A Response

Usually I write my blogs at the very last moment they're due and my writing is pretty vague and not very well thought out. Thanks Ben, now that somebody else besides you is reading, I have to pay more attention.

So, here I am thinking about the criticism I received in my last post.

I appreciate the well-wishings for my uncle. He'll be okay. The news was just jarring to the family because he's a lifer with only nine months to go before his mandatory retirement. So hopefully he'll come home with no problems and a nice pension check waiting in the mail.

Jake's response to Mr. Campbell summed up most of what I would say in response myself. I would add, of course, that I am pretty biased when I speak to my students about social justice, and this case is no exception. But, this works to my advantage and credit, because my liberal biases are exactly the viewpoints that my students are not aware of. Students in the JROTC are only told what their program is all about by the people who cover up criticisms of it. Informed decisions and value judgments must take into account all aspects of an issue - dissemination of information is of utmost importance in a democracy - and it is not fair to them that they are ignorant of the other side. While I started my blurb in class about JROTC with a decidedly acerbic twist against the JROTC program, I was shocked to find that even students within JROTC were ignorant of its purpose and intent in general, so the session quickly turned into an informative discussion of both sides of the issue - after all, how could I impassion my students to distrust the program if they nothing about it, whether good or bad?

Thus I arrive at the other issue I wanted to address in response to Mr. Campbell. While the military certainly provides an excellent and respectable career option, it should not be the only option. The military is a great way to get out of the hellhole that many students live in, but what a bone it is to throw at the underpriveleged in our society! "Here, kid, our society has stacked the cards against you and neglected you throughout your entire life because you're poor and/or black, and we don't give a shit. Guess what, your only option is to sign your life away, put on a uniform, and possibly become a murderer before you are murdered. We pay pretty well for that, because not many people like going to war and somebody has to do it."

And they don't even know that they're being exploited or fully understand what they're signing for. They're told they'll become better people intellectually and physically, serve our country as a patriot, and be able to buy a shiny new car with the signing bonus. They're not told that being in a war means that you point a gun at someone else and kill before they do the same to you, and don't they have a right to know that? Is it fair that our society tells us that we must fight for freedom because freedom is all-important? Or might it make a free-thinking society think twice knowing that we hypocritically send our undesirables who do not, apparently, have any freedom in the first place to slaughter some hundreds of thousands of innocents in order to set up a democracy?

When it comes down to it, the students have a right to know and be aware of what they're signing up for, not just the pretty polished bullshit version that unpatriotic conservatives push on them. The should have the freedom from joining the military jsut as much as they have the freedom to join it, and if that means the army misses its recruiting goals and there are a few more drug dealers on the streets because didn't want to kill or be killed, I'm more than happy to settle for that; at least they've made an informed decision and done what's right for themselves. There may not be a literal draft in this country, but there certainly is an implicit draft if we're telling our poorest and most neglected kids that they can either be losers or enlist.