The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY)

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AI Explains About Opposition to JROTC

Parent Category: NNOMY Articles Hits: 365

JROTC stands for Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps, a program that is designed to provide high school students with leadership skills and prepare them for a possible future career in the military. While some people support JROTC, others are opposed to it for various reasons.

One of the primary reasons why people oppose JROTC is because they believe that it glorifies war and violence. They argue that the program encourages young people to view military service as the only viable career option, rather than pursuing other paths such as higher education or vocational training.

Others object to JROTC because they believe that it promotes militarism and nationalism. They argue that the program instills a sense of blind patriotism in young people, rather than fostering critical thinking skills and independent thought.

Some critics of JROTC also argue that the program is discriminatory, particularly against students who are LGBTQ or who hold pacifist beliefs. They point to instances where JROTC instructors have made homophobic or sexist remarks or where students have been punished for refusing to participate in certain activities.

Finally, opponents of JROTC argue that the program diverts funding and resources away from other important areas of education. They point to instances where schools have cut funding for music, art, or language programs in order to make room for JROTC.

Overall, opposition to JROTC is rooted in concerns about militarism, nationalism, discrimination, and the allocation of resources within the education system.

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Our Children Are Experiencing Militarization of the US Up Close and Personally

Parent Category: NNOMY Articles Hits: 235

A child waves from the back of a jeep with an M60 during a Veterans Day parade in Reno, Nevada, on November 11, 2022. Ty O'Neil / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty ImagesFebruary 23, 2023 / Andrea Mazzarino / Truthout -  During a Veterans Day celebration in my small Maryland community, a teacher clicked through a slideshow of smiling men and women in military uniforms. “Girls and boys, can anyone tell me what courage is?” she asked the crowd, mostly children from local elementary schools, including my two young kids.

A boy raised his hand. “Not being scared?” he asked.

The teacher seized on his response: “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Not being scared.” She proceeded to discuss this country’s armed forces, highlighting how brave U.S. troops are because they fight to defend our way of life. Service-members and veterans in the crowd were encouraged to stand. My own children beamed, knowing that their father is just such a military officer. The veterans and troops present did indeed stand, but most of them stared at the ground. As a counselor who works with children, including those from local military families, I marveled that the teacher was asking the young audience to dismiss one of the most vulnerable emotions there is — fear — in the service of armed violence.

No mention was made of what war can do to those fighting it, not to speak of civilians caught in the crossfire, and how much money has left our country’s shores thanks to armed conflict. That’s especially true, given the scores of U.S.-led military operations still playing out globally as the Pentagon arms and trains local troops, runs intelligence operations, and conducts military exercises.

That week, my children and others in schools across the county spent hours in their classrooms celebrating Veterans Day through a range of activities meant to honor our armed forces. My kindergartener typically made a paper crown, with six colorful peaks for the six branches of service, that framed her little face. Kids in older grades wrote letters to soldiers thanking them for their service.

I have no doubt that if such schoolchildren were ever shown photos in class of what war actually does to kids their age, including of dead and wounded elementary school students and their parents and grandparents in Afghanistan and Iraq, there would be an uproar. And there would be another, of course, if they were told that “their” troops were more likely to be attacked (as in sexually assaulted) by one of their compatriots than by any imaginable enemy. I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, one of the most progressive and highly educated counties in the country and even here, war, American-style, is painted as a sanitized event full of muscular young people, their emotions under control (until, of course, they aren’t).

Even here, few parents and teachers dare talk to young children about the atrocities committed by our military in our wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

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Children of War

Parent Category: NNOMY Articles Hits: 409

The War on Terror and the Battle for Young Minds

 

Culture of ViolanceFebruary 23, 2023 / Andrea Mazzarino / Tomdispatch  - During a Veterans Day celebration in my small Maryland community, a teacher clicked through a slideshow of smiling men and women in military uniforms. “Girls and boys, can anyone tell me what courage is?” she asked the crowd, mostly children from local elementary schools, including my two young kids.

A boy raised his hand. “Not being scared?” he asked.

