Tag: high school

Junior ROTC Shouldn’t Exist

W.J. Astore

High school students shouldn’t be wearing military uniforms

I entered the Air Force through ROTC and served for 20 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.  I also taught for 15 years at both military and civilian colleges.  As a retired military officer and as an educator, perhaps I have some standing on the issue of Junior ROTC in our nation’s high schools. So, to put it bluntly:

  • High school students, in my opinion, are too young to decide to wear a military uniform.  In short, I believe JROTC is inappropriate.
  • Many veterans involved in JROTC in our nation’s schools lack experience and qualifications in education.
  • The U.S. military is already glorified in our culture and society.  Its dominance of American institutions is undeniable.  That dominance should not extend into America’s high schools.
Combat uniforms wait patiently for fresh high school bodies (Zack Wittman for the NYT) 

A friend with experience in JROTC alerted me to notable shifts in the program’s mission and organization, especially since the 9/11 attacks. In the past, JROTC had focused on leadership and civics while being overseen by civilian directors. In the 1990s, the director of JROTC for the Air Force was a civilian with a doctorate in education. The current director of AF JROTC is an active-duty colonel with no experience in education, though he has an MBA and a master’s in strategic studies. (His deputy is a retired colonel who similarly lacks credentials in education.)

Over the past 20 years or so, JROTC has increasingly been militarized and used as a feeder for military recruitment, despite disclaimers that it is “not an accessions program.” High schools are enticed to support JROTC with financial incentives such as subsidized (read: low-cost) instructors, veterans who often lack teaching credentials but who are willing to do grunt work at schools (monitoring lunchrooms, school exits, and the like). In return, the military gets access to young, impressionable students, the ultimate goal being recruitment of the same into the ranks.

JROTC, in sum, is now militarized. It’s more of a pipeline to military service as a “warrior” than a civics program that develops alert and knowledgeable citizens who may then decide freely to enlist as citizen-soldiers. Consider this change as yet another example of creeping fascism in America.

Put uncharitably, JROTC is preying on America’s youth.

Incredibly, students in some high schools today are being assigned automatically and involuntarily to JROTC classes, notes the New York Times. In a sense, 14- and 15-year-olds are being drafted into JROTC and trained by gung-ho veterans with virtually no experience in education.

And people say the draft died fifty years ago!

JROTC is in 3500 high schools across the nation, and, as the New York Times notes, has its highest enrollment numbers in areas where there’s “a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households.” To such students the military promises opportunity, an identity, and of course financial aid for college, enticing inducements indeed.

Again, students in JROTC don’t have to join the military upon graduation. They’re not dragooned into the ranks. But they are gradually enticed and subtly pressured into joining. The military doesn’t run JROTC programs for purely altruistic reasons.

Imagine, for a moment, the elimination of those 3500 JROTC programs. Or, better yet, a re-imagining and re-purposing of them. Why not make a true national service corps of teenagers in which military service is only one option among many? A national service corps that fosters civilian conservation, that offers options for fostering peace, that is focused on service within communal settings that is unrelated to wielding weapons while wearing battle dress uniforms. There are many ways, after all, to serve one’s community and country, ones that don’t involve military discipline and exposure to what concerned parents term “indoctrination.” 

Speaking for myself, I wasn’t ready to wear a military uniform when I was 14. When I was 18 and enlisted in ROTC, I’d graduated from high school. I (sort of) knew what I was doing and the true seriousness of the choice I had made.

Military service is far too serious to be inflicted on impressionable young teenagers. Let’s give our kids time to grow and mature before we start issuing them uniforms for battle. Better yet, let’s work to create a more peaceful world where there’s far less call for militaries, period.

(For more information on JROTC, see this recent panel discussion sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action.)

You Shouldn’t Need a College Degree

W.J. Astore

A friend sent along an article today with the eye-catching title “You shouldn’t need a college degree to have a decent life in America.” The author argued that Americans are too dependent on college for better opportunities and that a Swiss model of education based on vocational tracking had some lessons for us. Here’s the link: Karin Klein, LA Times, June 13th, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/insight/2021/06/13/You-shouldn-t-need-a-college-degree-to-have-a-decent-life-in-America/stories/202106130026

But what was most interesting to me was what the article left out. Firstly, my dad never finished high school, but he got an education in the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and the Army during World War II, then did factory work (again) until he got on the civil service as a firefighter. And that’s what was essential: a decent-paying job backed up by a strong union. My dad’s pay and benefits continued to increase throughout his career because of the firefighters’ union and its bargaining power. Yet nowhere in the article above are unions mentioned. In fact, in America today unions are often demonized as being against the interests of workers. Instead, we’re urged to trust in the uber-rich like Jeff Bezos to provide high-paying jobs with great benefits. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

My dad’s “education” included two years in the CCC, including time in Oregon fighting major forest fires. He never formally graduated from high school but loved philosophy and opera

Secondly, the article fails to mention anything about a living wage for these workers and their careers. There’s no mention of Joe Biden’s broken promise to pass a $15 federal minimum hourly wage (which really nowadays should be $20 an hour).  Without unions and without a living wage, how are all these high school graduates with vocations going to support themselves? Not all vocations pay that well, and some pay no more than $10 an hour and come without health care. Small wonder that so many Americans turn to college for some “insurance.”

Yet even in college they often don’t find the insurance they’re looking for. America’s collegiate system is often about funneling the maximum number of young adults to college while extracting as much money from them as they and their parents are able (or unable) to pay. What’s “higher” about higher education are often the bills and little else.

Look, I taught for nine years at a vocational college and I’m all for it. At a community college you can gain certificates and associate degrees without assuming a heavy load of student debt.  I agree we need more decent-paying vocational programs. For example, I had a student who trained as a heavy equipment operator.  He didn’t do that well in my class, but he didn’t much care.  As he told me, he was graduating to a job, probably in the fracking fields of Pennsylvania, where he’d soon be earning $75K-$85K a year, and this was circa 2010. Not bad pay at all for his chosen profession.

I’m all for vocational options that don’t require four-year (or longer) college degrees and lots of debt.  But let’s have strong unions and fair pay as well, else many of these vocational graduates will be screwed yet again by a system that deflates wages as much as possible so as to funnel more money to the richest.

Another subject the author fails to develop is how college has become the new high school for too many students.  I saw my share of students where I taught who needed remedial math and English because they didn’t learn the same in high school.  Partly this is because we underfund our schools, underpay our teachers, and often focus way too much on high school sports (football in Texas, anyone?).

I also wonder at times whether our system is designed to produce dead ends for students.  It’s one way you get more than a few eighteen-year-olds to enlist in the military. They’re often seeking educational benefits, vocational training, and sometimes those enlistment bonuses as well. Often those bonuses are tied directly to enlisting in the most dangerous military occupational specialties, like being a combat infantryman. The empire always needs fresh bodies.

In sum, I think it’s a great idea to open more opportunities to high school graduates in America. But while we do that, let’s do three other things: 1) Strengthen workers’ unions in America; 2) Raise the federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour; 3) Improve high school education across the board through more educational funding. higher pay for teachers, and an ethos in America that values education as essential to active and informed participation in civic life.