No JROTC Left Behind: Are military schools recruitment pools?

[marmar]

from In These Times:



No JROTC Left Behind
Are military schools recruitment pools?
By Allen McDuffee



Matthew Hartman had every intention of enlisting in the Army directly after his graduation in two years. But it was Col. Sterling Stokes and his military staff who convinced Hartman that college, not the battlefield, was a better option. At least for now.

“They persuaded me that there is always time to serve my country and that maybe I would be able to serve even better if I went to college first,” Hartman, 16, says.

The Richmond, Va., native is a junior at the Franklin Military Academy in Richmond, where Stokes is principal. He earned the highest score on the 2008 National Chemistry Olympiad in his school, and is the type of student college admissions counselors would like to see among their applicants.

But for Cadet Hartman, the military seemed like a natural progression.

Academies like Franklin Military are part of the country’s rapidly expanding Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) program. The academies are exclusively JROTC and the Department of Defense helps fund them — part of a growing trend to introduce military schools into the public school system in primarily poor urban areas where many school systems are struggling, if not failing.

These academies aren’t boot camps for delinquents. There is no compulsory military service upon graduation. And they’re not the realization of the Bush administration’s machinations. In fact, administrators insist the academies are college prep schools. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3855/no_jrotc_left_behind/

[billyoc]

1. The officer corps is starved for new people, they can always clean out the jails for privates.