Peer Reviewed Title: The Militarization and the Privatization of Public Schools Journal Issue: Berkeley Review of Education, 2(1) Author: Galaviz, Brian, Caucus of Rank and File Educators Palafox, Jesus, National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth Meiners, Erica R., Northeastern Illinois University Quinn, Therese, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Publication Date: 2011 Publication Info: Berkeley Review of Education, University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/4969649w Keywords: Militarization, Charter Schools, Military Academies, Privatization, Discipline Abstract: This article offers a case study of the militarization of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). First, we portray the landscape of militarization of education through the example of Chicago Public Schools. Second, we situate the militarization of schools within the current charter school movement. Third, we explain the impact of militarization on youth and critique the view that military academies and military programs are appropriate as public education models. Fourth, with a lengthy appendix, we provide readers with tools to work against the militarization of public schools within their communities. eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. Available online at http://escholarship.org/uc/ucbgse_bre The Militarization and the Privatization of Public Schools Brian Galaviz,a1 Jesus Palafox,b Erica R. Meiners,c and Therese Quinnd a b Caucus of Rank and File Educators National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth c Northeastern Illinois University d School of the Art Institute of Chicago Abstract This article offers a case study of the militarization of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). First, we portray the landscape of militarization of education through the example of Chicago Public Schools. Second, we situate the militarization of schools within the current charter school movement. Third, we explain the impact of militarization on youth and critique the view that military academies and military programs are appropriate as public education models. Fourth, with a lengthy appendix, we provide readers with tools to work against the militarization of public schools within their communities. Keywords: Militarization, Charter Schools, Military Academies, Privatization, Discipline During the State of the Union Address on January 25, 2011, invoking the removal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the federal policy that restricted lesbian, gay, and bisexual soldiers from revealing their sexual identities, President Barack Obama made a plea to remove all barriers to Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and military recruiters on college campuses: Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation. (¶93) In this speech Obama is asking institutions of higher education to become more militaryfriendly. However, his statement overlooked or willfully ignored the Solomon Amendment, a law enacted in 1996 which freezes federal funding to universities that bar Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) units or military recruiters from their campuses. His speech also failed to acknowledge the unanimous 2006 Supreme Court 1 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Brian Galaviz, Caucus of Rank and File Educators. Email: briangalaviz@gmail.com Berkeley Review of Education Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 27-45 28 Galaviz et al. decision that affirmed the Solomon Amendment, Rumsfeld v. FAIR.2 At the moment of the speech there were several elite universities in the United States with de facto bans on ROTC, including Yale (Advocates for Yale, 2011) and Stanford (Huwa, 2010). However, the Department of Defense (DOD) has long chosen not to enforce compliance with the Solomon Amendment at these restrictive access institutions. This lack of enforcement is important to note; it offers a clue to the real interest of the DOD, which we will argue here is not the recruitment of the nation’s most privileged, but rather, its most vulnerable youth. For example, in 2009 the Young America's Foundation challenged the Pentagon in court to try to force the federal government to withhold funds from the University of California, Santa Cruz because of the school’s ban on ROTC (Young America’s Foundation v. Gates, 2009). The Young America's Foundation lost the case because the Secretary of Defense has discretion in enforcement of the Solomon Amendment and it is “therefore not reviewable” (Young America’s Foundation v. Gates, 2009, ¶2). Clarifying the decision-making process in enforcement of Solomon, Cheryl Miller, manager of the Program on American Citizenship at the American Enterprise Institute, recently wrote, “the Pentagon has taken the path of least resistance when it comes to recruiting at colleges” (Miller, 2010, ¶4). Miller’s statement hints at what we contend in this paper— that the military focuses on a certain group of youth to recruit, mainly the poor and working class, who typically do not attend the nation’s most exclusive universities. Specifically, the military aims to develop strongly positive feelings about military-related activities and service in these youth, particularly since positive feelings about and expressed interest in military service by high school seniors is a strong predictor of actual service (Woodruf, Kelty, & Segal, 2006). The military invests hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising and support for think tanks charged with developing recruitment strategies (e.g., RAND Corporation), and Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), military academies, and programs at all levels are a part of this recruitment plan (Ayers, 2006; Schaffer-Duffy, 2003; Woodward, 2004). The military relies on the availability of a specific pool of populations for recruitment. For example, researchers working with the RAND Corporation did a study for the Pentagon on how to increase Latin@3 recruitment, a military priority as the numbers of African-Americans who enlist continues to decrease (Williams & Baron, 2007). The authors suggested it would be difficult to