A Few Good Kids?
How the No Child Left Behind Act allowed military recruiters to collect info on millions of unsuspecting teens.
John Travers was striding purposefully into the Westfield mall in Wheaton, Maryland, for some back-to-school shopping before starting his junior year at Bowling Green State University. When I asked him whether he'd ever talked to a military recruiter, Travers, a 19-year-old African American with a buzz cut, a crisp white T-shirt, and a diamond stud in his left ear, smiled wryly. "To get to lunch in my high school, you had to pass recruiters," he said. "It was overwhelming." Then he added, "I thought the recruiters had too much information about me. They called me, but I never gave them my phone number."
Nor did he give the recruiters his email address, Social Security number, or details about his ethnicity, shopping habits, or college plans. Yet they probably knew all that, too. In the past few years, the military has mounted a virtual invasion into the lives of young Americans. Using data mining, stealth websites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students' GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect like Travers, the soldier may know more about the kid's habits than do his own parents.
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Fast Times at Recruitment High
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan invited the Pentagon into Chicago's schools. Will he promote military schools nationwide?
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No Child Unrecruited
Should the military be given the names of every high school student in America?
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Photo Essay: I Love a Man in Uniform - The Marines Take Manhattan
The Marines take Manhattan.
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War Games: The Army's Teen Arsenal
"America's Army" and more government shooter game lures.
The military has long struggled to find more effective ways to reach potential enlistees; for every new GI it signed up last year, the Army spent $24,500 on recruitment. (In contrast, four-year colleges spend an average of $2,000 per incoming student.) Recruiters hit pay dirt in 2002, when then-Rep. (now Sen.) David Vitter (R-La.) slipped a provision into the No Child Left Behind Act that requires high schools to give recruiters the names and contact details of all juniors and seniors. Schools that fail to comply risk losing their NCLB funding. This little-known regulation effectively transformed President George W. Bush's signature education bill into the most aggressive military recruitment tool since the draft. Students may sign an opt-out form—but not all school districts let them know about it.
Yet NCLB is just the tip of the data iceberg. In 2005, privacy advocates discovered that the Pentagon had spent the past two years quietly amassing records from Selective Service, state DMVs, and data brokers to create a database of tens of millions of young adults and teens, some as young as 15. The massive data-mining project is overseen by the Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies program, whose website has described the database, which now holds 34 million names, as "arguably the largest repository of 16-25-year-old youth data in the country." The JAMRS database is in turn run by Equifax, the credit reporting giant.
Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says the Pentagon's initial failure to disclose the collection of the information likely violated the Privacy Act. In 2007, the Pentagon settled a lawsuit (filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union) by agreeing to stop collecting the names and Social Security numbers of anyone younger than 17 and promising not to share its database records with other government agencies. Students may opt out of having their JAMRS database information sent to recruiters, but only 8,700 have invoked this obscure safeguard.
The Pentagon also spends about $600,000 a year on commercial data brokers, notably the Student Marketing Group and the American Student List, which boasts that it has records for 8 million high school students. Both companies have been accused of using deceptive practices to gather information: In 2002, New York's attorney general sued SMG for telling high schools it was surveying students for scholarship and financial aid opportunities yet selling the info to telemarketers; the Federal Trade Commission charged ASL with similar tactics. Both companies eventually settled.
The Pentagon is also gathering data from unsuspecting Web surfers. This year, the Army spent $1.2 million on the website March2Success.com, which provides free standardized test-taking tips devised by prep firms such as Peterson's, Kaplan, and Princeton Review. The only indications that the Army runs the site, which registers an average of 17,000 new users each month, are a tiny tagline and a small logo that links to the main recruitment website, GoArmy.com. Yet visitors' contact information can be sent to recruiters unless they opt out, and students also have the option of having a recruiter monitor their practice test scores. Terry Backstrom, who runs March2Success.com for the US Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, insists that it is about "good will," not recruiting. "We are providing a great service to schools that normally would cost them."
Recruiters are also data mining the classroom. More than 12,000 high schools administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a three-hour multiple-choice test originally created in 1968 to match conscripts with military assignments. Rebranded in the mid-1990s as the "ASVAB Career Exploration Program," the test has a cheerful home page that makes no reference to its military applications, instead declaring that it "is designed to help students learn more about themselves and the world of work." A student who takes the test is asked to divulge his or her Social Security number, GPA, ethnicity, and career interests—all of which is then logged into the JAMRS database. In 2008, more than 641,000 high school students took the ASVAB; 90 percent had their scores sent to recruiters. Tony Castillo of the Army's Houston Recruiting Battalion says that ASVAB is "much more than a test to join the military. It is really a gift to public education."
