By Seth Kershner, Scott Harding, and Charles Howlett
(University of Georgia Press, 2022)
204 pp.
español -
Winter 2023 - 2024 / Sylvia McGauley / Rethinking Schools - Teenagers mount the army tank, shyly at first and then more boldly when they realize no one is stopping them. Soon more than half a dozen kids vie for space. Someone climbs to the top, takes the helm, and begins steering the turret and pointing the tank’s main gun, aiming it. A girl takes over, her red hair flying, and then someone else. Nearby students climb into a Humvee from the Iraq War. From the back of a jeep, a youngish military vet pulls out fatigues, a flak jacket, and helmet, which he quietly hands to a gangly teenage boy who slowly dons the uniform and stands up tall. Moments later, the same vet emerges with a heavy shoulder mounted grenade launcher that he passes to a small boy who smiles broadly. The vet assists him in balancing and pointing the big gun. Dozens of students gather round, and they pass the weapon one to another. Each takes a turn aiming at other kids. Then I see Alex, my student who an hour before had exploded with rage at an education system that has failed him and a family that cannot support him. He aims the weighty gun at me and says “Pow.”
It was “Living History Day” at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, a working-class suburb of Portland, Oregon, in November 2016. At that annual event, our administration and the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) hijacked our schedule and curriculum so that our 2,800 students could hear presentations by more than 300 military veterans. This embrace of militarism is not unique to Reynolds High School. Schools throughout the country organize Veterans Day programs such as Reynolds’ Living History Day.
Seth Kershner, Scott Harding, and Charles Howlett in their thoughtful, well-researched book, Breaking the War Habit: The Debate over Militarism in American Education, demonstrate how the military presence in schools today has become a pervasive normalized element in the educational landscape. According to the authors, 3,500 public high schools, one in six, have a JROTC unit. In the Southeast, JROTC is present in 30 to 60 percent of public high schools. Even some middle schools boast military-based “leadership programs.” The Pentagon continues to promote the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) as a career aptitude exam, even though the military developed it as a recruitment tool. Military recruiters regularly visit high schools, targeting students primarily from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and students of color. In 2013, Congress instructed the secretary of defense to expand further and to report on “efforts to increase distribution of units in educationally and economically deprived areas.”
![[Some of the Boston 18 outside the J.W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse in Post Office Square, Boston, 15 February 1983, the day they surrendered to begin serving 30-day prison sentences for blocking the entrance to the Post Office in that same building where men were being registered for the draft on 5 January 1981 during the mass Selective Service registration week for men born in 1962. Photo by Ellen Shub from the Harvard University archives on the history of women in America .]](/images/Enroutetojail.jpg "[Some of the Boston 18 outside the J.W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse in Post Office Square, Boston, 15 February 1983, the day they surrendered to begin serving 30-day prison sentences for blocking the entrance to the Post Office in that same building where men were being registered for the draft on 5 January 1981 during the mass Selective Service registration week for men born in 1962. Photo by Ellen Shub from the Harvard University archives on the history of women in America .]")
November 23, 2023 / Nick Thompson / 
The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible. - Chris Hedges (From his article: 
.jpg "Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team members, some armed with assault rifles, preparing for an exercise")
David Swanson is the author of the new book, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, by Seven Stories Press and of the introduction to The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush by Dennis Kucinich. In addition to cofounding AfterDowningStreet.org, he is the Washington director of Democrats.com and sits on the boards of a number of progressive organizations in Washington, DC.
Jorge Mariscal is the grandson of Mexican immigrants and the son of a U.S. Marine who fought in World War II. He served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego.
Matt Guynn plays the dual role of program director and coordinator for congregational organizing for On Earth Peace, building peace and nonviolence leadership within the 1000+ congregations of the Church of the Brethren across the United States and Puerto Rico. He previously served a co-coordinator of training for Christian Peacemaker Teams, serving as an unarmed accompanier with political refugees in Chiapas, Mexico, and offering or supporting trainings in the US and Mexico.
Pat Elder was a co-founder of the 
