This post came from Truth Out, not from Roger.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2016 3:53 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Why Is My Kindergartner Being Groomed for the
Military at School?
This article reminds me of why I appreciate Roger's posts so much.
We, Working Class Americans, are in a life and death struggle. And, sad to
say, too many of us have no inkling that this battle is raging around us,
and we are losing.
We need to constantly be expanding our information base. The articles
posted by Roger do bring different perspectives on a wide range of issues.
While we must draw our own conclusions from this information, still it can
generate new thinking. After listening to some of the presidential debates,
especially those of the Republican combatants, I welcome posts that provide
food for thought.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/6/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Why Is My Kindergartner Being Groomed for the Military at School?to join.
Thursday, 04 February 2016 00:00 By Sarah Grey, Truthout | Report
Military recruitment efforts, whether societal or sponsored directly
by the US military, reach children as young as preschool, priming them
to think of war and soldiering as cool and exciting, without any
discussion of the trauma and death they bring. (Image: Jared Rodriguez
/ Truthout) When he got home from Iraq, Hart Viges began sorting
through his boyhood toys, looking for some he could pass on to his new
baby nephew. He found a stash of G.I. Joes - his old favorites - and
the memories came flooding back.
"I thought about giving them to him," he said. But the pressures of a
year in a war zone had strengthened Viges' Christian faith, and he
told the Army that "if I loved my enemy I couldn't see killing them,
for any reason." He left as a conscientious objector. As for the G.I.
Joes, "I threw them away instead." Viges had grown up playing dress-up
with his father's, grandfather's and uncles' old military uniforms.
"What we tell small kids has such a huge effect," he told Truthout. "I
didn't want to be the one telling him to dream about the military."
As the mother of a 6-year-old, I know what he means. My partner and I,
as longtime antiwar activists, work hard to talk to our daughter about
war, violence and peace in age-appropriate ways.
That's why we were shocked this November when, shortly after Veterans
Day, our daughter came home from kindergarten with a worksheet that
asked the children to decide which branch of the military they would like
Theto join.
class had been working on charts in math class, taking polls and
graphing the results, which usually fell more along the lines of what
flavors of pie they preferred.
Military recruitment can start as early as kindergarten when teachers
make use of free classroom materials such as this worksheet, which
encourages children to consider which branch of the military they'd like
(Credit: Sarah Grey)Veterans Affairs.
Unsure what to do, I posted a photo of the worksheet on Facebook, with
a simple caption: "I am not happy about this." This kicked off a huge
all-day debate on Thanksgiving, with many commenters (especially those
abroad) expressing horror and others wondering what the big deal was.
Several identified the worksheet's content as "grooming" children for
later military recruitment.
THE US WAR MACHINE IS SO UBIQUITOUS THAT FEW PEOPLE EVEN THINK TWICE
ABOUT ITS ROLE IN OUR CHILDREN'S LIVES.
Perhaps the most insidious thing about this grooming is that it wasn't
even deliberate. The worksheet did not come from military recruiters.
It didn't have to. Search online for "military kindergarten
printables" and you'll find a wealth of free materials for teachers -
a welcome resource in cash-strapped public schools, where teachers
often pay significant sums out of pocket for classroom materials.
My child's teacher wasn't deliberately distributing propaganda. When
we talked with her about it, she was surprised and very responsive.
She's a fantastic teacher. It's just that our country's $598.5 billion
war machine is so ubiquitous that few people even think twice about
its role in our children's lives.
But we should. It isn't just that the current wars are less about
"democracy" than about oil and empire. It isn't just the body count,
though that is staggering: Researchers at the Costs of War Project at
Brown University estimate 92,000 deaths in Afghanistan, 26,000 of them
civilians, with more than two-thirds of Afghans now experiencing
mental health problems. At least 165,000 Iraqi civilians have been
killed in the Iraq war since 2003. US drone strikes have also killed
about 3,800 people in Pakistan, most of them civilians. That's in
addition to the estimated 6,800 US soldiers and 7,000 contractors who
have died, not to mention that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have
filed nearly 1 million disability claims with the US Department of
Jennifer Smith, a mother of two teenage boys from Prospect Park,iceberg.