Concerns about the ASVAB's links to recruiting have led to a nearly 20 percent decline in the number of test takers between 2003 and 2008. But the test is mandatory at approximately 1,000 high schools. Last February, three North Carolina students were sent to detention for refusing to take it. One, a junior named Dakota Ling, told the local paper, "I just really don't want the military to have all the info it can on me." Last year, the California Legislature barred schools from sending ASVAB results to military recruiters, though Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. The Los Angeles and Washington, DC, school districts have tried to protect students' information by releasing their scores only on request.
To put all its data to use, the military has enlisted the help of Nielsen Claritas, a research and marketing firm whose clients include BMW, AOL, and Starbucks. Last year, it rolled out a "custom segmentation" program that allows a recruiter armed with the address, age, race, and gender of a potential "lead" to call up a wealth of information about young people in the immediate area, including recreation and consumption patterns. The program even suggests pitches that might work while cold-calling teenagers. "It's just a foot in the door for a recruiter to start a relevant conversation with a young person," says Donna Dorminey of the US Army Center for Accessions Research.
Still, no amount of data slicing can fix the challenge of recruiting during wartime. Last year, a JAMRS survey identified recruiters' single biggest obstacle: Only 5 percent of parents would recommend military service to their kids, a situation blamed on "a constant barrage of negative media coverage on the War in Iraq." Not surprisingly, more and more kids are opting out of having their information shared with recruiters under No Child Left Behind; in New York City, the number of students opting out has doubled in the past five years, to 45,000 in 2008. At some schools, 90 percent of students have opted out. In 2007, JAMRS awarded a $50 million contract to Mullen Advertising to continue its marketing campaign to target "influencers" such as parents, coaches, and guidance counselors. The result: print ads that declare, "Your son wants to join the military. The question isn't whether he's prepared enough, but whether you are."
Not far from the mall in Maryland, I asked 21-year-old Marcelo Salazar, who'd been a cadet in his high school's Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, why he'd decided not to enlist after graduating from John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 2005. Now a community college student, he replied that his mother was firmly against it.
Then, as if on cue, his cell phone chirped: It was a recruiter who called him constantly. He ignored it. "War is cool," he said, flipping on his aviator sunglasses. "But if you're dying, it's not."
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Intrusive Recruiters
Also recruiters use your information in a new way: given your address, they come to your home to speak with you in person about joining the miltary. They came to mine during my senior year of high school. My father had to tell them off so they wouldn't come back. It's ridiculous.
Lie Like Rugs
What many parents and teens don't realize is that recruiters lie like rugs often guarantying slots, training etc that are extremely unlikely to be delivered just to get the signiture on the dotted line.
The out for the military is the phase 'for the good of' the army, navy, etc.
I was a FAA license aircraft mechanic with avionics rating. My recruiter promised on a stack of bibles I would be working on aircraft and avionics. Military had pushing pills.
Lie Like Rugs
What many parents and teens don't realize is that recruiters lie like rugs often guarantying slots, training etc that are extremely unlikely to be delivered just to get the signiture on the dotted line.
The out for the military is the phase 'for the good of' the army, navy, etc.
I was a FAA license aircraft mechanic with avionics rating. My recruiter promised on a stack of bibles I would be working on aircraft and avionics. Military had pushing pills.
Recruiters
The armed forces started to send mail to my boys (but not my daughter) from the time they were 15. No one else is allowed to approach minor children without parents' consent, are they? Why are these guys?
This needs to get broader distribution!
This item needs to get broader distribution, especially to those wingnuts who are accusing Obama of gathering lists and information. This is a Bush-era program with the provision added by another Bush puppet to once again weaken our privacy and rights. I know very well how these recruiters work and the pressure applied to young men trying to decide the direction of their lives is not a good thing. These decisions to join or not need to be made by young men on their own and not through lies and promises of experience or work they will probably not get. You would think the military would be held to a high standard and truthfulness but apparently it is not.
Oh for heaven's sake, can we
Oh for heaven's sake, can we rise above our partisanship can come together for ANYTHING?! What does it take to open Democrats eyes to the FACT that it matters not whether a politician is an elephant or an ass, they ALL want our kids for war and they ALL should be stopped! Stop making excuses for these people.
Opt-Out vs. Opt-In
This year's back-to-school packet of forms had three places (on different forms) to opt-out for my teenager's information to be released to the military. I happen to be someone that reads stuff before I sign it, but I know not everyone is. I guess their kids will be getting contacted.
My son remarked that it ought to be the other way around (opt-in)! And he also thanked me for noticing and opting out for him.
The military recruiters come onto the high school campus pretty regularly and give out sweatshirts and caps and try to convince the juniors and seniors to sign up instead of wasting their money on college.
You mean someone will have
You mean someone will have my name and phone number? I'm shakin' in my boots! You mean the military wants to give thousands of aimless kids a future? How dare they? Seriously, this is paranoid ridiculousness.
Yeah "an M-16 and a Kevlar
Yeah "an M-16 and a Kevlar vest". Job training? forget it. skills to transfer to the civilian world? wishful thinking. benefits if you're hurt? only if you fight for them. education benefits? Maybe. Jobs when you've done your commitment? Not that I've seen.
NancyP / Ice Cream
This is my favorite story about military recruiting: http://www.snopes.com/military/icecream.asp
They got the data from an ice cream shop.
NancyP, it really just depends on how you sign up. There are some great jobs in the military and it can be very rewarding. But you can't just walk into the recruiter's office without a plan and let them do whatever they want. Twelve years ago I went into the Air Force office and told them I wanted to be a linguist. Here's where I am now:
-I am a mid-level sergeant (E6) and made almost $80k last year
-I have two Associates, a Bachelors, a graduate certificate and I have almost completed a Master's
-I have foreign language proficiency
-Government clearance
-I've lived in some beautiful places around America and frequently traveled to CIS countries as a diplomat
-Haven't been placed in much danger over my career
-Trying to decide if I want to stay in after this contract is up in order to reach retirement or take one of the $100k+ jobs that are out there for me. Yes- even in this job market I have employers calling me because of my skill set.
Don't get me wrong - there are negatives to service. But it can be a success story if you make it one. On the other hand, if you have poor ASVAB scores and you walk in and say, "Just sign me up. I don't care. Simply trying to get out of my parents' house," then yes - it can turn out as you described.
12 years in and an E6 at
12 years in and an E6 at $80,000 per year
not on the current pay scale by 50% or more
probably a recruiter in drag
The difference between you
The difference between you and those kids is you are obviously smart and focused. A lot of these kids are not smart and not focused, and they are just looking for a way out, and the truth is it's a very old tradition to use deceptive tactics and empty promises just to get kids to sign up - I know for a fact they were doing the same kinds of things in the 60s in the Army alone. I suspect it's a lot older than that.
It was not mentioned here that all branches of the military service have met their recruitment goals for the past year, so the recruiters are clearly being effective somehow.
My problem isn't with recruiting, it's the collection of all this personal information and the SS#. That's not necessary for recruitment and it's further encroachment on people's privacy. It takes advantage of naive kids.
Also the kid who said "war is cool" needs to be smacked.
databases of personal info w/out permission of citizens:illegal!
You mean someone will have my name and phone number? I'm shakin' in my boots! You mean the military wants to give thousands of aimless kids a future? How dare they? Seriously, this is paranoid ridiculousness.
How is this riduculous? The rise of personal information companies since deregulation has swayed the vote for the presidency of 2000 by purging legal voters, prevented convicted citizens from expunging their record after serving their penance to society, allowed credit agencies to run amok and prevent you from cleaning up your credit history or even getting a job, and to illegally collect false information without allowing citizens to purge false data about themselves.
Now the military is going one step further than the predatory credit card industry by targeting people under 18 and withholding personal information on them without their consent or knowledge (much less their parent's). There are no safeguards in place to protect the personal information culled by the military to pursue predatory practices in recruiting nor any other ulterior motive. There's nothing stopping the military from sharing that information with anyone else.
Why did the military have to piggy back inside school legislation instead of making their own law? Because it would've been voted down. No Child Left Behind is a flimsy republican attempt at reforming our failed education system. Without a doubt they knew this already, otherwise they wouldn't have to secretly hide laws and excess pork inside such a successful movement.
If you see the military as such an opportunity when the dirtbag recruiter lies to you that you're guaranteed the M.O.S. when signing your signature then you're very naive. There's no such thing a guarantee in the military. I signed up for intelligence in the Marine Corp and all I got was useless infantry training 19yrs ago. Had I know beforehand I wouldn't have signed the dotted line and instead gone straight to college.
Take a look at our military these days. Over the last 8 years all the GOP did was create a Poverty Draft for useless wars in the Mideast mainly made up of latinos who are promised the ability to legalize their direct family if they join. How much peace has this brought to the world by sending uneducated troops from south of the border to the mideast?
Apples to Oranges
I'm having a hard time buying that $24,500 per enlistee figure... unless it includes signing bonuses or education benefits. If you were to compare what the Army spends per enlistee to what colleges spend on their athletes, you might come close to a fair comparison.
I joined at 17. My recruiter didn't lie. I did "Hometown Recruiting" at 18 and called kids who have voluntarily taken the ARMED SERVICES Vocational Aptitude Battery. Some of them seemed surprised or confused, but as teenagers in the information age, they were perfectly capable of saying "No thanks" and hanging up. My favorite, of course, were teens who barely passed the ASVAB claiming they had a full ride scholarship to college. Good luck with that.
I don't agree with any school requiring it, but if you opt to take the ASVAB and somehow can't figure out it is related to the military, you don't need to graduate high school because you clearly cannot read.
I seem to recall colleges e-mailing me, mailing me and calling me at home but I don't once remember freaking out or watching my parents freak out about "pressure" on me while I "decided what to do with my life." I spent 4 years of my life and got $50,000 in debt for an undergraduate degree that didn't get me a job... and I spent 4 years of my life in the Army; getting a clearance, learning job skills, making valuable connections that helped me find work, and paying that soul crushing debt.
Sorry guys, the Army isn't the bad guy in my book and this reads like more pointless pot stirring by MJ.
Can we say... reaching?
I'm sorry, I missed somewhere how it is a privacy violation for the government to have information about you.
How many of you posting here against this are in favor of a public option in health care? If you are, then be prepared to give up a lot more information, including your genetics.
Anyhow, with unemployment at recent highs, the military isn't a bad option for many kids these days. Especially so for the not-so-bright, the children of poverty, and of course the spazzes that could just use some discipline.
And, for the record, all that information can be found with internet searches anyhow. If you think you have any privacy at all, you are sadly mistaken, especially in this information age.
This is just another form of fear-mongering, that knows no political inclination.
Is the info they possess
Is the info they possess able to be accessed via a FOIA request?
Recruiters in High Schools
I think that military recruiters should sit in their recruiting offices and stay away from high schools. If young men want to visit those offices, fine; but they should not have to deal with recruiters at their schools.
recruiters in school
After the Vietnam war, I was shocked and stunned to see them anywhere especially at schools. They laid low for a few years and became more visible. Nothing learned from Vietnam.
Tony Castillo of the Army's
Tony Castillo of the Army's Houston Recruiting Battalion says that ASVAB is "much more than a test to join the military. It is really a gift to public education."
A Few Good Kids?
Yeah ---------
Get the kids to sign on and take their Bible in their knap sack on the Christian American Crusade against Islam.
From a former Army Recruiter
I was an Army Recruiter for 2-1/2 years! While I love the opportunities that I've been given in the military, I hated being a Recruiter! We have to reach a certain amount of the military-aged population (17-42 years old) through a variety of ways, phone calls, face-to-face contacts, school visits, etc. It's hard,but a necessary job unless you want Congress to bring back the draft! Recruiting in the schools really isn't necessary, in my opinion, but it is part of the job.....
That's the beauty of living in this country...you have the option of whether or not you want any information about the military
asvab
The asvab test has been given to students in Florida for decades. For students with no other options the military is employment. The schools will not tell the students that failing the state test does not disqualify them for the military. Giving the students money as sign on bonuses as a 15 year old and obligating them to service is obscene. Some students fail to graduate on purpose so they do not have to enter the military. They will be lied to but they can get out of this commitment. Lifetime tv's Army wives gives attention to the day to day military life, how real I am not sure. The treatment of officers compared to non-coms is also obsolete. The medical care for officers is also better. The military wants the best and the brightest not the neediest. (the pbs series Carrier quoted the crew of about 2000 as being like a high school. The crew did not like being told what to do without being told why. Orders?? Military?? Yes, just like high school.)
check your facts
Because... if you did, you'd know that 15-year-olds can't sign up for the military. The youngest age is 17, and that's with parental consent.
Does it hurt your brain to be ignorant?
A Few Good Kids
This is outrageous,a total violation of privacy.I'm conservative but read MOJO for other views because the right isn't always right.Students should be able to say,"Don't call us,we'll call you",to the military.
library records
Under NCLB they can also pull library records to see what books students have checked out. The librarian is not allowed to tell you if the government has done this or not.
Civil Liberties
It's well documented that the Government has been attempting to strip Americans of their Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties for some time in numerous areas. Unreasonable search and seizure, Privacy Intrusions, Illegal wiretapping, and now profiling with the census under duress with threats of fines, to name just a few. I understand now the Government is tracking users who access Government websites, whats next? More Government tracking of internet activity? Now Obama wants to create a civil army just as strong and well funded as the military. For what purpose? Who is the enemy. Is it the American people? Whats behind it is more power and more control over Americans. I think it is going to get worse before it gets better. Righteous indignation and demanding accountability from Washington is a start. If possible electing Politicians who want to preserve our freedoms is a key. Are there enough honest and forthright politicians to elect to office? When will the scales tip back in favor of the American people? Only time and the American people will tell. Glenn Beck has insight on what our Government and Obama are doing!
Richard "Pete" Lauf
Richard "Pete" Lauf
Richard "Pete" Lauf wrote:
"Glenn Beck has insight on what our Government and Obama are doing!"
Wow. Did he tell you this: "Now Obama wants to create a civil army just as strong and well funded as the military. For what purpose? Who is the enemy. Is it the American people? Whats behind it is more power and more control over Americans"?
And you believed him?!
Listen, Pete, there are good treatments available for paranoia, and I think all of them begin like this: Don't listen to Glenn Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, or any of their ilk. What's behind all of them, you see, is more power for their corporate sponsors. They're ENTERTAINERS, not newsmen, and certainly not well-informed commentators.