The teacher seized on his response: “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Not being scared.” She proceeded to discuss this country’s armed forces, highlighting how brave U.S. troops are because they fight to defend our way of life. Servicemembers and veterans in the crowd were encouraged to stand. My own children beamed, knowing that their father is just such a military officer. The veterans and troops present did indeed stand, but most of them stared at the ground. As a counselor who works with children, including those from local military families, I marveled that the teacher was asking the young audience to dismiss one of the most vulnerable emotions there is — fear — in the service of armed violence.

No mention was made of what war can do to those fighting it, not to speak of civilians caught in the crossfire, and how much money has left our country’s shores thanks to armed conflict. That’s especially true, given the scores of U.S.-led military operations still playing out globally as the Pentagon arms and trains local troops, runs intelligence operations, and conducts military exercises.

That week, my children and others in schools across the county spent hours in their classrooms celebrating Veterans Day through a range of activities meant to honor our armed forces. My kindergartener typically made a paper crown, with six colorful peaks for the six branches of service, that framed her little face. Kids in older grades wrote letters to soldiers thanking them for their service.

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JROTC Is Preying on Poor Students

Parent Category: NNOMY Articles Hits: 277

A recent string of revelations about abuses by the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps presents an opportunity to rein in the military’s presence and power in public schools.

The G. Holmes Braddock Senior High School Naval JROTC Unit cadets at the Miami Beach, Florida Veterans Day Parade, November 11, 2022. (Jeffrey Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)01.08.2023 / Seth Kershner Scott Harding / Jacobin - The Pentagon’s signature program for instilling military values in American schools, the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), has a long history dating to 1916. But it hasn’t endured such bad press since the 1970s. In several damning articles, the New York Times revealed the structure of what’s wrong with high school military training: instructors who use their positions to prey on teenage girls, in-school shooting ranges built with grants from the National Rifle Association, and mandatory enrollment in some of the nation’s largest school districts — all abetted by school officials who fail to adequately monitor a program of such dubious educational value that many instructors lack a college degree.

These revelations have vindicated those in the “counter-recruitment” movement who for years warned of a largely unsupervised program taught by retired military officers. It also raises serious questions about why military training programs have any place in US public high schools.

The Pentagon spends around $400 million annually to provide training in military drill and “leadership” through the JROTC in more than 3,500 high schools, to approximately five hundred thousand students. Despite this presence, the program seems to operate on the fringes, with school officials exercising scant oversight even as instructors take their young “cadets” on extended travel to military bases and interschool competitions. Such conditions foster an environment rife with potential abuse.

The Times identified at least thirty-three JROTC instructors who had been criminally charged with sexual misconduct with their students, and found evidence that numerous other instructors were accused but never charged. According to the education outlet Chalkbeat, Chicago’s head of school military instruction quietly resigned last summer, three years after failing to inform officials of suspected sexual abuse by a JROTC instructor who was later arrested.

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Thousands of Teens Are Being Pushed Into Military’s Junior R.O.T.C.

New York Times JROTC Series 2022 Hits: 319

In high schools across the country, students are being placed in military classes without electing them on their own. “The only word I can think of is ‘indoctrination,’” one parent said.

A uniformed J.R.O.T.C. student stands in a sea of desks in a mostly empty classroom.

 

Dec. 11, 2022Updated Dec. 20, 2022 / Mike Baker, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Ilana Marcus / New York Times - DETROIT — On her first day of high school, Andreya Thomas looked over her schedule and found that she was enrolled in a class with an unfamiliar name: J.R.O.T.C.

She and other freshmen at Pershing High School in Detroit soon learned that they had been placed into the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, a program funded by the U.S. military designed to teach leadership skills, discipline and civic values — and open students’ eyes to the idea of a military career. In the class, students had to wear military uniforms and obey orders from an instructor who was often yelling, Ms. Thomas said, but when several of them pleaded to be allowed to drop the class, school administrators refused.

“They told us it was mandatory,” Ms. Thomas said.

J.R.O.T.C. programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said that requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found that thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.

A review of J.R.O.T.C. enrollment data collected from more than 200 public records requests showed that dozens of schools have made the program mandatory or steered more than 75 percent of students in a single grade into the classes, including schools in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and Mobile, Ala. A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households, The Times found.