Pennsylvania, responded to the worksheet by asking:
How is this teaching about Veterans Day? There's no history on this
worksheet. What there IS however, is grooming. Having kindergartners
consider what branch they would be in? How is a 5 or 6 yr old supposed
to make that decision? What criteria is a kindergartner using?
Smith's question is crucial. The most visible aspects of military life
are the things that make good toys: ships, planes and tanks. But
there's no warning on toy boxes that a decade of constant war on
multiple fronts has left the US military stretched beyond its
capabilities, which means soldiers can be involuntarily recalled:
Active-duty personnel routinely serve multiple tours of duty in Iraq
and Afghanistan. At least 16 percent of returning veterans experience
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). US Defense Department and RAND
Corporation data show that at least 5 percent of military women
reported being raped or sexually assaulted, and that 62 percent of
those who reported a rape experienced retribution or retaliation.
And as for those great jobs recruiters claim to offer? A 2014
investigation by NBC found that fully one-quarter of active-duty
military families struggle with hunger and rely on food stamps, food
banks and other food aid to survive.
While we can and should insist that recruiters be required to present
young people with stark realities like these, it's important to
understand that children's images of and attitudes toward the military
are shaped long before they're old enough to be considered legitimate
targets for recruiters. Recruiters are the tip of an enormous ideological
Recruitment efforts run a lot deeper than their visible presence inmilitary service.
schools and shopping malls. To see just how deep, you have to start at
the beginning.
The all-volunteer army is a recent phenomenon in the United States.
From the Civil War until 1973, all young men were required to register
for the draft.
The Conscription Act, passed during World War I, punished those who
refused with prison sentences, labor camps and even the death penalty,
according to historian Gerald Shenk. But even before the US military
needed to attract soldiers, it was concerned with preparing children for
Thedifferent way."
armed forces needed literate, technically skilled recruits who could
perform increasingly complicated tasks. In his book War Play, Corey
Mead points out that this need shaped the formation of the US public
school system - particularly its emphasis on standardized testing.
(Indeed, he points out that "the first Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT),
given in 1926, was a modified version of the army's Alpha exam....
Many of the original test's questions made the military connection
explicit.") THE PROMISE OF AN EDUCATION, A STEADY JOB AND VETERANS'
BENEFITS LURE YOUNG PEOPLE WHO DON'T HAVE MANY OTHER OPTIONS.
Military conscription - that is, the draft - ended in 1973, the result
of a strong, militant antiwar movement that spread not only across the
United States, but among soldiers in Vietnam. Rick Jahnkow of Project
YANO (the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities) in San
Diego, California, an organization that addresses the economic effects
of militarism on communities, was part of the Vietnam-era draft
resistance movement. He points out that the abolition of the draft - a
major blow to the military - marked the beginning of recruitment by
any means necessary. "The Pentagon took a different tack," Jahnkow
said, "because they had to. They had to market soldiering in a whole
When the stick failed - when the armed forces were prevented fromhaving to pay back monstrous student loans....
using the threat of prison, withholding financial aid and other
punishments to force young people into the ranks - they turned to the
carrot. Promises of scholarships, marketable skills, bonus money and a
chance to "see the world"
or help the victims of global conflicts became inducements to sign up.
The promise of an education, a steady job and veterans' benefits lure
young people who don't have many other options. It's often called the
"economic draft." Kids who can't afford college or who face grim job
prospects in a declining economy are far more likely to join the
military; that's why recruiters are far more active in low-income
areas. Veteran and activist Tomas Young told biographer Mark
Wilkerson, "There was no other way that I could go to college without
My plan was to serve my time, take my GI Bill money and go to schoolfor the military."
in Oregon or someplace." Young never got the chance to go to school.
As the forthcoming book Tomas Young's War documents, he was paralyzed
by a bullet in Sadr City on his fifth day in Iraq. He spent the rest
of his short life campaigning with Iraq Veterans Against the War to
the extent his excruciatingly painful injuries allowed. He died in 2014.
The promise of education and jobs is a powerful lure. But to get that
message across to potential soldiers, military recruiters had to reach
them.
They couldn't afford to hang around in recruitment offices waiting;
they had to go where the kids were, and that meant getting inside the
schools.
SHIFTS IN LEGISLATION OVER THE PAST DECADE AND A HALF HAVE OPENED
SCHOOLS UP TO THE MILITARY MORE THAN EVER BEFORE.
