EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Fast Times at Recruitment High: Arne Duncan and the Militarization of Chicago's Schools
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan invited the Pentagon into Chicago's schools. Will he promote military schools nationwide?
When Arne Duncan stepped down as the head of the Chicago Public Schools to become the secretary of education in January, the school district he left behind had little to brag about. While Duncan served as its chief executive officer, CPS received mostly average or below average rankings in "The Nation's Report Card," a Department of Education assessment of the country's largest urban school districts. Its high school graduation rates lingered at around 50 percent, well short of the national average of 70 percent. And since 2004, CPS has failed as a district to meet No Child Left Behind's "adequate yearly progress" standards. In one area, however, Chicago's schools stood out: In large part to Duncan's efforts, they were—and remain—the most militarized in America.
Nearly 10,500 of Chicago's 203,000 sixth- through twelfth-graders participate in some kind of military program on campus, from joining the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps to enrolling in Pentagon-sponsored JROTC academies. As the district's CEO (and previously as deputy chief of staff to his predecessor, Paul Vallas), Duncan oversaw the controversial move to bring full-fledged military academies to the Windy City. The district's first, the Chicago Military Academy at Bronzeville, opened in 1999, and three more followed during Duncan's tenure. Today, Chicago has six military high schools run by a branch of the armed services. Six smaller military academies share buildings with existing high schools. Nearly three dozen JROTC programs exist in regular high schools, where students attend a daily JROTC class and wear uniforms to school one day a week. And at the middle school level, there is a JROTC program for sixth, seventh- and eighth-graders.
Chicago may have the nation's biggest JROTC program, but it is no longer an anomaly. Due to increases in federal funding for JROTC programs, the military's presence in public schools is greater than ever before. More than a dozen academies partly funded by the Department of Defense have sprouted up from Philadelphia to Oakland, and the National Defense Authorization Act of 2009 passed last year will increase the number of JROTC units nationwide from 3,400 to 3,700 by 2020, at a cost of $170 million. (Peacework magazine obtained a list of schools that have requested JROTC programs.) The Marines are in discussions to open new JROTC academies in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and New Orleans, helping to expand a program that critics contend has blurred the line between education and recruitment.
Now that Duncan is the nation's top education official, anti-recruitment activists worry that he will use his position to promote the expansion of JROTC and military academies as solutions for cash-strapped or underperforming school districts. "We see he has been promoting military academies," says Darlene Gramigna, program director for the American Friends Service Committee's Truth in Recruitment Program. "Around the country, that's what going on—Arne Duncan believes in these military academies."
To continue reading this article, please click here.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
13 Comments so far
Show Allodoco
Corporations love this setup: they get little soldiers trained at the public's expense, all the while undermining the traditional, more humane, liberal arts program that once guided our morality (what little of it we actually had).
I would ask this question of Mr. Duncan: what will be the demographic makeup of your new cadets? I'm bettin' there won't be many rich kids, kids of politicians in the ranks - wanna bet?
No need to bet.
At my high school that I graduated from just this year, the ROTC class was mostly Hispanic (but I come from the Southwest, so that's not saying much). The few white kids there were mostly people who wanted to join the Armed Forces upon graduation (most of them are poor or have parents who served).
However, I will note that recruiters do tend to target the kids who don't do well. They only visit the vocational classes (generally where kids who fail go for easy classes) and when I tell them I intend to go to college, they usually back off.
This guy is one of Obama's worst appointments and that's saying a lot. He should be selling refrigerators at Sears because he is a salesman--nothing more.
The fact he was ineffectual in Chicago is irrelevant because he knows how to play the game. One more member of the disingenuous liberal elite......
Obama's cabinet appointments look like they came off the military industrial media complex's wish list.
Obama will not need to reactivate the military draft...the loss of jobs resulting from his pandering to the financial industry and his militarized education system create a defacto draft.
In the discussion on health care the "people" continually compare Obama's suggestions to Hitlers Germany.
Interesting is it not that they do not have the same amount of bile for the Militarization of the nations Youth which was also a program implemented by the Nazis?
This type of thinking is also obvious when it comes to religion wherein "God fearing Christians" will pick and choose which parts of the bible they believe in so as to force their views upon others while at the same time ignoring what else is said in that same book if it contradicts their "belief system".
The same type of thinking also makes itself apparent when one is blind to the facts and numbers that may contradict a given position, while at the same time advancing ones own numbers as proof of the validity of ones own position.
It my opinion that this speaks to the way we all LEARN and how our brain becomes hard wired as we develop so as reach the state wherein ones opinions and beliefs are for the vast majority merely "indoctrination" and not representative of the facts.
None of us can be immune to this. Our childhood is our most critical period in our lives as "how and what" we learn will shape our personalities for the rest of our lives.
The Military (And Adolf Hitler) recognize(d) this.
[The Military (And Adolf Hitler) recognize(d) this.]
That attitude of militarizing the youth of the nation wasn't just limited to the Germans. The Empire of Japan (and Britain for that matter) also used early education to indoctronate the youth into believing in the glory of armed conquest. In the end (when finally faced with an opponant that's about to or just did defeat you) there is no glory in war. If you serve in a peacetime military, and never fire a shot in anger, you can say you've had a successful career in the forces. Otherwise, you're going to suffer even if you've never been physically wounded.
The worship of military service is a bit disturbing to people who've actually served in the militaries of other countries, I know that I wouldn't want my kid (if I ever had one) to serve in the navy like I did. Nor do I like the attitude of people who say stupid things like 'thank you for serving', I served for my own ends, not to get thanked by idiot armchair warriors.
