October 28, 2008 / Marc Norton / BeyondChron - “Without JROTC, I would not be where I am today: a Staff Sergeant in the United States Army.” So writes Jason, a former JROTC cadet, in a recent Facebook post on the Keep JROTC Alive in San Francisco site. “As a young teenager,” he continues, “the JROTC program helped me develop discipline, leadership skills, and values which I continue to use today. So let’s keep the JROTC program alive!”
The Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) was created 90 years ago, at the height of the hysteria of World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson needed troops for the “war to end all wars.” The program was reauthorized in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson, who needed troops for yet another doomed military adventure, this time in the jungles of Vietnam. Today, under the reign of yet another wartime President, JROTC’s operational budget has more than doubled.
JROTC was, is, and always will be, a military recruitment program. The “discipline, leadership skills, and values” that Jason and other JROTC advocates tirelessly praise are, for many, nothing more than a come-on for recruitment.
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The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)
Articles
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Oct. 22, 2008 / Javier C. Hernández / New York Times - Barbara G. Harris, 72, looked her troops in the eye. Staring out at mohawks on one side of the room, salt-white bobs on the other, she said in her delicately firm way: “Hold your ground. You have every right to stand there, and if anyone tells you differently, tell them your rights.”
A retired teacher and longtime peace advocate, Ms. Harris was tutoring 20 new enlistees in the art of “counter-recruitment,” her personal crusade to block recruiters for the United States military from contacting New York City high school students.
She had assembled the group in her war room, a space near Union Square lent by a sympathetic organization, where plants and antiwar signs line the walls, in preparation for a blitz Thursday evening at parent-teacher conferences, where Ms. Harris and the others plan to stand on sidewalks outside school buildings armed with opt-out forms and their best sales pitches.
“You don’t have a whole lot of time — that’s the point,” Ms. Harris told the volunteers, who ranged in age from college students to the Granny Peace Brigade, a New York group of older women started in 2005 to protest the Iraq war. “Don’t be frustrated by that. They do stop.”
Cedar Ridge High's principal says they weren't being disciplined in being sent to a suspension classroom
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February 13, 2008 / Cheryl Johnston Sadgrove / NewsObserver - HILLSBOROUGH - Three high school students were sent to an in-school suspension classroom after refusing to take a military aptitude test at Cedar Ridge High School on Tuesday.
Principal Gary Thornburg said the students were not being disciplined, but rather that the in-school suspension teacher was the staff person available to supervise them. More than 300 juniors spent two hours Tuesday and again Wednesday in the school cafeteria taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.
Thornburg said the test, which the U.S. military calls the ASVAB, is traditionally administered to juniors at his school and is part of a larger career assessment program.
The military provides the tests, proctors and grading without charge. In exchange, the scores are sent to military branch recruiters and the school.
"This happens to be the best career assessment we've found," Thornburg said.
By federal law, the contact information for any junior or senior who doesn't sign an opt-out form is passed along to recruiters by the school district.
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