In the 1970s and 1980s, this was often accomplished on a
school-by-school basis. Recruiters asked for permission to set up
tables in high school cafeterias and signed up for career fairs. Their
access was regularly challenged by parents and community groups like
Project YANO. But the first Gulf War shifted the terms of the debate.
The military's role in schools wasn't just about open recruiting
anymore; it was about "supporting the troops" with exercises like
yellow-ribbon campaigns, assemblies and postcard-writing competitions.
Since these weren't explicit recruitment activities, restrictions
about students' ages and grade levels didn't apply; even the youngest
children could participate.
In the 1990s, these strategies were applied more widely, according to
Jahnkow. As schools began to initiate "partnerships" with local
businesses and nonprofit organizations, military recruiters applied to
participate in such programs, arguing that they were simply one more
organization and deserved equal consideration. Often, however, such
partnerships served as a guise for open recruitment of young children.
Jahnkow provided me with a copy of a memo Project YANO sent the school
board of the San Diego Unified School District on March 6, 1992. A
school in the district, Horton Elementary, had embarked on a
partnership with a local US Navy unit. "Early in December [1991] a man
appeared at Horton Elementary dressed as Santa Claus," the memo
recounted.
Apparently, he was a representative of the Navy. According to children
who were there that day, this "Santa Claus" distributed bags of
material to many, if not all, of the children at the school (K-6).
What horrified some parents was that "Santa" distributed military
recruiting propaganda in the bags given to their children. We have a
copy of one of the items, a Navy folder that is clearly designed as a
recruiting tool ...
The Horton principal has also admitted that military tanks have been
brought to career events at the school and children have been allowed
to crawl through them! After telling this to one parent, he reassured
her that the children are not allowed to bring toy guns to school.
Wonderful logic, isn't it?
Showing off military equipment is a favorite tactic. Hart Viges, who
is now an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and
Sustainable Options for Youth, recalls a military helicopter being
displayed at his elementary school in the 1990s. "We thought it was so
cool," he said. "Of course, they didn't tell us it was a killing machine."
Defense Department-sponsored after-school programs like STARBASE reach
children as young as grade 5, offering tutoring (by uniformed
soldiers) and "increased career awareness," with an explicitly stated
mission to "expose our nation's youth to the technological
environments and positive civilian and military role models found on
Active, Guard, and Reserve military bases and installations."
The Junior ROTC program targets middle school and high school students
with military drills and training. In Chicago, the public school
system is even experimenting with publicly funded JROTC military
academies. Each academy focuses on a specific military branch and is
partially staffed by retired military personnel. The Chicago program's
website claims that "although students wear uniforms and operate in a
structured environment, these schools are not intended to prepare students
Shifts in legislation over the past decade and a half have openedit.
schools up to the military more than ever before. Just after 9/11,
President George W.
Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. The
act, which has since been renewed by President Obama, took drastic
measures to implement standardized curricula and testing in the
nation's public schools.
It also gives recruiters unprecedented leeway, according to a report
by the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at the Rutgers School of Law:
"schools receiving federal funds must give military recruiters the
same access to students as they give employers and college
recruiters," including the names of all junior and senior students.
Parents can sign a form to "opt out" of giving recruiters access to
their child's time and information, and "the NCLB and Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) require that parents be
told that they have the right to keep recruiters away from their
children." However, according to the Rutgers report, "high schools
throughout the State [of New Jersey] do not notify parents of this
right adequately, or at all." In addition, the report found that
"schools throughout the State give recruiters much greater access to
students than is required by law" and that "lack of oversight allows
recruiters to present students with unrealistic and false portrayals
of military service." A report from the US Army War College arguing in
favor of unfettered recruiting notes that "access to the high school
population remains critical to DoD [Defense Department] efforts to man
the force as propensity for military service drops dramatically for
most groups after the age of 18."
TOYS, VIDEO GAMES, SPORTS, TV SHOWS AND MOVIES ALL NORMALIZE NOT ONLY
THE MILITARY BUT COMBAT ITSELF.
The Department of Defense also maintains contracts with private
corporations that broker data about children: Journalist David Goodman
told Democracy Now! in 2009 that this information includes everything
from "when you buy a yearbook, when you buy a student ring ... any
number of ... commercial purchases." Data brokers' information, he
writes, is combined with data from the Selective Service, state DMVs,
the ASVAB standardized test and information children voluntarily
provide to "career planning" websites openly or not-so-openly run by
recruiters, such as myfuture.com and march2success.com. The result is
a remarkably detailed picture that allows recruiters to screen out
kids who don't qualify (due to physical fitness, criminal records or
other factors) and target the ones who do.
