Blue Steel started out as a study track for technical subjects to suit Air Force needs and was mainly concentrated in the Air Force Cadet Technical School in Haifa. A few years later, when the program was implemented in a number of peripheral towns, the Blue Steel track turned into one of scholastic excellence to which students were proud to belong.
The research aim was to explore whether there was a gap in displays of patriotism between students in the Blue Steel track and their peers outside this track.
The subjects were 80 students in 10th grade in a peripheral town: 40 students in a Blue Steel class and 40 students in a parallel class in which there is no military program. The students in both tracks come from mixed level socio-cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.
The chosen research method was qualitative and the research tool, which was created accordingly, included open-ended questionnaires for the students regarding their perception of patriotism in terms of their emotions, thinking and behavior.
The main findings were that students in both classes demonstrated a high level of patriotism, although the Blue Steel students were far more patriotic than their non-track peers. While some students in the regular class responded neutrally, indifferently or even with disinterest to some of the national dilemmas, the Blue Steel students ranked themselves as citizens who uphold the patriotic ethos and its myths.