{"id":225828,"date":"2022-12-19T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=225828"},"modified":"2022-12-29T06:27:30","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T06:27:30","slug":"inculcating-the-military-virtues-the-pentagons-predatory-role-in-u-s-high-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/12\/inculcating-the-military-virtues-the-pentagons-predatory-role-in-u-s-high-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Inculcating the \u201cMilitary Virtues\u201d: The Pentagon\u2019s Predatory Role in U.S. High Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

On December 11, 2022, the New York Times <\/em>broke a front-page story about \u201cJ.R.O.T.C,\u201d the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps, described as \u201ca program funded by the U.S. military designed to teach leadership skills, discipline, and civil values \u2013 and to open students\u2019 eyes to the idea of a military career.\u201d\u00a0 The well-researched Times <\/em>article has the air of a dramatic expose, although the facts it presents have been known for years.<\/p>\n

This Pentagon program, now enrolling more than half a million \u201ccadets\u201d in some 3,500 high schools across the United States, was founded during World War I and has greatly expanded since the 1970s. \u00a0It is no coincidence that this expansion took place simultaneously with the development of the \u201call-volunteer\u201d armed forces introduced by President Richard Nixon at the end of the Vietnam War.\u00a0 The use of conscription to raise forces for that war not only generated a massive antiwar movement among youth at risk of being drafted, it also produced a dissension-ridden, unreliable U.S. Army.\u00a0 By 1973, ending the draft seemed to American rulers little more than common sense. \u00a0But how, then, to ensure that young people willing to risk their lives in imperial adventures would volunteer in numbers sufficient to maintain the largest, most far-flung military establishment in human history?<\/p>\n

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Centro Studi Sereno Regis<\/p><\/div>\n

The answer (in addition to raising pay rates and opening military recruitment doors to women) was to establish an enormous training and recruitment program in high schools, particularly those located in impoverished urban communities inhabited in large part by people of color, as well as in more rural areas in which military service was a tradition. \u00a0According to the U.S. Army spokespeople, the Army now draws 44% of all new recruits from schools offering J.R.O.T.C. training. \u00a0The U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard also rely on their teenaged cadets to supply substantial numbers of recruits.\u00a0 The major point emphasized by the Times<\/em> reporters is that these programs, each featuring a battery of courses, are supposed to be \u201celectives\u201d which students are free to take or reject, but are very often mandatory in fact, if not in law. \u00a0(E.g., students in a great many schools are automatically enrolled in them and must struggle to be de-enrolled).\u00a0 Thus, the Times <\/em>headline declares, \u201cAt Many Public Schools, Military Training Is Not an Elective.\u201d<\/p>\n

The headline is eye-catching, but mandatory vs. voluntary is not the crucial question.\u00a0 The key issue is whether U.S. public schools ought to be used to convince students to undertake military careers by inculcating the \u201cmilitary virtues\u201d and by taking advantage of their impoverished circumstances.<\/p>\n

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Foto Arctic Warrior JROTC 2010 da Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)<\/p><\/div>\n

These two factors are closely related.\u00a0 Advocates of the J.R.O.T.C. programs insist that what they are teaching is not aggressiveness or methods of violent coercion, but self-discipline, respect for authority, leadership, and collaborative teamwork.\u00a0 These virtues are often considered to be in short supply in ghettoized communities plagued by deep poverty, disrupted families, and a high level of street violence.\u00a0 Thus, defenders of the programs point out that many parents in poverty-ridden communities approve of them, since they provide sorts of useful training that neither the parents themselves nor the local schools in their civilian capacity seem capable of providing.<\/p>\n

One can hardly blame parents for feeling this way.\u00a0 As a parent myself, I would rather have my child indoctrinated and absorbed by the U.S. Army or Navy than by some local street gang or prison-bound group of troublemakers.\u00a0 But the idea that this either\/or constitutes a reasonable or legitimate choice seems nothing less than obscene.<\/p>\n

In effect, we hear the Pentagon, which is in urgent need of new recruits, telling students and their parents, \u201cWe know that your community is ravaged by poverty and violence. We understand that your schools don\u2019t teach useful or marketable skills, and that you\u2019re unlikely to obtain a job after graduation that pays more than a poverty-level wage.\u00a0 But these are the facts of life; we can\u2019t do anything about them.\u00a0 We are here to help you develop good habits and succeed in the world, so long as you take orders from us now and consider seriously \u2013 VERY seriously \u2013 making a U.S. military service your permanent home.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Foto Chris Brooks JROTC 2016 da Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)<\/p><\/div>\n

Consider how this \u201cdeal\u201d works.\u00a0 First, the socioeconomic and political systems that the U.S. Armed Forces are organized to protect generate endemic poverty, shattered families, incompetent schools, rural decay, and environmental destruction as part of their normal operations.\u00a0 Then the U.S. Armed Forces appear in the guise of rescuers promising to save students from these ills by teaching them to be on time, obey authority, take pride in their work, control their impulses, and work with each other in teams.<\/p>\n

Could these skills not be taught by the schools themselves or by other civilian organizations?\u00a0 Perhaps, but only the armed services receive hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds each year to operate their youth-based programs.\u00a0 Couldn\u2019t the impoverished or decaying communities that house these schools be transformed by a federal development plan for deindustrialized or neglected regions?\u00a0 Certainly \u2013 but this would almost certainly involve cutting a military budget that now consumes almost one trillion<\/em> dollars of taxpayer money each year. \u00a0In any case, the whole point of programs like J.R.O.T.C. is not to transform the system of inequality, but to turn its destructive effects to the advantage of the military organizations and their civilian masters.<\/p>\n

Inculcating respect for and obedience to these authorities, in fact, is a prime objective of J.R.O.T.C. training. \u00a0Each service has its own high school programs taught by retired veterans who may or may not have college degrees and teaching credentials, but who are professional advocates for militarism.\u00a0 The knowledge that they communicate therefore includes tales from U.S. history designed to emphasize the noble and essential role played by the armed forces and to avoid criticism of America\u2019s wars or warfighters.\u00a0 All this is in line with the program objectives stated quite frankly by the U.S. Army:<\/p>\n