Access to schools isn't the only route into children's lives, however.
The Department of Defense spends billions each year on video game
development, as Mead's book documents. The Army has even developed its
own realistic simulation game, "America's Army," and recruiters give
kids access to trailers full of video game consoles where they can play
There's also the $10.4 million the military has spent on marketingto be able to do that."
displays at pro football, baseball, hockey, basketball and soccer
games since 2012 - not to mention that "the National Guard spent more
than $56 million each year on sports marketing with NASCAR and
IndyCar," according to The Washington Post.
Then there's sponsoring and consulting on Hollywood films (a
partnership that goes back to the dawn of the film industry).
Journalist Nick Turse, in his book The Complex, quotes Transformers
(2007) producer Ian Bryce enthusing about the movie's Pentagon ties:
"We want to cooperate with the Pentagon to show them off in the most
positive light, and the Pentagon likewise wants to give us the resources
These efforts reach kids as young as preschool, priming them to thinkbecause the G.I.
of war and soldiering as cool and exciting, without any discussion of
the trauma and death they are designed to bring. Hart Viges vividly
remembers playing with soldier toys while watching "G.I. Joe," a
cartoon show that ran from
1983 to 1986. "I actually went back and watched a bunch of episodes on
Netflix, just to see what was put into my head," he said. "It was
weirdly specific - like, there were at least three episodes where they
talked about how they couldn't fight Cobra [the villains' organization]
Joe budget was coming under attack."shooting someone.
Toys, video games, sports, TV shows and movies all normalize not only
the military but combat itself. Though there's intense debate over the
topic, studies have shown that first-person shooter games do
desensitize heavy players to images of violence - unsurprisingly, it's
easier to imagine shooting someone when you spend all day simulating
Allowing children to play in tanks and imagine themselves at thethe boxes of games like "America's Army" at Walmart.
controls likewise lowers their inhibitions, especially since this
exposure to big, exciting machines is not accompanied by any way of
envisioning the killing and devastation the machines are designed to
deal out. Likewise, classroom discussions of military careers that
don't inform children about the realities of war have the effect of
inviting children to fantasize about war
- priming them to welcome the advances of recruiters whose goal is to
lure them into a war machine that is likely to leave them to poverty,
pain, PTSD and an early grave.
So what can students, parents and others do to stop military grooming? Dr.
Terrence Webster-Doyle, a Vietnam veteran, Veterans for Peace member
and founder of the Youth Peace Literacy program, writes free books for
children and adults about ending the cycle of violence. He also
advocates martial arts training as a way to allow youth to channel
their aggression in a safe, controlled environment.
The most effective solution, Viges says, is counter-recruitment. Viges
mans a Sustainable Options for Youth table in Austin, Texas, high
school cafeterias, where he offers stark statistics about sexual
assault, PTSD, veteran homelessness and other less attractive aspects
of military life and gives out information about a range of
alternative job opportunities, from firefighting to AmeriCorps.
Project YANO sends veterans to speak to schoolchildren and youth
groups about the realities of war, as well as alternatives for jobs
and college funding, and educates school administrators about
recruiters' tactics. Viges has also been known to slap warning stickers on
As parents, we should question what our kids are told about war anddecisions.
the military in school, on TV and even through the toys we give them.
We should also present them - and their teachers - with all of the
facts, even the ugly ones. They might still choose to sign up as
teenagers, but we can at least make sure they make fully informed
Afghanistan veteran and war resister Rory Fanning, author of Worthto join.
Fighting For, spent nine months walking on foot across the United
States to raise money for the Pat Tillman Foundation, a scholarship
fund for veterans and their families named for the former NFL star
turned Army Ranger, whose death by friendly fire resulted in a scandal
for the Pentagon. Fanning's journey became one of counter-recruitment
when he spoke to students in Roby, Texas.
"Which branch of the military should I join?" one boy asked - and
Fanning surprised himself by responding, "I don't think you should
join any of them."
