Teach Peace Not War
The piece below was written for the Progressive Media Project, and ran over the Scripps Howard News Service in June 1996.
You'll see them in many Memorial Day parades: young people in uniform with rifles, drilling and marching on command. They're members of the Defense Department's high school military training program, the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC).
Memorial Day, of course, is a time to remember the tragedy of warfare and the millions who have died. It should also be a time to question the role of America's high schools in training the next generation of soldiers.
JROTC makes itself sound like a cross between the Scouts and Upward Bound. But when you look past the clean uniforms, the precision marching, and the claims of "youth development,"the program is nothing more than a overhyped, overfunded recruiting tool.
JROTC was founded in 1916 with a mandate to "create favorable attitudes toward a career in the Armed Services." Today, over half of those who complete the program join the U.S. armed forces, most at the lowest enlisted ranks.
For most of its history, students drilled and marched in hundreds of schools without much claim to "youth development." All this changed in 1992 after the Los Angeles riots, when General Colin Powell offered JROTC as his answer for America's troubled inner-city youth, and Congress voted to double the size of JROTC.
But Powell seems not to have heard Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney say, "The reason to have a military is to be prepared to fight and win wars. The military is not a social-welfare agency. It is not a jobs program."
Apparently, nearly a thousand school districts weren't listening either. If they were, they might have looked more critically before they adopted JROTC's pre-packaged, militaristic program to "promote leadership and self-discipline."
Hundreds of veterans were listening. They have joined teachers, parents, and peace activists across the country in asking: Is training for war the best our schools can offer our young people?
This year, almost 2500 schools are subsidizing the Pentagon's program. JROTC typically costs each school $71,000 per year, above and beyond the portion paid by the military. In an era of tight school budgets and overwhelming need, what are these schools buying?
They're buying violence. At a time when we're all fighting to remove guns from schools, 90 percent of JROTC units bring guns into schools and teach students how to fire them. JROTC-related gangs have been uncovered in Detroit. In San Diego and New Jersey, JROTC gang members actually murdered two of their members. In Arizona, a camouflage-clad JROTC student murdered nine Buddhist monks.
Many districts think they are buying a "dropout prevention" program, but when pressed, the military admits it has no data to support JROTC's claims to help "at-risk" youth. JROTC excludes those with poor grades or disciplinary problems. The remainder are at risk for miseducation: the curriculum committees given the chance to study the program's textbooks have found them them archaic, simple-minded, and racially insensitive.
What is the purpose of JROTC's endless drills? Any drill sergeant will tell you: It's to teach recruits to obey without stopping to think. JROTC texts also preach "loyalty to those above us in the chain of command, whether or not we agree with them."
School districts are also buying into the military's discrimination. Neither veterans with disabilities nor gay veterans can become JROTC instructors.
Worst of all, school districts are buying into the dehumanizing process of basic training, the horrors of war, and the psychological costs of killing.
There is no question that many young people are starving for what JROTC claims to provide: self-esteem, the pride of belonging, hope for the future. But the Pentagon's offers unthinking obedience, oversimplified sloganeering, and glorified violence.This is not what America's youth need.
There are clear, constructive alternatives to JROTC already working on a small scale across this country: mentoring programs, internships, and community service. In thirty communities, parents, teachers and veterans have persuaded school boards to reject JROTC, and instead provide and demand excellence for all students.
To buy into JROTC is not only a betrayal of our young people. It is a betrayal of our hope for a world without war. |