Few people know about Section
9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act, but it can be a killer.
Known as the Military Recruitment Clause, it requires
public schools to give information about students to military
recruiters. Schools, of course, are eager to perform this service
to the armed forces since failure to comply carries the risk of
losing federal aid.
Inviting the military into public
schools by itself might not be a problem, but recruiters are
increasingly faced with stepped-up needs for fighters in Iraq and
declining enlistment at home. This causes some recruiters to use
high-pressure sales pitches on teenagers to fulfill their quotas.
As the New York Times put it in an
editorial Jan. 4, “Military recruiters can blitz youngsters with
uninvited phone calls to their homes and on-campus pitches replete
with video war games.” Recruiters are also known to target the most
vulnerable young people, minorities and the rural and urban poor
who have fewer choices for jobs or higher education.
Though the law gives parents the right to opt-out of military
contact on behalf of their children, most parents don’t know
much about this or other details of No Child Left Behind, a law
designed to hold schools more accountable to taxpayers. Parents who
do not want their children solicited by the military must put their
opt-out request in writing to ensure that the high school does not
provide a student’s address and phone number.
When
a high school does give notice to parents about their right to
privacy from federal intrusion, that notice is likely to be buried
in obscure language. You might find it in an official student
handbook, coming somewhere after a dozen or so pages detailing
zero-tolerance policies for violence in school, parking regulations
or grading procedures.
Perhaps if parents knew about the
deceptions that are common in recruitment tactics, they would ask
the military not to contact their children. Consider the story of
New Jersey substitute teacher Sue Neiderer, just after her son was
killed in Iraq. She told reporters that the recruiters constantly
pursued her son, promising that he would not be on any front lines
and that the Army would pay off his debts. She recounted that when
her son, Seth, told the recruiter that his mother had questions
about signing up, the recruiter said: “Aren’t you man enough
to sign on the dotted line yourself? Who wears the pants in your
family?”
The U.S. military spends many millions of
dollars annually on recruitment, and much of that targets
high-achieving, low-income youth. Nearly 40 percent of the American
deaths in Iraq are people of color, such as Lori Piestewa, the Hopi
mother of three who became the first woman to die in combat in
Iraq.
She wanted to be the first in her family to go to
college, but not wanting to take advantage of others to make ends
meet, and having been a high-ranking ROTC student in high school,
she signed on the dotted line when asked to do so. Although ROTC
stands for “Reserve Officer Training Corps,” she, like most ROTC
students, went to a country where the front lines are everywhere
— even in a mess tent — and where she died in action.
Besides not sufficiently informing parents about their
right to sign a form that would prevent recruiters from calling on
students at home, public schools also tend to violate Section
9528’s requirement for giving students equal access to
alternatives to military service.
Section 9528 is a sad
indication of what is happening in our schools under the guise of
education, but on paper, at least, it gives parents and students
certain rights regarding choice and informed consent. Now is the
time to emphasize those rights, and to make sure young people and
their parents know what military service means.
I served
this country as a Marine, and I know that military service is not
just about the promise of future education, the cool uniform, the
amazing technology of modern warfare, or even about loving
one’s country and wanting to help it. It is ultimately a
question of life and death. A young person fresh out of high school
needs to weigh carefully the crucial decision to go into battle.
Don Trent Jacobs, also known as Wahinkipe
Topa-Four Arrows, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
teaches at Northern Arizona University and the Fielding Graduate
Institute, two schools that graduate the highest number of American
Indian students in the country. He lives in Flagstaff,
Arizona.
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