospective employers of those students.” Where is Mayor Bloomberg? Where is the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, who is after all a former federal law enforcement officer? Are they prepared to back up the Marines and those students who might want to join the Marines? And where is the commandant of the corps that boasts of the Halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli?