The only thing wrong with JROTC is that it isn’t universally required.
The New York Times recently published across its front page “When Military Training Is Not an Elective.” While the headline is innocuous enough, the subhead reads, “Public school mandates raise fears of ‘indoctrination.’” The Times report focuses on Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) programs in public high schools, some of which are mandatory or strongly recommended — at least for one semester. The Times appears most concerned with the predominance of these required programs existing in lower-income schools where student body majorities are composed of minorities — suggesting that JROTC is a pipeline of poor minorities into military service, feeding a left-wing mania coming out of the Vietnam war.
As a veteran who dislikes many of the military’s recruitment methods, some of which are just shy of outright duplicity, I believe the only thing wrong with JROTC is that it isn’t universally required. Were I appointed High Lord Chancellor of Education and Traffic Cones, every American student would spend a semester in JROTC, along with shop class and music instruction. The liberal arts should include the art of war, automotive repair, and bugling. Additionally, it’s good for students to understand their relationship with the federal government’s whims at an early age.
The authors write:
[C]ritics have long contended that the program’s militaristic discipline emphasizes obedience over independence and critical thinking. The program’s textbooks, The Times found, at times falsify or downplay the failings of the U.S. government. And the program’s heavy concentration in schools with low-income and nonwhite students, some opponents said, helps propel such students into the military instead of encouraging other routes to college or jobs in the civilian economy.
“It’s hugely problematic,” said Jesús Palafox, who worked with the campaign against automatic enrollment in Chicago. Now 33, he said he had become concerned that the program was “brainwashing” students after a J.R.O.T.C. instructor at his high school approached him and urged him to join the classes and enlist in the military.
“A lot of recruitment for these programs are happening in heavy communities of color,” he said.
Mr. Palafox describes JROTC as “brainwashing.” When considering post-secondary employment and education, is the average high school not both passive and conscious brainwashing in favor of pursuing a college education? University is certainly an analogous model and mode of instruction to high school. If for no other reason than familiarity, public schools “brainwash” students into thinking education consists of desks, highlighters, and Smartboards (not to mention the not-insignificant ideological input from all other textbooks and teachers), and the dismissal of tech schools or immediate employment.
(As a side note, while often trafficking in euphemism, the military has never been coy about sending recruits and transfers to classes quite literally titled “Indoctrination,” “indoc” for short, aboard ships and elsewhere. I appreciated the honesty in marketing even as two weeks of stultifying Powerpoint slide shows flickered past.)
The idea that students are only exposed to “indoctrination” at public schools through JROTC is absurd. Instead, indoctrination is the very point of public education. While I hold many high-falutin’ notions about the value of critical thinking and the liberal education model, most of high school is the equivalent of feeding a reticent dog his medication. The adults say, “Learn this.” The youth say, “Nah.” And then we, Johns Q. Public, pin the buggers down and cram as much information in those galactic vacuums housed behind their pubescent foreheads as we can.
Education is mostly bludgeoning young brains with facts and figures, interspersed with rare moments of analysis and independent thought. In an involuntary relationship such as the student with K-12 public education, one tends to have quite a few disinterested parties into whose hands we bequeath calculators and history books. We’re already coercing attendance, multiple disciplines, and schedules. In terms of forcing kids to do what is best for them, we are across the Rubicon and closing in on the Marecchia.
And really, all of this left-wing grumbling reveals their fear that they cannot entirely control the narrative within public schools.
We can afford a semester of young Americans learning how to dress, develop grit, and conduct themselves seriously. More than that, we should celebrate such programs and look to incorporate more alternative career opportunities into the school day.