The United States military is facing resistance against recruitment
drives on high school campuses. The controversy centers on withheld
federal funding for high school administrators who don’t divulge
student names and contact information to the Armed Forces. The military
wants the same level of access to students that is given to college
athletic departments and corporate recruiters. Like its corporate
and athletic competitors, the military is looking to recruit the
best and the brightest in exchange for scholarship money to help
pay for college.
Military service is a career unlike any other, yet is also a viable
long-term choice just like any other. So why the uproar? I’ve heard
the so-called “Big Brother” argument against putting the names of
students in the hands of military recruiters, but with all due respect
to the paranoid masses, is that so much worse than having your personal
information on file with a marketing firm so they can try to sell
you something over the phone on a Sunday morning? Or with a college,
for that matter? Or with any number of proponents of any number
of career options? A career of military service gets a bad rap because
of the negative mythology created by the anti-military Left.
Like many jobs and careers, the military is becoming more specialized.
Gone are the days when quantity was more important than quality.
Today’s military is swift and mobile, specialized and trained to
use cutting-edge technology. There is a heavy reliance on Special
Ops units, which are composed of men and women who are fluent in
several languages and highly skilled with the equipment they use.
Perhaps it is wrong for them to recruit from our nation’s high
schools, where the children who graduate can barely read or speak
in coherent sentences. During a humorous exchange that exemplifies
this point, Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked by the media
if he was concerned about support for war with Iraq given that only
an estimated 13% of Americans could find the country on a map, to
which he replied, “Fortunately, they’re all Marines.”
I think the Left has it backward. It’s not the military that is
doing the disservice to the high school kids, but perhaps the institution
of education itself.