That wasn't an option on my daughter's worksheet. Let's make sure
children of all age groups know that they have the right to say no to
war, to violence and to military recruiters.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
SARAH GREY
Sarah Grey is a freelance writer and editor in Philadelphia, an
antiwar activist and the parent of a kindergarten student. Her writing
on politics, language and food has been published in Best Food Writing
2015, Truthout, The Establishment, Serious Eats, Lucky Peach,
Spoonful, The Frisky, Copyediting, and many more.
RELATED STORIES
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Elder, National Coalition To Protect Student Privacy | Report US Army
Special Forces Officially Recruit for "Mission for God"
By Mikey Weinstein, AlterNet | Op-Ed
Student Privacy and Military Recruiting By Pat Elder, SpeakOut | Op-Ed
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Why Is My Kindergartner Being Groomed for the Military at School?
Thursday, 04 February 2016 00:00 By Sarah Grey, Truthout | Report
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. Military recruitment efforts, whether societal or sponsored
directly by the US military, reach children as young as preschool,
priming them to think of war and soldiering as cool and exciting,
without any discussion of the trauma and death they bring. (Image:
Jared Rodriguez /
Truthout)
. When he got home from Iraq, Hart Viges began sorting through his
boyhood toys, looking for some he could pass on to his new baby
nephew. He found a stash of G.I. Joes - his old favorites - and the
memories came flooding back.
"I thought about giving them to him," he said. But the pressures of a
year in a war zone had strengthened Viges' Christian faith, and he
told the Army that "if I loved my enemy I couldn't see killing them,
for any reason." He left as a conscientious objector. As for the G.I.
Joes, "I threw them away instead." Viges had grown up playing dress-up
with his father's, grandfather's and uncles' old military uniforms.
"What we tell small kids has such a huge effect," he told Truthout. "I
didn't want to be the one telling him to dream about the military."
As the mother of a 6-year-old, I know what he means. My partner and I,
as longtime antiwar activists, work hard to talk to our daughter about
war, violence and peace in age-appropriate ways.
That's why we were shocked this November when, shortly after Veterans
Day, our daughter came home from kindergarten with a worksheet that
asked the children to decide which branch of the military they would like
Theto join.
class had been working on charts in math class, taking polls and
graphing the results, which usually fell more along the lines of what
flavors of pie they preferred.
Military recruitment can start as early as kindergarten when teachers
make use of free classroom materials such as this worksheet, which
encourages children to consider which branch of the military they'd like
(Credit: Sarah Grey)Veterans Affairs.
Unsure what to do, I posted a photo of the worksheet on Facebook, with
a simple caption: "I am not happy about this." This kicked off a huge
all-day debate on Thanksgiving, with many commenters (especially those
abroad) expressing horror and others wondering what the big deal was.
Several identified the worksheet's content as "grooming" children for
later military recruitment.
The US war machine is so ubiquitous that few people even think twice
about its role in our children's lives.
Perhaps the most insidious thing about this grooming is that it wasn't
even deliberate. The worksheet did not come from military recruiters.
It didn't have to. Search online for "military kindergarten
printables" and you'll find a wealth of free materials for teachers -
a welcome resource in cash-strapped public schools, where teachers
often pay significant sums out of pocket for classroom materials.
My child's teacher wasn't deliberately distributing propaganda. When
we talked with her about it, she was surprised and very responsive.
She's a fantastic teacher. It's just that our country's $598.5 billion
war machine is so ubiquitous that few people even think twice about
its role in our children's lives.
But we should. It isn't just that the current wars are less about
"democracy" than about oil and empire. It isn't just the body count,
though that is staggering: Researchers at the Costs of War Project at
Brown University estimate 92,000 deaths in Afghanistan, 26,000 of them
civilians, with more than two-thirds of Afghans now experiencing
mental health problems. At least 165,000 Iraqi civilians have been
killed in the Iraq war since 2003. US drone strikes have also killed
about 3,800 people in Pakistan, most of them civilians. That's in
addition to the estimated 6,800 US soldiers and 7,000 contractors who
have died, not to mention that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have
filed nearly 1 million disability claims with the US Department of
Jennifer Smith, a mother of two teenage boys from Prospect Park,iceberg.
Pennsylvania, responded to the worksheet by asking:
How is this teaching about Veterans Day? There's no history on this
worksheet. What there IS however, is grooming. Having kindergartners
consider what branch they would be in? How is a 5 or 6 yr old supposed
to make that decision? What criteria is a kindergartner using?