You're right that they're
You're right that they're "entertainers". But, then again, so is everyone on the left or right whether they're on mainstream radio or masquerading as "news" bobble heads for the alphabet networks on the TeeVee... AKA the "idiot box".
Agree that the Govt in
Agree that the Govt in general is always in flux when it comes to personal liberties but... Obama's civil army is more akin to habitat for humanity than the hitler youth. Funny that putting a ton of people to work is what we need right now, but if it's for the BIG BAD GOVT, then it's of course wrong. Unless you work in the military, then you're patriotic! Please..
Also, Glenn Beck is lying to you. He makes money off lying to you. He's the freakin wizard of oz, man.
This is just a general
This is just a general question, really, but I want to know how often recruiters visit schools that have 'well-off' students? I grew up in a moderately middle-class community, and I have no recollection whatsoever of recruiters being on campus, other than at college and career fairs. I'd like to know how they choose which schools to target, and which not.
From what I can tell, it appears that recruiters spend the majority of their time in schools that are working-class. Rather than pouring money in the form of extra funds to the schools for education, the government decides that the same poor kids should be the ones fighting so recruiters are sent to these schools.
righteous indignation
I don't have statistics to quote about this, but I couldn't agree with you more. My high school in southwestern Wisconsin wasn't a "wealthy" school by any means, but it was a quality school where the vast majority of each graduating class went of to college.
Recruiters were present, but rarely heard from in any intrusive form. If students didn't go looking for them, they never really heard about what the military had to offer. The recruiting offices for all three branches of the military were within 2 blocks of the school, however, and constantly had fancy sports cars and Harley's parked out in front of them--can't imagine what they were trying to project with that little subliminal message!
I attended an elite high
I attended an elite high school in NYC (Stuyvesant). Although the economic backgrounds of the attendants are diverse, well over 50% of the graduating class attends ivy league schools.
I could not remember, in the four years of attending, a day I didn't pass a recruiter's table on the way in and the way out. Though, I admit, they may have just been capitalizing on the cross-roads of several schools (we were next to a CUNY campus).
It was sad for the recruiters. Education tends to incline one towards liberalism, and high school students are smartass prats no matter their political inclinations. The recruiters were just never given peace.
Here are a few other
Here are a few other interesting points about NCLB in a letter I wrote to friends around 2004 when my teenage son was being harassed by recruiters:
What They Really Mean by No Child Left Behind
A couple of years ago (right about the time we invaded Iraq) I heard a news report one morning on the radio stating that a new law required that all public school boards provide the names, addresses and telephone numbers of their high school students to branches of the military for recruitment purposes. I was fairly outraged, and even more so when I never heard the story mentioned anywhere in the mainstream news (so much for the liberal media).
But it’s definitely so. Since hitting the age of 16, our son, Graeme, has been bombarded with recruitment offers. I collected them for a few months just to see how many he would get, but after the collection began requiring a full drawer for storage, I finally pitched them in disgust. They’re really insidious too. Very glossy, very professionally done - they make it look like a Hawaiian vacation. After graduation, he started getting phone calls from local recruiters too.
Last week, I was surprised to hear from a student at my school that while he was doing research on the web, he discovered that a provision of Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act also includes this requirement. I just couldn’t believe it – for about a second – but then I thought well that just figures. I decided to look it up for myself. I didn’t expect to have any trouble finding the actual text of the NCLB Act since it has been dictating immense changes in national school policy since 2001. My initial search led to some promising websites. Surely, I thought I could find a link to the act at the official website for the White House, or the Department of Education webpage, or the No Child Left Behind site. I was wrong – they all had information about all the supposedly great things NCLB is doing for kids in America – but no actual links to the act itself.
I was able to access the text through the NEA- National Education Association site (www.nea.org). NEA is the national teachers’ union previously described as a “terrorist organization” by Bush’s Secretary of Education, Rod Paige. Here, I scoured the 15 page table of contents for NCLB to see where I might find this particular provision in the 670 page document. Finding no clues there, I scrolled through the document itself and finally found the provision for “Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students & Student Recruiting Information” about where I expected it to be -on page 559 under the heading of “Other Provisions.”
In a neat little paragraph, it states that all local education agencies receiving funds under this act must provide the names, addresses & telephone listings of secondary students to recruiters who request it & that military recruiters must have the “same access” to these students that colleges & prospective employers have. An interesting “exception” is that while some Catholic and private schools receive some of these funds, they can request a waiver for their students if the school maintains a religious objection to service in the armed forces. The National Catholic Educational Association website (www.ncea.org) indicates that that is exactly what they are doing.
So the upshot is that only public school students are really affected. However, there is also a provision whereby a student or his parent may request that the student’s name not be released without written parental consent. It further states that school boards are supposed to notify parents of this option (but I know that I never received any notification of this from my son’s school board.). That is the main reason for this lengthy note. Please pass this information on to any student or parent that you know so that they can exercise this option & harass their school boards to come clean with parents. Thanks for helping to spread the word.
