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DEMILITARIZE SCHOOLS |
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by Riseout
(No verified email address) |
29 Apr 2006
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There is no reason for any military personnel to set foot inside a school, if institutions are serious about education. |
There is no reason for any military personnel to set foot inside a school, if institutions are serious about education. With millions of youth attending public schools, schools are a hot bed for the pentagon’s business of expanding military numbers. At no time is it so urgent and desperate to increase military numbers then during a time of war.
But students, parents, teachers, and administrators are not taking the business of military recruitment lightly, as the militaries reputation in schools has not been exactly exemplary these past couple of years. Some schools rather, are taking an active stance towards making schools demilitarized zones.
In a Parent Teacher Student Association meeting in May of 2005, Garfield High School in Seattle became the first high school to seriously argue, as reported by The Christian Science Monitor, 2005, “public schools are not a place for military recruiters.” Amy Hagopian, co-chairwoman of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association at Garfield High School is a critic of a law enacted by the No Child Left Behind Act, which allows military recruiters assess to students personal records, or else the school suffers setbacks in federal funding under Section 9528 of the act. According to the New York Times, 2005, the “Garfield High School in Seattle has been fighting against a four-year-old federal law that requires public schools to give military recruiters the same access to students as college recruiters get, or loose federal funding.”
For parents the message is: your child’s name, address, birth date, and social security number are freely available for the propagation of war. In fact, the only way a student can be excluded from the military data list is if the parents decide to opt out. An opt out form can also be found at Washington Truth In Recruiting http://www.watir.org/res/resources.htm, who’s mission is: “Connecting with students and parents, to provide objective information for critical life choices involving the military.”
Since 2002 the military has been collecting a database honed in on 16 – 25 year olds called the Joint Advertising, Marketing Research Studies (JAMRS). Those who decide to opt out are then shifted into a category in the JAMRS titled “suppression list,” along with about 30 million names. JAMRS is a project included in the pentagons 4 million dollar spending towards military recruitment, according to Counterpunch, 2006. What they do with such a database is another story. And keeping this information out of the pentagon is next to impossible, especially for youth enrolled at public school.
Strategies for keeping military out of school
So how do we keep the military out of school cafeterias and classrooms?
Some colleges have taken on a different strategy to keep military recruitment in their places of leaning. Last year, Seattle Central Community College chased recruiters off their campus. Nichole Thomas, a part of the protest organization was quoted in the Seattle Post Intelligencer (PI) saying, “We do not want the military in our schools, asking our friends and family to fight a war that is wrong. We want recruiters out of our schools.”
In 2005, the military gave a three hour standardized test at South River High School, in Baltimore Maryland. However many of the students the day of the exam did not realize this was a military related test. Nor did they know this was a test, which one could “opt” out of taking. The military exam has been offered for years, but raised concerns among parents when the test was offered during class time and the choice in opting out was ambiguous.
More recently at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a groups of students and activists sauntered from their campus to a building housing the university’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. “ROTC should be the next target for the anti-war movement because it’s the way we’re going to demilitarize our schools,” commented Susan Navabi a sophomore at UIC in the Chicago Sun-Times, 2006.
Challenging military recruitment, threatens the prospect of further war
What is war, if no one shows up? In 2005 the Army has missed reaching its recruitment goal since 1999. As the war in Iraq stretches over three years, military recruitment has also fallen short.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer said in AP January 25, 2006, "You really begin to wonder just how much stress and strain there is on the Army, how much longer it can continue." Yet this summer the military is hoping the numbers will begin to swell. Emulating corporations, the military has doubled its marketing campaign since 2000, however numbers still fall short.
Public schools are popular places for military recruitment because about 60 million public school students are required to attend. And with promise after promise of enticing financial and educational rewards by the military falling by the wayside, the pentagon package is becoming less inviting. Meanwhile military recruitment normally follows a path of least resistance, targeting low-income school districts, offering sticks and carrots to remedy financial burdens.
Putting an end to military recruitment in school prioritizes education over war. Asking military to stay out of schools advocates for a culture, not indoctrinated in hate and violence, and sends a strong message of peace and non-violence. Keeping military out of schools, levels out the playing field for military recruitment, rather then opening the door to easy prospecting in times of war.
Advocating dissent in educational institutions, and against military recruitment strengthens democracy. Our defensive strategy against propagating more violence and war is through advocating critical dialogue in schools, opposing schools as militarized places. Databases on students and false promises by military recruiters are part of the problem, but the real issue is how we can keep them away from schools in the first place? It is the responsibility of the community to continue to voice ardent criticism, while challenging the assumptions that a global military is needed to spread “democracy” to the world. And recruitment officers need to be held accountable for disinformation or broken promises.
The examples provided within this article are just a few effective strategies, which have challenged military recruitment through small groups of concerned citizens. Closing the doors on military recruitment in schools makes war profiteering more of an obstacle and democracy more of a reality. Keeping military out of school creates value on what most can agree on, a society where all people are concerned about educating youth. |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Re: DEMILITARIZE SCHOOLS |
by D. Verz
(No verified email address) |
30 Apr 2006
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I am having to look for a news article about each Amendment in the Bill of Rights. #3 is a hard amendment, because the militia does not need to stay at reluctant hosts' houses any more. But thankfullly, I found this news article. Go BIMC!!! |