Smith's question is crucial. The most visible aspects of military life
are the things that make good toys: ships, planes and tanks. But
there's no warning on toy boxes that a decade of constant war on
multiple fronts has left the US military stretched beyond its
capabilities, which means soldiers can be involuntarily recalled:
Active-duty personnel routinely serve multiple tours of duty in Iraq
and Afghanistan. At least 16 percent of returning veterans experience
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). US Defense Department and RAND
Corporation data show that at least 5 percent of military women
reported being raped or sexually assaulted, and that 62 percent of
those who reported a rape experienced retribution or retaliation.
And as for those great jobs recruiters claim to offer? A 2014
investigation by NBC found that fully one-quarter of active-duty
military families struggle with hunger and rely on food stamps, food
banks and other food aid to survive.
While we can and should insist that recruiters be required to present
young people with stark realities like these, it's important to
understand that children's images of and attitudes toward the military
are shaped long before they're old enough to be considered legitimate
targets for recruiters. Recruiters are the tip of an enormous ideological
Recruitment efforts run a lot deeper than their visible presence inmilitary service.
schools and shopping malls. To see just how deep, you have to start at
the beginning.
The all-volunteer army is a recent phenomenon in the United States.
From the Civil War until 1973, all young men were required to register
for the draft.
The Conscription Act, passed during World War I, punished those who
refused with prison sentences, labor camps and even the death penalty,
according to historian Gerald Shenk. But even before the US military
needed to attract soldiers, it was concerned with preparing children for
Thedifferent way."
armed forces needed literate, technically skilled recruits who could
perform increasingly complicated tasks. In his book War Play, Corey
Mead points out that this need shaped the formation of the US public
school system - particularly its emphasis on standardized testing.
(Indeed, he points out that "the first Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT),
given in 1926, was a modified version of the army's Alpha exam....
Many of the original test's questions made the military connection
explicit.") The promise of an education, a steady job and veterans'
benefits lure young people who don't have many other options.
Military conscription - that is, the draft - ended in 1973, the result
of a strong, militant antiwar movement that spread not only across the
United States, but among soldiers in Vietnam. Rick Jahnkow of Project
YANO (the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities) in San
Diego, California, an organization that addresses the economic effects
of militarism on communities, was part of the Vietnam-era draft
resistance movement. He points out that the abolition of the draft - a
major blow to the military - marked the beginning of recruitment by
any means necessary. "The Pentagon took a different tack," Jahnkow
said, "because they had to. They had to market soldiering in a whole
When the stick failed - when the armed forces were prevented fromhaving to pay back monstrous student loans....
using the threat of prison, withholding financial aid and other
punishments to force young people into the ranks - they turned to the
carrot. Promises of scholarships, marketable skills, bonus money and a
chance to "see the world"
or help the victims of global conflicts became inducements to sign up.
The promise of an education, a steady job and veterans' benefits lure
young people who don't have many other options. It's often called the
"economic draft." Kids who can't afford college or who face grim job
prospects in a declining economy are far more likely to join the
military; that's why recruiters are far more active in low-income
areas. Veteran and activist Tomas Young told biographer Mark
Wilkerson, "There was no other way that I could go to college without
My plan was to serve my time, take my GI Bill money and go to schoolfor the military."
in Oregon or someplace." Young never got the chance to go to school.
As the forthcoming book Tomas Young's War documents, he was paralyzed
by a bullet in Sadr City on his fifth day in Iraq. He spent the rest
of his short life campaigning with Iraq Veterans Against the War to
the extent his excruciatingly painful injuries allowed. He died in 2014.
The promise of education and jobs is a powerful lure. But to get that
message across to potential soldiers, military recruiters had to reach
them.
They couldn't afford to hang around in recruitment offices waiting;
they had to go where the kids were, and that meant getting inside the
schools.
Shifts in legislation over the past decade and a half have opened
schools up to the military more than ever before.
In the 1970s and 1980s, this was often accomplished on a
school-by-school basis. Recruiters asked for permission to set up
tables in high school cafeterias and signed up for career fairs. Their
access was regularly challenged by parents and community groups like
Project YANO. But the first Gulf War shifted the terms of the debate.