All very Orwellian
and very scary.
Personally, and I know I might take flack for this, I'd rather have a cigarette company targeting my child than the armed forces.
The US and UK are not looking after their maimed soldiers as well as they should, and arguably never have.
And in the UK our politicians and MOD are very effective getting our young men and women into war zones - but hopeless at getting munitions and supplies to them.
To mothers like Peggy - be strong and join together with other mothers, to be stronger. The military want your kids but when they have them they don't appreciate them.
The Military Needs Us, and We Need the Military
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tagged as:
- solution
Let's not make something sinister that is not. We all know, and knew, that the military tries to recruit new candidates. This is not new. We know it is necessary and it there is nothing wrong with it., other businesses do the same including Kaplan and the College Board. They garner information on students using the same techniques. Who do you think the Army paid to operate these websites for them?
Get real people. Some of our kids might actually want to go into the military and will be better for it; I did, and I was...
Around these parts we as
Around these parts we as parents were notified of this provision and the opt-out requirement. We were told we needed to opt-out every year, which we have done. I did not like the provision and would rather it be opt-in, but in that case why put it in the law, because that was already how it was done.
So this was just one more new requirement NCLB puts onto the school administration so they can teach better.
Speaking of that, my children have told me how many students intentionally fail at the NCLB tests because they know that it does not affect their grades and they don't like the tests. Essentially, NCLB has given students a great tool to vandalize and disrupt their school with no repercussions to themselves.
I can imagine that some students intentionally do poorly on the military aptitude test as well.
Sarcasm on -
Maybe we should mobilize the national guard to monitor the students while taking tests to ensure they comply with all government regulations?
Sarcasm off
I do not blame the military for any of this. Like all of us, they are pawns given a difficult task to do (given by the ultra-rich and corporations who actually control our government) as best they can.
Tripp
And the economy in the
And the economy in the crapper is a recruiter's wet dream. Enlisting in the legions, advancing the empire's grasp, has become for many high school graduates the best option they have.
(Hey, Dubya, you drooling SOB! Mission accomplished!!)
Anonymous
I don't normally cut and paste but it was the quickest way to call out this mess.
_
kai_I'm having a hard time buying that $24,500 per enlistee figure... unless it includes signing bonuses or education benefits. If you were to compare what the Army spends per enlistee to what colleges spend on their athletes, you might come close to a fair comparison.
I joined at 17. My recruiter didn't lie. I did "Hometown Recruiting" at 18 and called kids who have voluntarily taken the ARMED SERVICES Vocational Aptitude Battery. Some of them seemed surprised or confused, but as teenagers in the information age, they were perfectly capable of saying "No thanks" and hanging up. My favorite, of course, were teens who barely passed the ASVAB claiming they had a full ride scholarship to college. Good luck with that.
I don't agree with any school requiring it, but if you opt to take the ASVAB and somehow can't figure out it is related to the military, you don't need to graduate high school because you clearly cannot read.
I seem to recall colleges e-mailing me, mailing me and calling me at home but I don't once remember freaking out or watching my parents freak out about "pressure" on me while I "decided what to do with my life." I spent 4 years of my life and got $50,000 in debt for an undergraduate degree that didn't get me a job... and I spent 4 years of my life in the Army; getting a clearance, learning job skills, making valuable connections that helped me find work, and paying that soul crushing debt.
Sorry guys, the Army isn't the bad guy in my book and this reads like more pointless pot stirring by MJ.
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Who the fuck do you think you are bringing this kind of bullshit to the table? Do you really think that people like me that were harassed by recruiters until I was 22 are lieing? No, but you are. And If you are going to lie at least be a man and say your name, coward. Andrew btw is my name, in Arkansas so I live by my statements.
Yes, the recruiters do tend to go to the less wealthy schools
In Seattle, the number of military recruiters is inversely proportional to the number of college recruiters in the 10 major high schools... the military recruiters target the poorer schools.
This is not a volunteer army. It is a poverty draft, and we are all complicit.
I wish we could go underneath the worry about privacy, and deal with the deeper implications of having the military in schools.....why do we presume that the mass murder of civilians in other countries, in the name of our government, is noble? Why do we allow soldiers in the schools to recruit minors to war? We should be absolutely ashamed at ourselves for allowing this, for writing off the futures of so many young people so companies and individuals and governments can profit from these wars of aggression.
Anti-war people- get in your public schools and go to your school boards and get rid of the recruiters. This can be done, school by school, district by district.
Recruiting sucks!
My husband did a tour of recruiting duty for the US Navy and it's thankless, grueling, miserable duty. He worked every Saturday (but a handful) for three solid years. He worked holidays. He worked Thanksgiving day, New Year's day, Christmas. he was allowed virtually no leave. He worked regularly 14-16 hours until he was worn to a nub. They say, "when you make quota, you can go home!" But they don't tell you that there is then your office's quota, the district's quota, the regions quota and the national quota, YOU NEVER GET HOME!