recruit more from the “least qualified” third of Latin@s looked at in their study; the second group, called the “nextmost qualified” in the study, was described as over-tapped by recruiters (Asch, Buck, Klerman, Kleykamp, Loughran, & RAND National Defense Research, 2009, p. xxi). Instead of targeting the previous two groups, RAND suggested that the military recruit the “most qualified” Latin@s, and noted that access to college money and “leadership opportunities” could be used as recruitment tools to attract potentially college-bound Latin@ students (Asch et al., 2009, p. xxii). Although the report’s authors suggested recruiting from the top third of Latin@s, who the report identified as the “most qualified” 2 Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR) (2005). Further information about this case can be found at Oyez Online at: http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2005/2005_04_1152 3 Latin@s refers to Latinas and Latinos and is a gender inclusive term. The Militarization and Privatization of Public Schools 29 group of Latin@s, they still viewed the potential of college funding as a recruitment tool. This makes sense; Latin@s had the lowest median household income of all groups reporting in the 2010 United States Census, and they are a group for whom the poverty rate is increasing, according to census data (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). In other words, even the “most qualified” group would be likely to benefit from financial assistance for their postsecondary studies. Perhaps as important as the funding rhetoric, the perception that participation in the military indicates leadership and strong moral character is particularly persuasive as a recruitment strategy. For youth who are regularly presented in media as social problems rather than assets, the military schools’ promise to develop youth’s leadership and other worthy personal qualities may be just as valuable as promises of college funding to vulnerable young people. For example, in Chicago, low-income students of color and their schools are often described in disparaging terms by advocates of public military academies and other forms of privatized schools: [A] racialized discourse of failure, probation, and lack of effort constructs African American and Latino schools and communities as deficient. This was made explicit when the CEO of CPS [Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan] defended the closing of Englewood High School by declaring the school exhibited “a culture of failure.” (Lipman & Haines, 2007, p. 490) Similarly, Chicago’s Nicholas Senn High School, an open enrollment community school, was called a “dumping ground for immigrants” at a school board meeting in order to justify placing a naval academy within its building (Chicago Independent Media, 2005). The military then offers a legitimating, and available, mechanism for young people and their families to resist the stigmatizing rhetoric placed upon urban youth of color. In this theoretical article about school militarization we explore a context in which much of the recruitment and disposition-to-military-service development is likely to happen—public schools. We focus our inquiry specifically on a case study of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to accomplish four things. First, we will portray the landscape of militarization of education through the example of Chicago Public Schools. Second, we want to situate the militarization of schools within the current charter school movement. Third, we want to explain the impact of militarization on youth and critique the view that military academies and JROTC are appropriate as public education models. Fourth, we want to give the reader tools to work against the militarization of public schools within their communities. Framing the Militarization of Education in Chicago With six public military high schools and over 10,000 students participating in JROTC programs beginning as early as middle school in the Cadet Corps, Chicago has the largest number of public military schools and JROTC programs in the United States (Military Public Schools on the Rise, 2009). In fact, Chicago has one-third of the nation’s public military schools and is the only city to have all of the branches of the military represented with military academies (Banchero & Sandovi, 2007; McDuffee, 2008). Chicago’s public military schools (along with other schools offering limited curricula 30 Galaviz et al. such as vocational education schools, Education-to-Careers Academies, and schools using only scripted direct instruction lessons) have been placed primarily in low-income communities of color, while schools with rich offerings (including magnet schools, regional gifted centers, classical schools, International Baccalaureate programs, and college preparatory schools) have been placed in whiter and wealthier communities, especially on the northside, along the lakefront, and in gentrifying areas (Lipman, 2004). In other words, it’s no accident that in 2005 Senn High School, an open enrollment high school with a largely poor and immigrant student population, was forced to share space with Rickover Naval Academy against the wishes of the school’s teachers, parents, and students, while the restrictive enrollment high school, Northside College Prep, only a short distance away, was not (Roa, 2009). In 2001, Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley, in a letter to the editor, congratulated then-Mayor Jerry Brown’s efforts to open a public military high school in Oakland and explained his own reasons for creating military schools in Chicago: We started these academies because of the success of our Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) program, the nation’s largest. JROTC provides students with the order and discipline that is too often lacking at home. It teaches them time management, responsibility, goal setting, and teamwork, and it builds leadership and self-confidence. (¶3) JROTC is an important historical piece in the evolution of militarized education. As one part of the National Defense Act of 1916, JROTC was developed to prepare young people to fight in World War I, and is