The military's role in schools wasn't just about open recruiting
anymore; it was about "supporting the troops" with exercises like
yellow-ribbon campaigns, assemblies and postcard-writing competitions.
Since these weren't explicit recruitment activities, restrictions
about students' ages and grade levels didn't apply; even the youngest
children could participate.
In the 1990s, these strategies were applied more widely, according to
Jahnkow. As schools began to initiate "partnerships" with local
businesses and nonprofit organizations, military recruiters applied to
participate in such programs, arguing that they were simply one more
organization and deserved equal consideration. Often, however, such
partnerships served as a guise for open recruitment of young children.
Jahnkow provided me with a copy of a memo Project YANO sent the school
board of the San Diego Unified School District on March 6, 1992. A
school in the district, Horton Elementary, had embarked on a
partnership with a local US Navy unit. "Early in December [1991] a man
appeared at Horton Elementary dressed as Santa Claus," the memo
recounted.
Apparently, he was a representative of the Navy. According to children
who were there that day, this "Santa Claus" distributed bags of
material to many, if not all, of the children at the school (K-6).
What horrified some parents was that "Santa" distributed military
recruiting propaganda in the bags given to their children. We have a
copy of one of the items, a Navy folder that is clearly designed as a
recruiting tool ...
The Horton principal has also admitted that military tanks have been
brought to career events at the school and children have been allowed
to crawl through them! After telling this to one parent, he reassured
her that the children are not allowed to bring toy guns to school.
Wonderful logic, isn't it?
Showing off military equipment is a favorite tactic. Hart Viges, who
is now an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and
Sustainable Options for Youth, recalls a military helicopter being
displayed at his elementary school in the 1990s. "We thought it was so
cool," he said. "Of course, they didn't tell us it was a killing machine."
Defense Department-sponsored after-school programs like STARBASE reach
children as young as grade 5, offering tutoring (by uniformed
soldiers) and "increased career awareness," with an explicitly stated
mission to "expose our nation's youth to the technological
environments and positive civilian and military role models found on
Active, Guard, and Reserve military bases and installations."
The Junior ROTC program targets middle school and high school students
with military drills and training. In Chicago, the public school
system is even experimenting with publicly funded JROTC military
academies. Each academy focuses on a specific military branch and is
partially staffed by retired military personnel. The Chicago program's
website claims that "although students wear uniforms and operate in a
structured environment, these schools are not intended to prepare students
Shifts in legislation over the past decade and a half have openedit.
schools up to the military more than ever before. Just after 9/11,
President George W.
Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. The
act, which has since been renewed by President Obama, took drastic
measures to implement standardized curricula and testing in the
nation's public schools.
It also gives recruiters unprecedented leeway, according to a report
by the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at the Rutgers School of Law:
"schools receiving federal funds must give military recruiters the
same access to students as they give employers and college
recruiters," including the names of all junior and senior students.
Parents can sign a form to "opt out" of giving recruiters access to
their child's time and information, and "the NCLB and Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) require that parents be
told that they have the right to keep recruiters away from their
children." However, according to the Rutgers report, "high schools
throughout the State [of New Jersey] do not notify parents of this
right adequately, or at all." In addition, the report found that
"schools throughout the State give recruiters much greater access to
students than is required by law" and that "lack of oversight allows
recruiters to present students with unrealistic and false portrayals
of military service." A report from the US Army War College arguing in
favor of unfettered recruiting notes that "access to the high school
population remains critical to DoD [Defense Department] efforts to man
the force as propensity for military service drops dramatically for
most groups after the age of 18."
Toys, video games, sports, TV shows and movies all normalize not only
the military but combat itself.
The Department of Defense also maintains contracts with private
corporations that broker data about children: Journalist David Goodman
told Democracy Now! in 2009 that this information includes everything
from "when you buy a yearbook, when you buy a student ring ... any
number of ... commercial purchases." Data brokers' information, he
writes, is combined with data from the Selective Service, state DMVs,
the ASVAB standardized test and information children voluntarily
provide to "career planning" websites openly or not-so-openly run by
recruiters, such as myfuture.com and march2success.com. The result is
a remarkably detailed picture that allows recruiters to screen out
kids who don't qualify (due to physical fitness, criminal records or
other factors) and target the ones who do.
Access to schools isn't the only route into children's lives, however.
