The Making of an American Soldier: Why Young People Join the Military

By Jorge Mariscal, Sojourners. AlterNet.com

Posted June 26, 2007.

George Bush likes to say it's because they're patriots, but the truth may have more to do with financial need and recruiters targeting those with limited economic options.

In today's political climate, with two wars being fought with no end in sight, it can be difficult for some people to understand why young folks enlist in our military.

The conservative claim that most youth enlist due to patriotism and the desire to "serve one's country" is misleading. The Pentagon's own surveys show that something vague and abstract called "duty to country" motivates only a portion of enlistees.

The vast majority of young people wind up in the military for different reasons, ranging from economic pressure to the desire to escape a dead-end situation at home to the promise of citizenship.

Over all, disenfranchisement may be one of the most accurate words for why some youth enlist.

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Documentary: Law gives military access to student data

By David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers | Posted on Tue, June 19, 2007

WASHINGTON — It began as a class assignment for Alexia Welch and Sarah Ybarra: Make a five-minute video news story about advertising in public schools.

But the Lawrence, Kan., teenagers' project snowballed into a 25-minute documentary on how the federal No Child Left Behind law to improve education promotes military recruitment, infringes on students' privacy and encourages school officials to look the other way.

The movie's fans include a Democratic California congressman who's been trying to change the law for two years and award-winning liberal filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who viewed some early rushes and offered the pair his lawyer's services, just in case.

Their film, "No Child Left Unrecruited," premiered in April at an arts center in Lawrence, the home of the University of Kansas. A short trailer on YouTube has gotten 630 hits in the past month, and the film made its Washington debut Tuesday.

"We found out this wasn't a school assignment anymore," said 17-year-old Ybarra, who'll be a senior next fall at Lawrence High School. "This was going to go beyond the walls of the district."

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Seattle Students Shut Down School Board Demanding Military Recruiters Out of Schools

By Philip Locker, Dylan Simpson, and Marianne Mork
June 21, 2007

“What do we want? Recruiters out! When do we want it? Now!” chanted over 70 antiwar protestors as we marched into to the Seattle School Board meeting Wednesday night. The spirited protest, called by Youth Against War and Racism (YAWR), demanded the school board finally take real action against military recruitment in our schools. As the local TV news King 5 said, it was “intended to be political high theatre, and it certainly was effective.” Another reporter commented: “it was the most dramatic anti-military recruitment rally to date.”

YAWR is calling for military recruiters to be banned from Seattle public schools. But to stay within the legal paramaters of the “No Child Left Behind” law, we are demanding that all recruiting be done at a district-wide recruitment fair once a semester. This would create equity between the access to students that the military, college, and job recruiters have. Currently, military recruiters have a massive budget and a huge advantage over college and job recruiters. A district-wide recruitment fair would also stop military recruiters from carrying out their predatory tactics within our schools and disproportionate targeting of schools that are predominantly made up of poor and minority students.

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Links to Mainstream Media Coverage
KOMO 4 Video coverage: http://www.komotv.com/news/8105247.html (click WATCH THE STORY below the picture)

King 5 Video coverage: http://www.king5.com/video/featured-index.html?nvid=153224

Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003756523_assignment21m.html

NCLB and the Military: A California teacher union passes antirecruitment resolution

ZNet, by Gregory Sotir of Rethinking Schools June 3, 2007

The British navy used to use trapdoors in barrooms to capture recruits to maintain its colonial empire. The U.S. military doesn't need these tricks. It has No Child Left Behind.

Section 9528, the 300 or so words buried within the act's 670 pages, cement militarism in public schools. This section's provisions funnel private student data such as telephone numbers and home addresses into the Pentagon for military recruitment purposes and also mandate access for military recruiters to students in public secondary schools.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dragged on, recruiters have become increasingly aggressive on campus. Data from student information provided via Section 9528 are used for recruiter home visits and repetitive phone calls to students. Military recruiters also use high-pressure sales techniques, flashy videos, and eye-candy trinkets, and bring he-man danger mobiles such as Hummers and helicopters onto school grounds to attract students, especially young males. At the beginning of this school year, the Los Angeles-based Coalition Against Militarism In Our Schools (CAMS), a group that I work with, decided to get the word out about Section 9528.
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Fewer high-quality Army recruits

As war needs rise, exam scores drop

By Bryan Bender and Kevin Baron, Globe Correspondent | June 1, 2007 | Boston Globe

WASHINGTON -- The percentage of high-quality recruits entering the Army is the lowest in 10 years, an indication that the force is struggling to attract top-grade enlistees -- and a troubling sign for the Pentagon, which is waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and plans to add 90,000 ground troops to its ranks within the next five years.

Over the past decade, the percentage of top-level recruits who enlisted in the Army was mostly consistent, dipping slightly at the end of the 1990s before spiking in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But since 2003 -- the same year the US invaded Iraq -- the Army has steadily taken in more recruits that the force itself considers "non-high quality."

Last year, nearly 40 percent of those who joined the Army had below-average verbal and math scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, a mandatory exam that helps the military determine a recruit's aptitude and mental proficiency. In 2003, the Army accepted only 28.9 percent of the low-scoring recruits, but that percentage gradually began to rise in subsequent years, according to Army statistics.

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