Recruiting eviscerates your family life. Forget seeing your spouse in he evenings. Forget him being anything but exhausted and played out from being a salesman 14 hours per day, driving hundreds of miles per week. Having tons of pressure of the whole military piled on his shoulders. Dealing with the 95% rejection rate--which is not about him personally, but instead about the service itself--but still feels like HIS fault because if he can't make quota HE CAN'T GO HOME NO MATTER HOW LATE IT IS.
They worked my husband to the bone. It nearly destroyed his career. He was a 1st class for EIGHT YEARS because of the damage recruiting duty did to his chances for advancement. He was fast track before that, making rate in the top few percent. He stalled. We lost thousands of $$ every year that he didn't make rate, and we paid for it for YEARS... four at least. We nearly got a divorce--and we've always been solid. Recruiting was so depressing I thought he was going to kill himself. Recruiting sucked. And as the only other wife I've ever met who made it through a tour said, "If you haven't been through it, you don't understand. no one does." That's the human side to recruiting.
There are slimeball recruiters, but out of the 50 or so that I met or knew, maybe TWO were slimeballs. The rest were guys like my husband trying to do what they saw as their duty under difficult circumstances. And the circumstances were, as I've outlined above, VERY DIFFICULT.
And this is where I come to data mining. High schools are already required by law to provide recruiters with names and contact info. And they get long lists of them, making hundreds of thousands of cold calls to kids who are thoroughly uninterested in service, being treated like telemarketers, hung up on, cussed out, treated coldly--all because they are serving their country and doing their duty. remember whose freedom they're protecting here the next time you're nasty to a recruiter who calls. This is very likely some over-worked, over stressed guy with a family he lives with but hasn't seen in three days and grass he needs to cut and HE JUST WANTS TO GO HOME!
If a bit of data mining--and yes, I'd like to see there be better notification of what's being done with the data--means that some recruiter somewhere can avoid calling the honor student who has better things to do (the future Dick Cheney), or the stoner rich kid who won't bother showing up for duty (GWB) and instead call some kid for whom the service would be a leg up in life. There are so, SO many kids for whom the service is a good thing. And it's efficient and effective to FIND those kids and market specifically to those people--because let's not fool ourselves, the "few good men" out there protecting your freedom and fighting in GWB's war of choice are vastly often under 21 and are "kids" by any other measure--the military is going to do it. SOMEONE has to people this volunteer force that we all seem to like having.
Because the alternative... I doubt that anti-military parents will like it when little Johnny (or Jane) gets drafted either. But perhaps that would be a better solution. Then everyone would have an equal chance at dying: the poor, the rich, the smart, the stupid, the college bound, the stoner-going-nowhere. Perhaps when it's YOUR kid out there defending freedom, you might value it a bit more, use your voice a bit more and be less like sheep and more like citizens. We've got lots of bread and circuses, people, and very few citizen soldiers.
I have to say I really feel
I have to say I really feel for you and I personally appreciate your account, but I don't accept that the only way to relieve such a heavy burden is to invade the privacy of these kids without their or their parents' knowledge or consent. Recruiters don't need to hire private companies to collect Social Security numbers and buying habits.
Names and phone numbers are available readily from the phone book, and every child has to have a Social Security number already, and all males 18 and over have to register for Selective Service. They already know who's of military age.
The military needs to come up with something better than this - I just feel they're not trying hard enough.
Those who are against any recruitment at all ought to think again. Somebody has to defend this nation, and we have an all volunteer army. At least be thankful for the great sacrifices our armed forces often make. If you want to end recruitment, then we'll have to go back to the draft.
Great opportunity to waste recruiters time
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Those opposed to the Death Machine can waste hours/days of the recruiters time by pretending to be interested in the military. Let the recruiter waste time on the uninterested, this leaves them no time to convince the gullible.
The Military has a shameful history of throwing away the damaged, used up soldiers it creates.
Dejah's Good Heart
This is not a personal attack, but have you stopped to think that a "leg up in life" to a poor kid at the risk of his/her life may not be as good of a thing as you believe? I'll use myself as an example. I am one of seven children raised by a single mother, a very strong woman to say the least. Growing up in the Midwest we were obviously poor, so poor my wife doesn't believe me to this day. So, I took the ASVAB, scored a 99 because I always did well on tests just to make my mother smile. I had great grades, scored in the top 10 percentile on the ACT, and was in the top 1 percent of my class. Opportunity was there for me in the form of higher education.