The Department of Defense spends billions each year on video game
development, as Mead's book documents. The Army has even developed its
own realistic simulation game, "America's Army," and recruiters give
kids access to trailers full of video game consoles where they can play
There's also the $10.4 million the military has spent on marketingto be able to do that."
displays at pro football, baseball, hockey, basketball and soccer
games since 2012 - not to mention that "the National Guard spent more
than $56 million each year on sports marketing with NASCAR and
IndyCar," according to The Washington Post.
Then there's sponsoring and consulting on Hollywood films (a
partnership that goes back to the dawn of the film industry).
Journalist Nick Turse, in his book The Complex, quotes Transformers
(2007) producer Ian Bryce enthusing about the movie's Pentagon ties:
"We want to cooperate with the Pentagon to show them off in the most
positive light, and the Pentagon likewise wants to give us the resources
These efforts reach kids as young as preschool, priming them to thinkbecause the G.I.
of war and soldiering as cool and exciting, without any discussion of
the trauma and death they are designed to bring. Hart Viges vividly
remembers playing with soldier toys while watching "G.I. Joe," a
cartoon show that ran from
1983 to 1986. "I actually went back and watched a bunch of episodes on
Netflix, just to see what was put into my head," he said. "It was
weirdly specific - like, there were at least three episodes where they
talked about how they couldn't fight Cobra [the villains' organization]
Joe budget was coming under attack."shooting someone.
Toys, video games, sports, TV shows and movies all normalize not only
the military but combat itself. Though there's intense debate over the
topic, studies have shown that first-person shooter games do
desensitize heavy players to images of violence - unsurprisingly, it's
easier to imagine shooting someone when you spend all day simulating
Allowing children to play in tanks and imagine themselves at thethe boxes of games like "America's Army" at Walmart.
controls likewise lowers their inhibitions, especially since this
exposure to big, exciting machines is not accompanied by any way of
envisioning the killing and devastation the machines are designed to
deal out. Likewise, classroom discussions of military careers that
don't inform children about the realities of war have the effect of
inviting children to fantasize about war
- priming them to welcome the advances of recruiters whose goal is to
lure them into a war machine that is likely to leave them to poverty,
pain, PTSD and an early grave.
So what can students, parents and others do to stop military grooming? Dr.
Terrence Webster-Doyle, a Vietnam veteran, Veterans for Peace member
and founder of the Youth Peace Literacy program, writes free books for
children and adults about ending the cycle of violence. He also
advocates martial arts training as a way to allow youth to channel
their aggression in a safe, controlled environment.
The most effective solution, Viges says, is counter-recruitment. Viges
mans a Sustainable Options for Youth table in Austin, Texas, high
school cafeterias, where he offers stark statistics about sexual
assault, PTSD, veteran homelessness and other less attractive aspects
of military life and gives out information about a range of
alternative job opportunities, from firefighting to AmeriCorps.
Project YANO sends veterans to speak to schoolchildren and youth
groups about the realities of war, as well as alternatives for jobs
and college funding, and educates school administrators about
recruiters' tactics. Viges has also been known to slap warning stickers on
As parents, we should question what our kids are told about war anddecisions.
the military in school, on TV and even through the toys we give them.
We should also present them - and their teachers - with all of the
facts, even the ugly ones. They might still choose to sign up as
teenagers, but we can at least make sure they make fully informed
Afghanistan veteran and war resister Rory Fanning, author of Worth
Fighting For, spent nine months walking on foot across the United
States to raise money for the Pat Tillman Foundation, a scholarship
fund for veterans and their families named for the former NFL star
turned Army Ranger, whose death by friendly fire resulted in a scandal
for the Pentagon. Fanning's journey became one of counter-recruitment
when he spoke to students in Roby, Texas.
"Which branch of the military should I join?" one boy asked - and
Fanning surprised himself by responding, "I don't think you should
join any of them."
That wasn't an option on my daughter's worksheet. Let's make sure
children of all age groups know that they have the right to say no to
war, to violence and to military recruiters.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Sarah Grey
Sarah Grey is a freelance writer and editor in Philadelphia, an
antiwar activist and the parent of a kindergarten student. Her writing
on politics, language and food has been published in Best Food Writing
2015, Truthout, The Establishment, Serious Eats, Lucky Peach,
Spoonful, The Frisky, Copyediting, and many more.
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