The mix of fundamental religion and an advanced military, coupled with the intent to avoid another experience like Vietnam and the defence of the business interests of the elite of the usa is a recipee for unparalled disaster.
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be
done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the
loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate
all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to
shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing
under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
- Albert Einstein
This is only the tip of the iceberg!
"The Crusade for a Christian Military: Jesus Killed Mohammed" by Jeff Sharlet in HARPER'S May 2009 edition is a clarion call regarding the entrenchment of Christian fundamentalism in the USA military beginning during the Cold War that accelerated during the Vietnam era which has wrecked havoc on the very soul of our nation.
Fundamentalist [referred to as evangelical by Sharlet] Chaplains began to join the military in droves as they aligned themselves with the Industrial Military Complex in opposition with Catholics and mainline moderate Protestant denominations such as Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians who were of one voice speaking out against American terrorism in Vietnam and for following in the ways of the nonviolent Jesus.
“Starting in 1987, Protestant denominations were lumped together simply as “Protestant”; moreover, the Pentagon began accrediting hundreds of evangelical and Pentecostal “endorsing agencies,” allowing graduates of fundamentalist Bible colleges—which often train clergy to view those from other faiths as enemies of Christ—to fill up nearly the entire allotment for Protestant chaplains. Today, more than two thirds of the military’s 2,900 active-duty chaplains are affiliated with evangelical or Pentecostal denominations." [1]
"For decades, the military built a sense of solidarity out of a singular purpose, the Cold War struggle between free markets and state-planned economies—the shining city on a hill versus the evil empire…meshed neatly with ideologies [that connected] nationalism and fundamentalism…Communism…the dark alternative should we fail to unite. Fundamentalism thrived…a neat, black-and-white [theology and] a foreign policy. The end of the Cold War deprived militant evangelicals of that clarity [and] the emergence of “radical Islam” [became] the object of a new Cold War." [Ibid]
"Everyone but Christians understands that Jesus was nonviolent."-Gandhi
excerpted from: Failures of Intelligence has reaped the Militarization of Christianity
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1267&Itemid=219
the militarization of our schools- and our country- would be a nightmare under the best of circumstances. When kids are told they can do something good in "serving their country" and when that so called service is killing helpless women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq it becomes an unspeakable horror. Which is then compounded when they come back in caskets and are honored as heros.
story in today's paper about a kid who went to hear obomber speak, and was so impressed he rushed down to the recruiting office to sign up. now he's dead. Maybe the first to die for obomber's famed oratory. (all the others having died for bush's lies)
we really need to stop this stupid march of folly. The people who get killed fighting in u.s. "wars" are like victims of drunk drivers. Instead of marching around proclaiming their heroism, we should be organizing to stop the madness, and like mothers against drunk driving, punish the perpetrators.
public schools were basically a "corporate" idea to begin with during the industrial revolution. The companies needed people who could do basic math and read in order to set up and run the new machinery used in manufacturing. Auto manufacturers already dictate to trade schools what they want the auto-mechanic to know. Some recent graduates can't discribe how a carborator works, but will know how to set up the machine to diagnose the problem.
The military and police are just the newest arrivals. If we're to be a nation of warriors, we need to train the youth to "obey orders" and "work as a team".... NO INDIVIDUALISM, exercise, march and jump upon command. Don't ask questions, accept the cameras and microphones at each intersection. Parents attend march rehersals and show great pride at their child, marching, saluting, showing how to 'bring down' a criminal...
I am SO glad that I won't see the end of this movie.... The New World Order will need order.....
Welcome to Germany of the 1930's.......
Let's dumb down the American Poor, take away all hope of jobs, leave the military as the only way out of poverty, and use the new recruits as sacrifices for "Protecting The American Way Of Life"........
For decades, Chicago Schools were run as a political football......never to be solved. When you put 35 low income children in a classroom with a substitute teacher, the children lose more than a year of academic development.....Under Arne, that system continued!
These should have been the requirements for low income schools: 20 students maximum in a classroom, a certified teacher in the subject area they were to be teaching (If you were teaching reading, you needed 30 semester hours of teaching reading. If you were teaching math, you needed 30 semester hours of teaching math).........and, a school psychologist in each and every school to counsel children who suffer from traumas like: no father, brother killed, mother on drugs, gang warfare in the streets, and living in poverty.
"The Power Elite" have decided that they need a military force that can be sacrificed.....
If you folks were honest you would seek the graduation rates of ROTC members compared to the rest of the student body.
Who are the REAL fascists? (Hint: not the ROTC).
And the lie about "if I told them I was going to college, they backed off..." is B.S. The military will help with college tuition, so those are the students they want and try to attract.
Nothing but the truth.
OK, to be specific, I also told them that scholarships from the school + my parents covered it all; that's when they backed off. However, the tone of recruiter changes; when I mention I'm going to college, instead of trying to sell me something, the recruiter then tries to talk from the role of a "helper" (because he knows I'm not likely to enlist for Active Duty); when I mention I don't need him, the conversation ends.
As for graduation rates, here's just the abstract of an article, routed from the American Sociological Association, http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/4/0/2/1/p240211_index.html suggesting the program has no effect on graduation.
Big business needs big military to enforce big adventures for big profit.
That takes a steady supply of grunts. How do you make a grunt? Early indoctrination.
It worked on me. For a while.