still part of the recruitment budget of the Pentagon (McDuffee, 2008). While JROTC is sometimes framed as “not recruitment” by current educational policymakers, JROTC has historically been understood as a recruitment tool and is still named within military spaces as part of the recruitment plan (Thomas-Lester, 2005). More broadly, military training in schools has been used since the early 1890s as a way to regulate difference, with an initial emphasis on tracking toward race- and class“appropriate” occupations and behaviors (Bartlett & Lutz, 1998). This push aligned with the prevailing political and economic interests of those in power, for example, white southerners who supported black high schools on the condition that the schools would train black youth—for work that did not compete with white labor and for qualities (including “respect, obedience, and submissive acquiescence”) that lessened the likelihood that these youth would demand equal treatment (Bartlett & Lutz, 1998, p. 121). After the start of war in Europe in 1914, there were more calls for universal military training in public schools and colleges as a way to resolve perceived social problems, including “moral rot” associated with increased national wealth, increases in the numbers of immigrants who were seen as insufficiently loyal, and demands by labor made especially through strikes (Bartlett & Lutz, 1998). Proponents of military training in schools claimed that it would create better citizens and a “spirit of obedience, of subservience to discipline” (Anonymous, as quoted in Bartlett & Lutz, 1998, p. 122). Pacifists and others who opposed this training were described in gendered and sexualized ways as “moral syphilitics,” a term that, together with “moral rot,” evokes spoiled sexuality, if not quite the spoiled identity of queerness (Goffman, 1963). The military and The Militarization and Privatization of Public Schools 31 a militarized education were also prescribed as a cure for the suspect masculinity of the immigrant, who could develop “a manly readiness” through participation in school-based drills and army training (Bartlett & Lutz, 1998, pp. 122-123). From JROTC’s inception, its primary purpose was understood as ideological, not vocational (Bartlett & Lutz, 1998). The National Education Association took a strong stand against universal military training at its 1915 meeting but reversed its position later with a conflicting statement that “the training should be strictly educational . . . and military ends should not be permitted to pervert the educational purposes and practices of the school” (Literary Digest, July 22, 1916, as quoted in Bartlett & Lutz, 1998, p. 124). Groups of parents, students, and educators resisted its imposition in widely publicized events. The New York Times articles “United Parents Vote against School Drill” (1929), which documented a parent group’s unanimous vote against military drills in schools, and “Debate Military Training: School Pupils Give Views at Panel in Times Hall” (1945) offered a sense of the longevity of organizing against military training in public schools, as calls for school-based or ‘universal military training’ have been resisted and contested by parents and communities over decades. Notably, it is important to identify the links between militarized education, eugenics, racism, and nationalism (Berlowitz, 2000; Ordover, 2003; Selden, 1999). The military and a militarized education were historically prescribed as a cure for “the hollow-chested boy” (Bartlett & Lutz, 1998, pp. 122). Military education relies on the same fears at the core of the eugenics movement: that the “weakness” of the “white race,” and in particular its men and boys, was supported through the softening practices of public education. Today, without a national draft yet with wars with no end in sight, it is no surprise that the U.S. military is eager to foster proven as well as new recruitment strategies (Alvarez, 2007). As part of that campaign, using attractive lures—like free first-person shooter video games and often false promises of enormous cash signing bonuses or college scholarships—and with the benefit of seemingly unfettered access to places children congregate without the presence of parents or guardians, the military is refining its youth recruitment activities by targeting public education (Houppert, 2005; Medina, 2007). For example, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), a multiple-choice test used to determine eligibility for enlistment, is integrated and used in schools as a recruitment tool (Anderson, 2009). Anderson analyzed and named these and other specifics of how schools can be militarized: increased military recruitment in schools and military charter schools; the transfer of military personnel to schools through programs like Troops to Teachers; motivational programs taught and funded by the military like Planning for Life; outreach through “adventure vans” that provide students access to military games and simulations; the use of JROTC instructors to teach other subjects, often allowing students to receive extra credits for graduation. This list identifies a range of issues that reinforce a particular form of hegemonic masculinity and the recruitment of female students to this ideology (Anderson, 2009). In what follows we look closely at connections between military public schools and the charter school movement. 