However, that 99 was too much for the military to pass by. Even after being accepted to numerous schools under scholarship, I was still poor. The military knew exactly how poor and how much private tuition was, and the difference between my scholarships and that tuition. So they called, and they wrote, and they called, and they wrote. For 3 years this went on, calling me and my mother. My mother being frugal would see 20k free money and just insist I think about it. I did, when I was 16 and didn't know my future was unlimited if I just didn't worry about the money. Two of my classmates who were similar to me economicaly and academicaly joined the Marines and are now dead.
If we were not poor they would not have harrassed me and my friends who are now dead. I do not blame the recruiters for killing my friends, no that lays on the shoulders of GWB. I do blame them for picking on the poor and misfortuned, because "college money" as the recruiters liked to call it means jack shit if you are dead. The military, in so far as the enlisted level, is a return to the feudal system. Protect the corporations interest with the blood of the downtrodden is what the recruitment system is built for and your husband knows this. No offense, but who cares how tired your husband is when he knows that what he was doing was baiting children into signing their own lives away for a few thousand dollars.
_kai_
Really
Let's not make something sinister that is not. We all know, and knew, that the military tries to recruit new candidates. This is not new. We know it is necessary and it there is nothing wrong with it., other businesses do the same including Kaplan and the College Board. They garner information on students using the same techniques. Who do you think the Army paid to operate these websites for them?
Get real people. Some of our kids might actually want to go into the military and will be better for it; I did, and I was...
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I will not be killed working for Regions Bank, so yes there is a difference.
_kai_
Since last year, Army in
Since last year, Army in Poland has resigned from draft and switched to recruiting professional soldiers. There is no sophisticated recruiting campaign as described in this very good piece, but ad campaign also focused on poorer parts of the country, especially small towns with struggling job market. I don't find it surprising. If you think of that, it is natural that poor people would find military carreer and interesting option way more often then wealthy kids. I know it's sad, but it's just the way it is.
Military Recruiting
While there are some concerns about this practice, how about taking on the elite universities that keep ROTC and recruiters off campus, so that the children of privilege don't end up donning the kevlar?
Someone has to protect our country.
The article talks about
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The article talks about companies and the military using a variety of underhanded means to acquire information on teenage kids and young adults. To the point of some companies being taken to court to thwart their practice. The companies do it because there is no accountability. I am telling you if they were put out of business for their actions it would stop overnight. You dump waste into the environment and the government seizes all of the corporate and personal assets of all of the companies officers. There may be one or two companies that are closed and after that it would come to a crashing halt, guaranteed. You cheat your employees - out of business!
"In 2002, New York's attorney general sued SMG for telling high schools it was surveying students for scholarship and financial aid opportunities yet selling the info to telemarketers; the Federal Trade Commission charged ASL with similar tactics. Both companies eventually settled." I say out of business! To hell with letting them settle - and those "non-disclosure agreements" what a load of crap. If you are a bottom feeding scum licking corporation then not only should all of us get to hear about it but you should be out of business.
Put TIME AND LOCATION RESTRICTIONS on the recruiters
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Topics as NCLB, ASVAB, JAMRS, and opt out will never put a stop to war. These are about privacy.
Counter recruitment is of two types: saving my child, and saving everybody's child. When you focus on privacy, that's "saving my child". When you focus on getting recruiters out of the K12 schools, that's saving everybody's child.
I oppose recruitment because I oppose war. All the wars since at least WW2 have NOT been self defense, these have all been aggressions. The U.S. has killed millions of innocent people in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq. Those people never attacked the U.S. So why did we kill them? And? why do we kill, throughout Afghanistan today and onwards, into Pakistan? Did those people attack America? I strongly disapprove of the entire US military. For shame. They are not defending us. They're just suckin money from the USA.
The better question is "Why do we allow the militarists to define their business as "honorable" when we can so easily disprove and destroy their myth? All we have to do is stand tall, and explain that all their killing is dishonorable and a disservice to America.
First, go to your Principal and go to your School Board meeting and tell them you do NOT authorize ANY contact between your minor child and ANY military recruiter, PERIOD. And make it burn and sting. Don't be polite and deferential.
You want time and location restrictions on recruiters. Start a campaign. Most of the large, urban school districts now have limits like 4 times per year, in a specific location such as the career center where recruiters can be supervised. This kills their whole operation. And you will notice, most of the fatalities (Washingtonpost.com Iraq casualities) are from small and rural towns now.
I'll give you a tip: it is politically impossible for a school district to allow recruiters free access to roam the high school campus whenever they want, as often as they want, *IF* you make the argument. Winning is fun. Take up this campaign.
The Draft
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My generation had the draft. This whole recruiter b.s. still happened, but it was considered your duty to register for the draft lottery. Rich kids, like Rush Limbaugh, George W., and Cheney played the system and never served. Others, like John Kerry served their country.
To prey on the young and innocent to fill our military is morally bankrupt. To use marketing to lure them into the service is pathetic. Like paying taxes, military service is considered something for 'other' people.
Thanks, Republicans, for making national security a political game.
