Learning to Say No to the Military

[RBHam]

By Andrew Tonkovich
LA Times
May 28, 2005

excerpt:
My wife and I want our son to have every opportunity: comfortable shelter, healthy food, clean water, a safe neighborhood, books, quality day care and excellent public schooling. But we also want him to have full citizenship — intelligent, engaged citizenship that points him toward both conscientious objection to war and political engagement with his government.

Yet the government's colonizing of public schools, the moral irresponsibility of elected officials and the cowardice of too many administrators and teachers to question our government add up to systematic accommodation of efforts by military recruiters to exploit children's naivete, ignorance and impulse to self-sacrifice.

The No Child Left Behind law allows recruiters not only access to high schoolers on campus but requires schools to share their addresses and telephone numbers with the military. It puts the onus on parents to actively opt out of this otherwise unchallenged indoctrination scheme. The law presumes parents' willingness to allow recruiters to get at their children. It favors pro-military indoctrination absent opposing perspectives.

My wife and I will teach our son to recognize the military scam, to challenge the pitch, to be skeptical about flag waving, uniforms and ridiculous promises. He'll need to be armed against the recruiters, prepared to exercise intellectual selfdefense. It is a lot to ask of a child, but it may save his life, and the lives of others.

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[flordehinojos]

1. No Child Left Behind should be about TEACHING CHILDREN and EDUCATING them

...it should never be about a weapon used for purposes of enlarging the numbers of the military... but in this bush era of crap, crap, and more crap... one has to think that he knows nothing of noble projects, and certainly much less of giving something without exacting something back in return.

so, to the bush man a/k/a señor arbusto i say, crap. crap. and more crap be unto you.