32 Galaviz et al. Militarization and the Charter School Movement Across the United States, school choice is posited as a public response to an ineffective and bureaucratic public education system. Through choice-based reforms, parents are repositioned as consumers who must select the best educational option for their child. In Chicago, these choices—perceived by some as “depoliticizing” a system that is highly politicized—include public and behind-the-scenes wrangling over who will control the schools, their funds, and their jobs. CPS is the second largest employer in the city and has an annual budget of over $5 billion, with choices that include local neighborhood schools, philosophic and thematic magnet and charter schools, and a range of selective admission academic preparatory schools, along with the newer military options (Chicago Business, 2010). Choices, the logic insists, ensure quality through competition—as each school competes for each child, teachers will finally be induced to teach better, and the quality of all schools will subsequently improve (Plank & Sykes, 2003). Key to this discursive and material turn is that what is public (money-sucking schools, slothful teachers) is cast as an artificial and wasteful monopoly, while what is private (quality through competition) is presented as a natural and economical good (Lubienski, 2001). Yet, school choice, including the push to offer military schools within choice systems, must be interpreted through larger economic shifts that have reframed the public sphere in the United States and subsequently altered the landscape for those not in the majority. These shifts are lived and felt at the local and personal levels as well as at the structural level, and militarization is neatly erased within these shifts. Charter schools, for example, are a key component of neoliberal, or privatizing, educational restructuring. Charters are free, publicly funded schools that do not have to comply with all state education regulations (usually calendar, curriculum, and teacher qualifications) in an attempt to address some of education’s most intransigent challenges. Theoretically, if charters do not produce results, generally measured through standardized test scores, the school’s charter or license to operate will be revoked. The public push for charter schools by powerful stakeholders, from Governor Chris Christie in New Jersey to entrepreneur Bill Gates, is frequently referred to by these advocates as the Charter School Movement (CSM) (see, for example, the State of the Charter School Movement [2005], a report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools). The CSM couches its push for charters in the rhetoric of free market choice and accountability (for teachers, parents, and students, but never governments). At first glance, accountability and choice are uncontroversial, and blaming teachers seems an easy way to shift attention from structural and systemic social problems. A problem with the CSM is that it, and the wider logic of free market choices, masks other motives and consequences, including privatization, gentrification, union busting, and the push for high-stakes testing.4 While the militarization of public education started before the charter movement, charterization has been able to ideologically and materially partner with militarization. Military academies are easily incorporated into the CSM because they are additional “choices” for parents in the new boutique of charter options. For example, in DeKalb, 4 It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully analyze the rhetoric and hidden agendas present in the CSM. Readers interested in further studying these areas of research and analysis could read The Charter School Dust-Up (Carnoy, Jacobsen, Mishel, & Rothstein, 2005). The Militarization and Privatization of Public Schools 33 Georgia, in 2009, public military schools were promoted (unsuccessfully) as a choice for parents: “Dale Davis, public information officer for the Dekalb County School System, told Atlanta Progressive News the school is ‘an addition’ for parents to consider. ‘It is a choice. It’s a parents’ choice to send their children’” (Springston, 2009). In Chicago, Colonel Rick Mills, Chief Area Officer of Area 26 (formerly known as the Military Area Office), has made similar claims: [T]he purpose of the military academy programs is to offer our cadets and parents an educational choice among many choices in Chicago public schools and to provide an educational experience that has a college prep curriculum, combined with a military curriculum. (Brackett, 2007) In these discussions, choice appears benevolent. However, looking at the “choices” available indicates that it is not unlikely some parents may feel pushed towards a military option. If one’s only choices are a neighborhood school in need of repair or a new military academy, parents will often choose the more resourced school. For example, Brian Galaviz (first author) was a science teacher for six years in Senn High School, which now shares space with Rickover Naval Academy (RNA). Once RNA was established inside of Senn, previously non-functional science labs were revamped and remodeled, while some teachers, including Galaviz, taught with no science lab at all. This choice can be agonizing for parents, as Marivel Igartua, mother of a cadet inside the Naval Academy, expressed to Galaviz (M. Igartua, personal communication, November 15, 2008). She did not want to have to send her daughter to RNA, but felt pushed into that decision because her area school was in such bad shape. The unequal allocation of resources, in which military academies are favored over older community schools, is a form of economic coercion, forcing parents and students to make the rational choice of the adequately funded alternative over an obviously neglected school. Militarization promoters in Chicago make the additional claim that military academies are not simply a choice for parents, but that they are a popular choice and, specifically, that parents demand these academies. Mills said, “These kinds of programs would not be in schools if there weren’t kids who wanted it, parents who supported it and administrators who facilitated it” (Wedekind, 2005, ¶4). Arne Duncan, while CEO of CPS, stated, “We have to think outside the box, and what existed before simply did not work for far too many students[; t]hese schools are popular and have waiting lists, so that tells me parents want more of them” (Banchero & Sadovi, 2007, ¶4). These claims are not substantiated and to our knowledge CPS has never released these waiting lists, despite repeated requests that they do so. Furthermore, examining enrollment in the military academies can shine light on this claim. For example, RNA’s goal for student enrollment for the 2009-2010 academic year was 600 students. At the beginning of the year in 2009, they had 420 students. They finished the year with 376 students (Roa, 2009). These numbers contradict