Views » December 6, 2002

No Child Left Unrecruited

By Joel Bleifuss

In another sign of the U.S. military’s increasing encroachment into civilian life, all high schools are now obligated to provide the Pentagon with the names, addresses and phone numbers of their juniors and seniors. Any school that refuses to comply with these provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act and this year’s National Defense Authorization Act stands to loose all federal funding.

The U.S. military is a growing force in public education. In middle schools, students are being targeted with programs such as the Young Marines and the Navy’s Starbase-Atlantis. In high schools, the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) is spreading across the country. Currently about 500,000 students in more than 3,000 high schools participate in the program, with JROTC units authorized in another 500 schools.

What’s more, school districts around the nation are augmenting their education systems with publicly funded military academies. About 2,000 eighth-graders applied for the 140 spots in the Chicago Military Academy, a JROTC school that serves the African-American community in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side.

The Pentagon designs the JROTC curriculum and allows no input from the host school districts. JROTC classes are taught by former military officers, none of whom are required to have education degrees or other credentials.

This absence of standards extends to the program’s educational materials. Did you ever wonder what happened to the Indians? An Army JROTC textbook reveals: “At the close of the Civil War, after the large Union forces were disbanded, a small regular Army was given the task of pacifying the Indians. … Fortunately for the Army, the government policy of pushing the Indians farther west then wiping them out was carried out successfully.”

A Navy JROTC text explains, “Not all nations are blessed with great resources. We need the resources other countries can provide to maintain our standard of living.”

And another Army JROTC textbook informs students, “Under democracy there must always be economic class divisions, yet the free market system offers an incentive for people to change their economic status. Everyone, no matter what their political associations, can succeed in moving up in the class structure.”

Lessons in upward mobility seem to be a central part of JROTC programs, which are most often established in poor school districts that serve African-American or Latino students. In essence, JROTC serves as a form of economic conscription, a way to maintain an “all-volunteer” military.

In an letter notifying school administrators of their new military responsibilities, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of Education Rod Paige write: “The All-Volunteer Force has come to represent American resolve to defend freedom and protect liberty around the world. Sustaining that heritage requires the active support of public institutions in presenting military opportunities to our young people for their consideration. … For some of our students, this may be the best opportunity they have to get a college education.”

Not to mention the best opportunity the military has to swell its ranks. About 45 percent of students in JROTC enlist in the armed forces. Who can blame them? Military service is one of the few privileges that their government offers them. An Army JROTC textbook explains: “Citizens owe allegiance to their government, which in turn grants them rights and privileges of citizenship.”

This perversely authoritarian view of the relationship between the individual and the state is made to order for a militarized society.

We prefer the Declaration of Independence’s vision of governments as human-made institutions that derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

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• Reader Comments

  thank you InTheseTimes for this article.
  I knew nothing about this. it’s unbelievable.
  by using its armed servants capitalism gets into US classrooms and starts brainwashing on youngsters.
  media - apart indi media like InTheseTimes - complete the job by exposing people to lobotomy day after day.
  I’m going to translate this article into italian and send it to my friends.
  thanks again. you’re doing a good job.

  Posted by festina lente on Mar 25, 2003 at 6:20 PM

  It’s total brainwashing. I can’t believe that shit. I feel bad for the poor kids who are tricked into joining the army because they think it will give them opportunities. Instead they are signing their life away to fight the so called war on terror.

  Posted by Rumzfeld on Sep 16, 2003 at 9:48 PM

  Ditto. When I was in high school, recruiters from the Air Guard base would come to the classes and tell everybody what a great time they’d have in the guard. Then, they’d take some of the new recruits down to the gulf coast for a weekend of fun. They would rent cars, get cases of beer, party on the beach all day and then hit the clubs at night.
  When the guys who had signed up and partied all weekend came back to school that Monday with a hangover and a sunburn in March, they’d tell everybody how great it was. So four more people would enlist.
  At that age, someone should have been saying, “Are you certain you want to do this?” But no. “It’s good for them! Make a man out of them!”
  At that age, it’s easy to influence a 17 year old mind. They’ll just do without questioning. It’s why they prefer young minds over someone who is, say, 30 and says, “What is THIS shit!”
  The ones I knew who went to basic training and spent 6 years in the guard hated it. Some quit, some finished, but no one re-enlisted.

  Posted by neil on Sep 29, 2003 at 12:26 AM

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