When the federal government called it the No Child Left Behind Act, we didn't know they meant they didn't want to leave any of our children behind when they marched into Baghdad.

A little-known provision of President Bush's education reform act turns every high school into a military recruiting station. Under the act, high schools are required to provide military recruiters with students' names, addresses and telephone numbers.

You have to wonder what that could possibly have to do with improving the education of students. Can you kids spell "cannon fodder"?

Parents who don't want to commit their own children to Bush's personal war against Saddam Hussein to avenge his father need to contact their school districts to ask that personal information on their children be withheld from the military.

No one needs to feel unpatriotic in making such a request. After all, President Bush himself opted out of joining those who risked their lives in Vietnam by using his father's political connections to sit out the war as a member of the Texas National Guard.

The military claims all it is getting is the same access to personal information about high school students that is often made available to colleges and universities.

That is one way to look at waging war around the world, just another educational experience. During Vietnam, there used to be a poster exhorting young men to join the military to visit exotic parts of the world, meet interesting people of other cultures and kill them.

Think of the military moving directly into our high schools as a new kind of Project Head Start. Many people may not realize it, but even though there is no longer a military draft in this country, every male is still required by law to register with the Selective Service when he turns 18.

The federal government repeatedly has said it has absolutely no plans to reinstitute the draft. It just wants to know exactly how to find every young man in the country that it is not going to draft.

Now, the government appears to be looking for a little back-up. Since it already knows where to find all the 18-year-olds who aren't going to be drafted, it also would like to have as many names and addresses as possible of all those younger than 18 so the government can be sure not to draft them as well.

Even though this little gimmick is included in an education reform act, it's not exactly academic. President Bush already has one war going on against terrorism. He's itching to start another one against Iraq. And the president still has that list in his drawer of other countries on his "axis of evil," Iran and North Korea, that are just asking for a pre-emptive strike.

That doesn't even include the totally unpredictable consequences in the Mideast of any war with Iraq. Every president in modern memory has struggled mightily to avoid war in the Mideast. This president wants to start one.

Given the possibility of U.S. involvement in countless wars without end around the world, perhaps we should be grateful military recruiting hasn't moved down to our elementary and pre-schools as well.

There may be one advantage to putting all high school students on a list of potential recruits for the military. There's nothing like painting a target on our own children to remind people what war is about.

The administration has been talking for months about going to war without ever mentioning that it means killing people, including our own sons and daughters.

Because the administration doesn't talk about that part, nobody else talks about it either. The media don't. Most community leaders don't. The rare exception was Richard Abdoo, CEO of Wisconsin Energy, who was nearly run out of town on a rail for signing an anti-war statement of conscience.

The most amazing part is that college campuses, even politically active campuses such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, also have been relatively quiet. That can only mean most students feel all these wars are going to be fought by somebody else.

The assumption is there are plenty of poor people - Southern working class whites and urban African-Americans and Latinos - who don't have anything better to do than to die for the politicians who start wars.

Perhaps there may be some real value in high schools sending a note home to parents:

"This is to inform you that the name and address of your son Scott has been forwarded to the military as a potential soldier whose life may have to be sacrificed to prove the United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth and other countries should do whatever we say."

Actually, put that way, it almost sounds like something that really should be a part of education in this country.

Joel McNally is a Milwaukee-based writer.

Copyright 2002 The Capital Times

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