the claims made by Mills and Duncan. Military academies are framed to be one option for parents to consider, and in fact, a very popular option. Yet, more research is needed to determine why parents and guardians choose to send their children to these schools. This push for “choice” also functions to distract communities from working together in order to challenge structural funding inequities and recognize or act on state 34 Galaviz et al. abandonment. Illinois, like many states, continues to have grotesque K-12 funding inequities that offer browner and blacker communities significantly fewer resources (Kozol, 2006; Lowenstein, Loury, & Hendrickson, 2008). Choice privatizes educational decision-making and frames the issues at stake as private, not public. Classification as private absolves the community and government from assuming responsibility for the inequities. Rather than the state needing to reallocate public resources, the educational choice movement reframes the public sphere through choice and personal responsibility. This is a hallmark of contemporary neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005)—a framework aimed at opening up all parts of society to the free market, which is notable for qualities such as “competition, inequality, market ‘discipline,’ public austerity, and ‘law and order’” (Duggan, 2003, p. x). Within this framework military schools are presented as the best choice for youth in need of discipline-building and safety, neatly eliding the reality that inequitable structures and state abandonment produce and shape this artificial crisis of scarcity—of resources, safety, and rich curriculum—within the public schools. Notably, military schools and JRTOC programs most frequently are offered to and accepted by low-income communities of color—the communities that have been and are still offered the least schooling resources (Lipman, 2004). Transportation, resources, and high-stakes entrance exams remove certain options, for example college preparatory and arts-rich schools, from the pool of choices for members of these communities. On the surface, the options offered youth and parents appear race and class neutral: College preparatory or military program? You make the choice. But military programs are not offered and do not flourish in wealthy and white communities, as noted at the start of this article. Yet the logic of choice functions to mask these differences, allowing the seemingly race and class neutral terms of choice and discipline to be advanced by key policymakers, and then used to promote military schools. For example, in Chicago, Mayor Daley and others argue for the need for military schools by tapping into racialized fears when they describe the needs of some youth, but not all, for discipline and order. A sixteen-year-old Latina student at the naval academy in Chicago seems to respond to these social perceptions, when she says, “When people see that we went to a military school, they know we’re obedient, we follow directions, we’re disciplined” (Banchero & Sadovi, 2007, p. 16). This logic is neither required nor ventriloquated by wealthier and whiter communities. The charterization of public schools and the outsourcing of public education and discipline to the military trade on similar practices of constructing particular identities as dangerous or wasteful recipients of public resources. For example, charters often hire using only yearly contracts, while teachers employed by traditional schools are protected by unions, which are increasingly presented as inflexible and costly. Also reproducing myths and stereotypes, military-themed schools are portrayed as essential because urban youth of color are undisciplined, unruly, even dangerous, and need to be controlled (Lipman, 2003; Montefinise, 2007; Quinn, 2007). Using scapegoats to reshape the public sphere is an old tactic in the United States. From welfare to public education, demonizing recipients is one clear way to call into question the legitimacy of a public institution or program and to assert the importance of market-driven regulation and oversight (Duggan, 2003; Quadagno, 1994). These cultural imaginings—of who cannot be trusted, needs to be controlled and/or is unworthy of public dollars—are gendered, sexualized, racialized, The Militarization and Privatization of Public Schools 35 and deeply embedded in U.S. narratives (Hancock, 2004; Winant, 2004). With the repetition of these stereotypes, lies eventually become public truths, or the kind of “unitary and coherent” good sense that demands forms and institutions (Gramsci, 1971, p. 328). For example, popular stereotypical tropes include the beliefs that urban kids need military style discipline and unions are for lazy workers, thus legitimating particular institutional and state practices. Finally, the militarization of public schools cannot be separated from larger economic and cultural practices that shape our lives and political processes. From toys to entertainment and from fashion to video games, militarization is naturalized throughout our popular cultural contexts. Militarization is both our response to conflict and how we live, as Eisenhower identified in 1961, when he warned against a military industrial complex, or permanent war economy. Gilmore (2007) reminds us that Eisenhower, in coining the term military industrial complex, aimed to highlight the problem of the widespread dominance of the military in economic, cultural, and political spheres: [Eisenhower] warned that the wide scale and intricate connections between the military and the warfare industry would determine the course of economic development and political decision making for the country, to the detriment of all other sectors and ideas. (p. 42) One of these “other sectors” is our system of public education, which is increasingly saturated by militarism. Impact JROTC and military academies work as military recruitment tools subsidized by taxpayers.5 The Chicago Public Schools’ total expenditures on JROTC programs for the school year 2007-08 were $12,885,966.60. Of this amount CPS received $3,810,924.45 from the Department of Defense (DOD), leaving Chicago taxpayers an invoice of $9,075,042.15. JROTC