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In Public Schools, the N.R.A. Gets a Boost From Junior R.O.T.C.

New York Times JROTC Series 2022 Hits: 283

Instructors in military-sponsored J.R.O.T.C. classes have offered to promote the N.R.A. in high schools in exchange for money for their marksmanship programs.

A line of students and instructors, some of them in camouflage uniforms, stand near a series of marksmanship target cards.
The Junior R.O.T.C Florida State Marksmanship Championship in Cape Coral, Fla. this April. At a time when many schools are going to great lengths to keep guns out of schools, the J.R.O.T.C. program has become one of the few places on campuses that promote weapons training.Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Dec. 20, 2022 / Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Mike Baker / New York Times - CAPE CORAL, Fla. — Beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school gym, dozens of teenagers took turns firing air rifles at a series of bull's-eye targets, part of a marksmanship competition that drew students from schools all along the Florida Gulf Coast.

The event was better outfitted than many high school competitions, with lights that illuminated the targets, scopes for spotting downrange and a heavy curtain to keep pellets from going astray, thanks to the help of a key sponsor: the charitable arm of the National Rifle Association.

“A lot of the equipment that you see behind me comes from N.R.A. grants,” Bryan Williams, a retired Army major who teaches in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program at Mariner High School in Cape Coral, told the contestants.

That tip of the hat was no casual remark. In order to win N.R.A. sponsorships, records show, military instructors who lead J.R.O.T.C. marksmanship teams at public high schools have repeatedly promised to promote the organization at competitions and in newsletters, post N.R.A. banners at their schools or add the N.R.A. logo to apparel worn by students.

In his pitch, Mr. Williams also offered to provide student testimonials to the organization “to include supporting photographs and storyboards showcasing the equipment and the happy cadets.”

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J.R.O.T.C. Textbooks Offer an Alternative View of the World*

New York Times JROTC Series 2022 Hits: 300

Descriptions of civic life and some key historical events differ from the way they are taught in typical public school textbooks.

An empty J.R.O.T.C. classroom showing several rows of unoccupied desks.
Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times

Dec. 11, 2022 / Mike Baker, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Dana Goldstein  / New York Times - One textbook for high school military cadets says girls should wear lipstick when in uniform. Another offers what a history professor described as a “frightening” interpretation of how the Vietnam War was lost. Another blames the death of Kurt Cobain, the Nirvana frontman who fatally shot himself in 1994, on heroin addiction.

A majority of public school textbooks receive extensive professional and government vetting, undergoing revision, rejection and public debate. But the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, in courses taught at thousands of high schools around the country, uses textbooks that have bypassed those standard public reviews.

The J.R.O.T.C. curriculum materials cover a wide range of subjects, with lessons on financial literacy and public speaking, on healthy eating and first aid, on preparing for college and life in the military. Most of them offer a presentation similar to what might be found in any public high school study materials.

But a New York Times review of thousands of pages of the program’s textbooks found that some of the books also included outdated gender messages, a conservative shading of political issues and accounts of historical events that falsify or downplay the failings of the U.S. government.

Here is a closer look at 10 issues covered in the texts:

  1. Military Acknowledges More Sexual Abuse in J.R.O.T.C. Programs
  2. The Games Industry as 21st Century Imperialism & Its Cultivation of Fascism
  3. How Counter-Recruiters Take on the U.S. Military
  4. Will Student Debt Relief Really Undermine Military Recruitment?
  5. Pentagon Admits Lack of Oversight to Stop Junior ROTC Sexual Abuse
  6. What I Discovered in the JROTC Curriculum
  7. GOP congressman says student loan forgiveness will hurt military recruitment
  8. The US Military’s JROTC Program Is Even Worse Than You Thought
  9. Lawmakers to Investigate Sexual Abuse in Junior R.O.T.C. Programs
  10. Sexual Abuse of Teens in the Military’s J.R.O.T.C. Program
  11. Military Recruiters Should Have No Place in Our Schools
  12. Navy desertions have more than doubled amid suicide concerns, as sailors feel trapped by contracts

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