[I submitted the following letter to the editor of the Indianapolis Star today]
As American military recruiting quotas fall further behind prescribed targets (per your front-page article), and as the war in Iraq drags on, I look for our U.S. government to ratchet-up pressure on local high school students. With the help of our elected officials in Washington, the military is already using a stealth recruiting technique to turn the heads of our youth. I discovered this six months ago.
My just-turned 17-year old son started receiving a lot of military recruiting mail. Concerned that Ben Davis High School was giving the military access to my son's personal records, I began to ask questions. I discovered that BDHS had, in fact, opened my son’s school records to the military. Further, this open records access is required of the schools. The directive is part of the "No Child Left Behind" Act of Congress. Short of working to get the law changed, or short of the school district refusing the funds, there is apparently nothing an individual can do to stop it.
The only immediate option available for concerned parents is to request an "opt out" before their child’s 17th birthday. This "opt out" option prevents military sources from acquiring a child’s school records--including their address. To my knowledge, our school district--the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township--did not inform parents about this option. Now several slick military recruiting mailers arrive at our home each week. I intercept most of them (I'm building quite a stack of unopened military recruiting mailers--our tax dollars at work!), but not all. I do not know if it is now possible to stop the mailings.
"Poverty draft" describes what the military is engaged in--preying on kids with little money and few options after high school. Most of the slick recruiting mailers don't talk about going to war, just about opportunities to serve your community and country, get job skills, and money for education. They primarily target our neighbors with lower incomes. It is no accident that the median household income of the families of the majority of military recruits is considerably below the national average.
I don’t know what local educators think of this tactic imbedded in the “No Child Left Behind” Act. But it seems to me, of all professionals and institutions, educators should be ashamed of themselves if they idly go along with such policies. Are school administrators and boards of educations just cash-strapped hand-wringers, or people who act with integrity for the best possible futures for the students whom they say they are there to serve?
Military recruiting is nasty business. But its nastiness has been intensified and brought to a high school campus near you. Our federal government is sinking an unprecedented amount of tax dollars into military recruiting. More and more, our neighborhood 15-year olds see impressive, high-tech weaponry displayed on campus. They experience heavy-handed tactics by military recruiters at the local school. While we work peaceably each day, our nation's military--with the permission of the Congress and direction of the President we elected--is doing its dead-level best to get our in-school children to believe that the best option for their future--and the future of the nation--is a military one. Are you satisfied with this? I'm not.
Recently, I learned of an organization with an Internet site that let me register my protest against using the "No Child Left Behind" education act to open school records to military recruiters. It also helped me send a letter to our district's school superintendent requesting that the school withhold my children's names and personal information from military sources seeking to recruit them. The organization is Working Assets, the project is called "Leave My Child Alone," and the website is http://www.leavemychildalone.org/.