instructors are paid substantially more than certified public school teachers; the 2009-10 average salary for a JROTC instructor was $75,400.37, compared to a 2009-10 average of $69,000 for CPS teachers (Chicago Public Schools, no date). In addition to pay inequalities, JROTC instructors also receive special treatment regarding class size. CPS schools are mandated to subsidize at least two JROTC instructors, no matter how many students they have enrolled in the program. Legally, JROTC programs must have a minimum enrollment of 100 students or 10% of the student population—whichever is lower. However, this law is not always enforced. For example, there are 11 JROTC programs in CPS that do not meet this threshold; of those 11 schools, six of them have three JROTC instructors. That means three instructors teach fewer than the required 100 students. This culture of preferential treatment and additional resources results in JROTC classes that look and feel, to students and parents, more appealing and safer than the resource-starved neighborhood schools and classrooms. The higher teacher-to-student ratio in JROTC classes does allow students to receive more 5 Unless otherwise stated, all data included in this section was gained from CPS through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made to CPS by Galaviz, Quinn, and Palafox, between July 2010 and January 2011. For access to these documents, readers may contact Jesus Palafox at jpalafox@afsc.org. 36 Galaviz et al. individual attention, which further disadvantages regular classroom teachers and their students. As previously noted in this article, the JROTC is included in the Pentagon’s budget under recruitment and is understood as a recruitment tool. More broadly than direct recruitment, these programs cultivate and naturalize a military, rather than civilian, culture. Young people are introduced to the military hierarchy and way of life—a military culture that is encompassing. They are offered sharply tailored formal uniforms and comfortable casual uniforms; their goals are to achieve ranks, Private or Corporal; and students in these programs are called names that signal status and value—cadet and soldier. Each of these aspects is aimed at cultivating a militarized mind, which may be the best explanation for why, as one example, “40% of all NJROTC [Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps] graduates enter military service” (Goodman, 2002). This statistic is especially telling considering that less than 1% of the population has served in the military at any given moment since 1975 (Segal & Segal, 2004, ¶5). Finally, field trips and guest speakers—the evidence of students’ possible futures—at these schools center military life to the potential exclusion of other pathways; the cadets in Rickover Naval Academy (RNA) have taken a school-sponsored field trip to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, and two years ago RNA hosted Admiral Michael Mullen, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mullen told the cadets that the "Navy was a great career choice" (Roa, 2009, ¶10). While JROTC promotes enlistment as a way to access college funding, military service can be described as a false pathway to college and other postsecondary benefits. For example, the many conditions which must be met to receive and utilize the promised postsecondary benefits means they are not truly guaranteed, and in the past, this has resulted in many veterans finding out too late that they were not going to receive the college financial aid they expected. Under the pre-9/11 GI Bill, 43% of military personnel have received their GI benefits and the average net payout to veterans is less than $2,200, far less than the cost of most postsecondary education possibilities (Diener & Munro, 2005). More research is needed to understand similar trends with the new GI Bill. In addition to the effacement of inequities between militarized and traditional public schools, erasure of non-military futures, and misrepresentation of actual military college benefits, the military’s lengthy track record of gender and sexual violence is also avoided in JROTC programs or policy-level discussions about the military and public schools. In the last twenty years alone, some of the higher profile incidents have included the 1996 admission that sergeants were regularly raping female trainees at the Aberdeen Proving Ground; the testimonials of Beth Davis and other women who were sexually assaulted at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado throughout the 1990s; the disclosures of many women in uniform and private contractors in Iraq that they have been raped, are afraid to use the bathroom at night for fear of sexual assault by their co-workers, and more (Chen, 2008; Enloe, 2000; Harman, 2008; Houppert, 2008). Between 2004 and 2006, reports of sexual assault by the Department of Defense increased 73%; in 2007, 2,688 sexual assaults were reported to the DOD (Harman, 2008, ¶4). Yet relatively few of these are referred for courts-martial (the military version of criminal prosecution)—in 2007, only about 12% of sexual assaults were referred to courts-martial, according to DOD statistics. In California, by comparison, 44% of reported rapes result in arrests, and The Militarization and Privatization of Public Schools 37 of those arrested, 64% were prosecuted (Harman, 2008, ¶7). The military, despite its history as an affirmative action employer and one of the first government branches to desegregate, continues to deny and minimize this epidemic of gender and gendered violence. Serving in the military is also hazardous in other ways. Studies have documented the rates of suicide, post-traumatic stress,6 and other mental health difficulties. Recent research demonstrates that these negative outcomes disproportionately target young people: Although adults in the active military service are reported to experience increased mental health risk, including stress, substance abuse, and suicide, the youngest soldiers consistently show the worst health effects, suggesting military service is associated with disproportionately poor health for this population. A study of mental disorders