The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

Todd Finley -

My town borders a military base. Almost all my students have a father or brother or sister serving. In meeting these soldiers, I find they have the dignity of redwoods. To question the premise of our foreign engagements would be like shredding their bark. Yet, teaching war must go beyond the "good-evil" rhetoric of politicians and spin doctors and focus instead on the nuances: How and why do we get into wars? Is war working as a means to resolve our conflicts?

The Danger of Asking Hard Questions

In a neighboring school district, a high school principal refused to allow students to dramatize the United States' military presence in Iraq. The topic, he asserted, was "too sensitive." Authorized classroom conversations and texts related to war tend to be removed by history or geography. The Diary of Anne Frank meets both criteria. Additionally, almost every passage is chillingly intimate, thus making it a popular, albeit still challenged, curricular choice.

Awkward classroom silences and rolled eyes accompany teachers who espouse opinions about war profiteering. The only safe places to discuss, write about, or dramatize war are where everyone agrees with everyone else, or where the instructor has created a climate of trust. Teachers who introduce discussions of contemporary military engagements by the United States risk community blowback. Anti-war talk can be perceived as unpatriotic. Talk radio still pillories Jane Fonda, not for ruining a generation of female knees with her videos on high impact aerobics, but for her anti-war views. The threat is real for teachers who risk asking questions.

Peaceful Vocations -

On April 19, 2013, Diane Wood, Peaceful Vocations member and representative of the Texas Coalition to Protect Student Privacy member, presented to the Texas State Board in Austin, TX the request that “Option 8” be the choice for all Texas schools when administering the ASVAB.

The Texas state organization, the Texas Coalition to Support Student Privacy, was initiated by Peaceful Vocations and formed in 2012.  The purpose was to address the abysmal numbers of Texas students to whom the ASVAB is administered yearly.  This group's formulation is an off-spring from the group formed by Pat Elder, the National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy. Three organizations in Texas have joined us in an action to address the issue regarding ASVAB to the Texas State Board of Education (see letter below).  During the past year we launched a letter writing campaign to the Texas State Board of Education board members.

Click on images to play YouTube videos of TBOE Meeting with Peaceful Vocations

This effort was also an excellent tool to provide education to the community and an opportunity for action.   Parents and students have sent letters to various Texas State Board of Education members.  Please contact us, if you would like to get involved at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.! Read the letter submitted to the Texas State Board of Education below:

Today, 5 May, we ae planning to hold a teach-in against military recruitment in schools. However, under pressure from the JROTC at my school, my principal, Sharon Schauss, informed me yesterday that our meeting would be cancelled. This is a violation of our free speech rights and is effectively denying dozens of students interested in Students Against the Draft and War the right to organize. Meanwhile, military recruiters and the JROTC program have the freedom to regularly push their agenda at my school

Eight years ago today, a contingent of socialist youth calling themselves Students against the Draft and War, challenges the school administration at Foss high school in Tacoma Washington, when told that their intention to have a meeting to organize a counter-recruitment action against military recruiters on their campus would not be permitted. Below is a re-posting of the documentation of the event, including the telling by the lead organizer, Clara Lightner, and the news stories that followed, the victory of these youth to prevail against the military recruiters in their school, and the follow-up interview with Clara.

In the age of Obama, and on the eve of another war for the United States in Syria, this seems an appropriate moment to retell this story to show the contrasts between the Bush and Obama eras, and maybe to spark another resistance against the next violation of the rights of our youth to be able to imagine their futures without violence pre-configured by foreign policy and the health risk this imposes on their futures and our democracy as a people.

Amy Hagopian & Kathy Barker -

Abstract

Recruiters for the various US armed forces have free access to our nation’s public high schools, as mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Military recruiting behavior in the nation’s high schools has become increasingly aggressive and predatory. Although adults in the active military service are reported to experience increased mental health risks, including stress, substance abuse, and suicide, there is evidence that military service for the youngest soldiers is consistently associated with health effects far worse than for those who are older. This suggests that military service is associated with disproportionately poor health for those in late adolescence. These negative outcomes for teen soldiers, coupled with significant evidence that the adolescent brain is not equipped to make accurate risk calculations, leads APHA to conclude entry into the military should be delayed until full adulthood. For these reasons, the American Public Health Association opposes military recruiting in public elementary and secondary schools. APHA should encourage the United States to cease the practice of recruiting military enlistees in public high schools, specifically by (1) removing the No Child Left Behind Act requirement that high schools both be open to military recruiters and turn over contact information on all students to recruiters and (2) eliminating practices that encourage military recruiters to approach adolescents in US public high schools to enlist in the military services.

By unanimous vote, the entire faculty at Garfield High School in Seattle voted not to administer the MAP test of reading and mathematics.

This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the faculty of an entire school refused to give mandated tests.

The action of the Garfield High School faculty could have national ramifications because it shows other teachers that there is strength in unity and that they do not have to endure unethical demands with passivity and resignation.

For their courage, their integrity, and their intelligence, I add the faculty of Garfield High School to the honor roll as champions of public education.

The teachers agreed that the tests are a waste of time and money. Students don’t take them seriously because they don’t count toward their grades. But teachers will be evaluated based on the results of these tests that students don’t take seriously. Even the organization that created the tests say they should not be used for teacher evaluation, but the district requires them anyway.

I hope that the example set by Garfield High School will resonate in school districts across the United States and around the world. High-stakes testing is bad for students, bad for teachers, and bad for education.

Andreas Speck -

“On 1 August 1914, it was too late for pacifist propaganda, it was too late for militarist propaganda – in fact the militarists then only harvested what they have sown 200 years before. We have to sow."1

This is what German pacifist Kurt Tucholsky wrote in an article titled “On effective pacifism”, published in 1927. More than 80 years later, the militarists are still sowing. The presence of the military in schools is only the most outrageous example of the sowing and planting of militarist values into the minds of children and soon-to-be soldiers, or supporters of militarism and war. It is the most outrageous, because on the one hand schools should be about learning positive values and knowledge, and not about propaganda, and on the other hand children are most vulnerable to propaganda and indoctrination.

Militarist propaganda

A key function of military presence at schools is propaganda. This can be very obvious – as we can see in Serdar M. Degirmencioglu's article on militarism in schools in Turkey (see page 4 in the article in The Broken Rifle, March 2011, No. 88) – or more subtle, as the German military's use of the simulation game “Politics & International Security” in schools and universities (see Michael Schulze von Glaßer's article on page 9 - ibid). This military propaganda is aimed at ingraining militarist values into the minds of children, so that they do not question the existence and use of the military in later life.