On JROTC and Military Recruiting in High Schools

Portions of a letter shared with school administration

….  I am concerned about military recruiting of our students. I write as a teacher, I write as someone who signed up for the military at 17 myself, and as a result of that decision, I write as a veteran (US Navy 2004-2008).  

            As you know, military recruiting of our students takes place in the obvious scenarios when National Guard members or members of other military branches table in the cafeteria, for instance, or when they post their literature in the school.  The Junior ROTC program is also a method of military recruiting. Additionally, naturally, students are exposed to the military from recruiting stations in town and from media and relatives. What concerns me most is that many of our students who are considering the military (and this number is a higher percentage than the previous two schools I’ve taught at) and whom I have talked to do not fully comprehend what they would be signing up for.  

While I am involved in some (volunteer) anti-war advocacy work, I am not in the end a pacifist.  I believe we need a military for defensive purposes. But by definition, I believe, seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds are not best situated (psychologically, economically) to decide to join the military—a decision that can have life or death consequences.  This predicament is compounded because recruiters typically do not tell the whole picture. A recruiter’s pitch usually involves a simple “serve your country...get money for college...get job skills….” When asked about questions of war or fighting—and the possibility of killing, dying, or being maimed physically or mentally—recruiters are evasive.  That is not their fault alone—that is how they have been trained. And therefore, when I ask our students why they want to join the military and if they have considered the very real and serious possibilities and that the military’s mission is to prosecute war, they typically likewise do not have much of an answer. (I did not have an answer myself at 17, but thankfully I escaped unscathed).  I tell these students, “In the end, I will support your decision...I will even write you a letter of recommendation...but you have to do this hard thinking first...come back to me and let’s have a real conversation.”  This hard thinking is not taking place, from my cursory observations, and I believe it is our job as educators to encourage it.

Navy JROTC’s mission is “to instill in students in United States secondary educational institutions the values of citizenship, service to the United States, personal responsibility and a sense of accomplishment.”  I believe in the values of citizenship, service, responsibility, and accomplishment.  However, JROTC is necessarily a military endeavor, and I believe those values can be taught without the military aspect, even from another (non-military) government agency.  Furthermore, it is well understood that the JROTC program is a recruiting tool. That does not negate the good work that is and can be done teaching students leadership, drill, physical fitness, and other values and that does not negate the good work that our ROTC instructors do, with honor and integrity.  But, I believe that we need to name military recruiting as such and deal with it on its face.  Moreover, it is also well documented that JROTC programs are disproportionately housed in lower-income schools and districts, which are then disproportionately made up of students of color.  JROTC and other recruiters are looking to get young people enlisted.  Critics, myself included, describe this as part of the “economic draft.” At my own (predominantly white, suburban, prep) high school, we did not have JROTC or other recruiters tabling.  However, we did have representatives from West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy who would make official visits.  To the degree that they were recruiting, they were looking for top students to join the officer corps, not to enlist.  This dichotomy between officer and enlisted recruiting is part of the economic draft and further entrenches class divisions in the military and in society as a whole. One of our top seniors (who earned a 4 on the APUSH test by the way), a couple months ago, shared with me his desire to enlist in the navy after graduation. In a private conversation, I asked him where this desire came from (it was mostly for financial reasons).  I told him I would support his decision but that I wanted him to think about the (aforementioned) implications of enlisting. Additionally, I told him that, at the very least, if he still really wanted to join the military, someone of his academic ability should consider the officer route, where you go to college first: the academies (e.g. West Point), ROTC (i.e. not JROTC), or Officer Candidate School (post-grad). He did not know about these options.  If there must be military recruiting at our school, I believe our students should in all fairness know about officer options in addition to enlistment options.     

I believe all good ethics comes down to following one’s conscience.  Good people can serve in the military and survive, morally and physically, if they follow their consciences.  However, the forming of one’s conscience is what must precede the following of one’s conscience. Yes, conscience formation takes place primarily in the family and then in the community, in churches and civil society groups, but we as teachers have a duty to help form our students.  That is a major goal of our deep education, or paideia, as the ancient Greeks would call it.  I am not confident that this conscience formation is happening inside the JROTC curriculum.  History and social studies are fitting places for this conscience formation to take place—I have tried to do that here and there when discussing the Vietnam war draft, for instance—but the curriculum and pacing places constraints on the depths to which this can be done.  Likewise, I imagine English courses could provide space for this to occur as well.    

              I do not imagine that JROTC will disappear any time soon.  I understand that these are district-wide decisions and that in many cases schools receive funding from the Department of Defense.  Nor do I imagine that we will no longer have National Guard recruiters in the school. While both are indeed problematic in my opinion, I do not even wish them away at this juncture.  Our students, after weighing all options, should be able to make decisions for themselves, even if I personally do not think they’re the best decisions. However, to reiterate, I do not think our students—and students more broadly in the district, I presume—are receiving the whole picture when they are recruited explicitly or implicitly by the military....  

While I enjoy the day-to-day of working with young people and I love teaching my history curriculum, this ultimately is the reason I became a teacher: to teach critical thinking so that as citizens we can sift through the hyperbole and hysteria and prevent the next war of choice, to help form consciences so that we are not creating “yes-people” who will just follow orders (in the military or in any field), and therefore to build a more peaceful world….