in the U.S. military found the highest rates of all disorders, including alcohol abuse, anxiety syndromes, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder, among the youngest cohort, those aged 17 through 24 years. Another study found that younger soldiers had 30% to 60% more substance abuse disorders than did older soldiers, and younger women in particular had the highest incidence of attempted suicide or self-inflicted injuries. The youngest group of veterans also recently experienced a 26% increase in suicides from 2005 to 2007. (Hagopian & Barker, 2011, p. e6) This collateral damage has been increasingly visible in recent years with mainstream news sources covering the high rates of post-traumatic stress and veterans’ uneven access to mental health services, yet seems to fall out of policy-shaping discussions about the relationship of the DOD to our system of public education (Goode, 2009; Lopez, 2010). Finally, just as fear and falsehoods—of danger, gangs, and anarchic urban homes and communities—has been used to sell military schools, military schools and programs use sexuality and gender stereotypes, specifically queers and girls, as the contrasts against which youth soldiers will be created. For example, discipline in militarized schools and programs such as JROTC is constructed through the development of a rigid masculinity that is both misogynist and homophobic. “Almost every day of my junior year,” one former JROTC cadet officer candidate reported about his experience with the program in high school, “I had to wear a dress, and I was regularly called ‘stupid,’ ‘maggot,’ ‘faggot’—all the happy, daily indignities that one had to suffer for the sake of ‘military discipline’” (Wily Filipino, 2003). In Chicago, our 2007 review of all military high schools, which across the board state that they conform to the city’s anti-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation, revealed that none had programs to actively support their queer students, such as the Gay-Straight Alliances that are common in many other Chicago schools. 6 Post-traumatic stress and not Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is used because the term disorder puts the focus of the problem on the individual as opposed to considering the logical response of stress in wartime (Ivey & Ivey, 1998). To view artwork critical of the term PTSD created by a veteran, the reader is also encouraged to visit the website http://www.ivaw.org/sites/default/files/documents/public/PTSDshadow.pdf. 38 Galaviz et al. Pathways Out of the Mess We Are In We have attempted here to demonstrate that in addition to using history to remind parents, youth, and politicians of the relationships between the military, gendered forms of violence, education, and eugenics, definitions and practices of discipline in education need to be expanded. In particular, we concur with a still-resonant 1916 essay in the New York Times, in which a school director, Dr. James Mackenzie argued, “If American boys lack discipline, by all means, let us supply it, but not through a training whose avowed aim is human slaughter” (Mackenzie, 1916). However, it is important to note that many school-based routes to discipline, or practices toward expertise, offered to the children of the most privileged in society—art education (dance, music instruction, theater and performance, visual arts), sports and physical education, after-school activities and clubs from chess and debate to radio journalism, and much more—are not available equally to all youth. In Chicago, for example, 20% of principals report that their public schools offer no arts programming at all, with children in low-income communities of color less likely to have school arts than students in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods (Illinois Arts Alliance, 2005, pp. 3, 15). The educational policymakers in Chicago could make decisions that support civilian forms of youth development, from sports to the visual arts and music, for all children. Youth and their parents support military programs because they view these initiatives as opportunities to provide discipline, safety, academic, and leadership opportunities. These same opportunities can be delivered through arts, sports, drama, martial arts, and music— programs that have been largely cut from urban schools. Only one restrictive enrollment school in Chicago has a military program, Jones College Preparatory High School, and this program does not meet JROTC enrollment requirements. For example, what if, instead of expanding military public schools, Chicago and the rest of the nation were to follow the lead of San Francisco’s Board of Education, which in 2006 voted to eliminate JROTC programs from its schools through a several-year phaseout? “It’s basically a branding program, or a recruiting program for the military,” said one school board member before the vote (Tucker, 2006, ¶19). Acknowledging that JROTC offered some desirable things to students and families, the San Francisco board decided to develop and pilot new non-military-based programs to address those interests. San Francisco’s board subsequently voted that its public schools could not offer physical education credit for JROTC programs (Asimov, 2008). This is a strategy with promise; the San Francisco board did not just ask youth to accept the loss of a valued program but rather invited these students to tell them what they loved about JROTC and offered some good civilian alternatives. Even though the planned phase-out of JROTC never occurred—the decision was delayed and then ultimately reversed—this intervention still offers a model for organizers (Tucker, 2009). Increased and equally distributed resources are clearly necessary but not sufficient to address the deeper problems we have indicated throughout this article and to unpack the ongoing relationships between charterization and militarization. We have argued here that military public schools should not be viewed simply as a choice among many in education, but rather, as a racialized, heteronormative, and gendered direction with negative consequences for all students and teachers and for the possibility of a truly democratic civil society. Latin@s, and other vulnerable students including queers, non- The Militarization and Privatization of Public Schools 39 citizens, African-Americans and/or new immigrants are most at risk with contemporary neoliberal educational shifts. We urge our colleagues in education to push back on the privatization and the embedded militarization of schools and advocate for a human and children’s rights frameworks as a guide, and to center our histories of organizing for a rich and fully public education for all (see Appendix 1). References Advocates for Yale. (2011). Advocates for Yale. Retrieved from http://www.yalerotc.org/ Alvarez, L. (2006, February 9). 