{"id":42066,"date":"2023-03-06T08:13:52","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T16:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=42066"},"modified":"2023-03-06T08:13:52","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T16:13:52","slug":"junior-rotc-shouldnt-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/06\/junior-rotc-shouldnt-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Junior ROTC Shouldn&#8217;t Exist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a> with the author&#8217;s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I entered the Air Force through ROTC and served for 20 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. I also taught for 15 years at both military and civilian colleges. As a retired military officer and as an educator, perhaps I have some standing on the issue of Junior ROTC in our nation&#8217;s high schools. So, to put it bluntly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> High school students, in my opinion, are too young to decide to wear a military uniform. In short, I believe JROTC is inappropriate.<\/li>\n<li> Many veterans involved in JROTC in our nation&#8217;s schools lack experience and qualifications in education.<\/li>\n<li> The U.S. military is already glorified in our culture and society. Its dominance of American institutions is undeniable. That dominance should not extend into America&#8217;s high schools.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>A friend with experience in JROTC alerted me to notable shifts in the program\u2019s mission and organization, especially since the 9\/11 attacks. In the past, JROTC had focused on leadership and civics while being overseen by civilian directors. In the 1990s, the director of JROTC for the Air Force was a civilian with a doctorate in education. The current director of AF JROTC is an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.airuniversity.af.edu\/Portals\/10\/AFJROTC\/documents\/Bios\/Col_McGonigal.pdf\" rel>active-duty colonel<\/a> with no experience in education, though he has an MBA and a master\u2019s in strategic studies. (His deputy is a retired colonel who similarly lacks credentials in education.)<\/p>\n<p>Over the past 20 years or so, JROTC has increasingly been militarized and used as a feeder for military recruitment, despite disclaimers that it is \u201cnot an accessions program.\u201d High schools are enticed to support JROTC with financial incentives such as subsidized (read: low-cost) instructors, veterans who often lack teaching credentials but who are willing to do grunt work at schools (monitoring lunchrooms, school exits, and the like). In return, the military gets access to young, impressionable students, the ultimate goal being recruitment of the same into the ranks.<\/p>\n<p>JROTC, in sum, is now militarized. It\u2019s more of a pipeline to military service as a \u201cwarrior\u201d than a civics program that develops alert and knowledgeable citizens who may then decide freely to enlist as citizen-soldiers. Consider this change as yet another example of <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/p\/the-military-industrial-complex-and\" rel>creeping fascism<\/a> in America.<\/p>\n<p>Put uncharitably, JROTC is preying on America\u2019s youth.<\/p>\n<p>Incredibly, students in some high schools today are being assigned automatically and involuntarily to JROTC classes, notes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/12\/11\/us\/jrotc-schools-mandatory-automatic-enrollment.html?unlocked_article_code=d26gLzUaIDvGjxQ4Z4RG8V5hWkfkcL0nZ47ug_LRUL0xPFtSx9OuGA-drdu5kYEXtSsbRirqyNE93sOt48vs0T5byOP1fsDrQEFcvTUew8K1JYIUROFCLK6XL9Fdcvv_1BFGs7KYEKenJolP5OD8mDcAciDJmwJZ2C8QemXszmvqdAIf5YMgfh0aLF9ChNssj0OpYLrh9o8CZ9-W1rcu21FbHj8aatfoDk4OMFM1lTtWfMtOoBPcwuGeQDujAI41JWYQQ3j-40yorOcpdWV_m7UFOIBwDY4r83p2C76cTen0V-eIWqaoulCmUoOpq69OYLEmhiiFY6-hbT3bq3jVN2s270AGNChSU_Fek2UUUt5A&amp;smid=em-share\" rel>the <\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/12\/11\/us\/jrotc-schools-mandatory-automatic-enrollment.html?unlocked_article_code=d26gLzUaIDvGjxQ4Z4RG8V5hWkfkcL0nZ47ug_LRUL0xPFtSx9OuGA-drdu5kYEXtSsbRirqyNE93sOt48vs0T5byOP1fsDrQEFcvTUew8K1JYIUROFCLK6XL9Fdcvv_1BFGs7KYEKenJolP5OD8mDcAciDJmwJZ2C8QemXszmvqdAIf5YMgfh0aLF9ChNssj0OpYLrh9o8CZ9-W1rcu21FbHj8aatfoDk4OMFM1lTtWfMtOoBPcwuGeQDujAI41JWYQQ3j-40yorOcpdWV_m7UFOIBwDY4r83p2C76cTen0V-eIWqaoulCmUoOpq69OYLEmhiiFY6-hbT3bq3jVN2s270AGNChSU_Fek2UUUt5A&amp;smid=em-share\" rel>New York Times<\/a><\/em>. In a sense, 14- and 15-year-olds are being drafted into JROTC and trained by gung-ho veterans with virtually no experience in education.<\/p>\n<p>And people say the draft died fifty years ago!<\/p>\n<p>JROTC is in 3500 high schools across the nation, and, as the <em>New York Times<\/em> notes, has its highest enrollment numbers in areas where there\u2019s \u201ca large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households.\u201d To such students the military promises opportunity, an identity, and of course financial aid for college, enticing inducements indeed.<\/p>\n<p>Again, students in JROTC don\u2019t have to join the military upon graduation. They\u2019re not dragooned into the ranks. But they are gradually enticed and subtly pressured into joining. The military doesn\u2019t run JROTC programs for purely altruistic reasons.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine, for a moment, the elimination of those 3500 JROTC programs. Or, better yet, a re-imagining and re-purposing of them. Why not make a true national service corps of teenagers in which military service is only one option among many? A national service corps that fosters civilian conservation, that offers options for fostering peace, that is focused on service within communal settings that is unrelated to wielding weapons while wearing battle dress uniforms. There are many ways, after all, to serve one\u2019s community and country, ones that don\u2019t involve military discipline and exposure to what concerned parents term \u201cindoctrination.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Speaking for myself, I wasn\u2019t ready to wear a military uniform when I was 14. When I was 18 and enlisted in ROTC, I\u2019d graduated from high school. I (sort of) knew what I was doing and the true seriousness of the choice I had made.<\/p>\n<p>Military service is far too serious to be inflicted on impressionable young teenagers. Let\u2019s give our kids time to grow and mature before we start issuing them uniforms for battle. Better yet, let\u2019s work to create a more peaceful world where there\u2019s far less call for militaries, period.<\/p>\n<p><i>(For more information on JROTC, see this recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GZ2VVyGdlEI\" rel>panel discussion<\/a> sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><i>William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author&#8217;s permission. I entered the Air Force through ROTC and served for 20 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. I also taught for 15 years at both military and civilian colleges. As a retired military officer and as an educator, perhaps I have some standing on the issue of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-42066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"High school students shouldn't be wearing military uniforms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42066"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42068,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42066\/revisions\/42068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42066"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=42066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}