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Rich kids go to college, poor ones to Baghdad. New Statesman,133(4717), 14. Young America Foundation v. Gates. (2009). Retrieved from http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-dc-circuit/1385643.html Appendix 1 Below, we offer a list of resources that we use and distribute that offer tools for educators, youth and parents who are committed to working against the militarization of schools, and understand that organizing requires linking to community based groups and also offering youth and parents clear, non-militarized alternatives. Organizations: American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) http://afsc.org/program/youth-and-militarism-program The Coalition for Alternatives to Militarism in our Schools (CAMS) http://www.militaryfreeschools.org Project YANO http://www.projectyano.org/ The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) http://nnomy.org/ War Resisters League http://www.warresisters.org/counterrecruitment Youth Activist-Youth Allies (YAYA) Network http://www.yayanetwork.org/ Resources For Students: Actions students can take to counter military recruitment in the school and in the community http://www.projectyano.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=47&Ite mid=80 High School Student Rights http://www.comdsd.org/pdf/hs_1.pdf 44 Galaviz et al. Military Sexual Assault – good handout/compact fact-card http://tinyurl.com/msassault Sgt. Abe the Honest Recruiter – Comic book style examination of dangerous clauses in the enlistment agreement. http://quakerhouse.org/documents/enlist.html Parents: FAQs About Opt-Out, and Recruitment Access http://www.militaryfreeschools.org/FAQ-military.html “Help Your Peace-Loving Child Avoid the Draft” by Helen James, Mothering Magazine http://mothering.com/parenting/help-your-peace-loving-child-avoid-the-draft Military Recruitment in High Schools http://www.tamewisconsin.org/Downloads/Important_Questions_parents.pdf “Recruiting Children into the US Military,” by Gary Evans, MD Very thorough analysis. One section deals with frontal lobe development in teens and how it relates to their ability to make prudent decisions, which some counter-recruitment groups use. http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/recruiting-children.htm For Teachers/Counselors: It’s My Life: A guide to alternative after high school http://tools.afsc.org/itsmylife/ Alternatives by State: Resource documents about alternative to military listed by state. A job and job-training guide intended to provide alternative to military service for youth in the United States and its territories that may be considering a career in the United States Armed forces. http://nnomy.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=317&Itemid =735&lang=en Ya Ya Network Resources http://www.yayanetwork.org/alternatives Curriculum Materials for Teachers: Adbusters media literacy kit, good to use with recruitment ads. http://www.adbusters.org/cultureshop/mediakit AFSC C-R Training Manual, contains a 45-minute lesson plan. youthmil@afsc.org Bay-Peace: Better Alternatives for Youth has samples of the curriculum they use for workshops and classroom presentations, as well as links to useful videos, pamphlets and other resources, on their website: http://baypeace.org/resources-curriculum.html Camouflaged: Investigating how the U.S. military effects you and your community http://www.nycore.org/curricula/ The Militarization and Privatization of Public Schools 45 “Help Your Peace-Loving Child Avoid the Draft” by Helen James, Mothering Magazine. Can be given to art/English/history teachers to create assignments for a potential conscientious objector file. Rethinking Schools magazine offers practical ways to teach controversial subjects. http://www.rethinkingschools.org Syracuse Cultural Workers sell a yearly Peace Calendar that is full of potential lesson plans for teachers. http://syracuseculturalworkers.com/calendar-2009-peace-calendar Immigrants’ Issues: Immigrants & Military Recruitment http://tinyurl.com/immand Latin@s & the Military http://tinyurl.com/latmil Thinking of Joining the Military to Gain U.S. Citizenship http://www.projectyano.org/pdf/CITIZENSHIP_AND_ENLISTMENT_SpanEnglish.pdf Veterans’ Groups: Courage to Resist – http://www.couragetoresist.org/ GI Rights Hotline 877‐447‐4487: http://www.girightshotline.org/ Iraq Veterans Against the War – http://ivaw.org/ Veterans For Peace – http://www.veteransforpeace.org/ Videos: Before you enlist: The real deal on joining the military (also in Spanish) http://afsc.org/video/you-enlist-2011 Is a rational counterpoint to the seductive and often deceptive recruiting practices of the U.S. military. It gives young people and their families the life-altering consequences of joining the military – especially in wartime. The Ground Truth – 77 minutes, young veterans discuss how boot camp training and combat experience has profoundly changed them. www.thegroundtruth.net Soldiers Speak Out – 27 minutes of young soldiers who oppose war-speaking, lots of good extras. http://www.empowermentproject.org/sso.html Yo Soy el Army http://afsc.org/video/yo-soy-el-army-americas-new-military-caste This short video looks at the militarization of the immigration debate. Alongside the Spanish-language media campaigns, the false promises and stringent laws that have even resulted in deportation of non-citizen veterans, and the DREAM Act. Yahoo Counter-Recruitment Chat Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/counter-recruitment/