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Stopping The Pentagon In High Schools

By Ben Chitty

Counter Recruitment in the City

"It's Spring—the Recruiters Must Be Swarming!"

—Ben Chitty
VVAW East Coast Coordinator

The Pentagon doesn't comment or divulge figures, but military recruiting activity seems to have picked up in New York City high schools. The pitch is tough to make. The job is dangerous—the Defense Department confirms that on the average, 1,500 men and women are killed every year in peacetime training accidents. The advantages aren't so obvious—one in three homeless men in New York is a vet. You can't quit if you don't like it—the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn't recognize resignation from enlistment, or a change of heart. Besides, the young men and women now turning 18 are the children of the Vietnam generation, and families touched by the stupid and brutal futility of that war aren't so thrilled about military service: whatever they think about Vietnam, they know its veterans got a raw deal.

Still, the military signs up new recruits. Two recent controversies show some of the complications and contradictions of that process. In January, a Junior ROTC program was withdrawn from a Manhattan high school. In March, a high school teacher was informally reprimanded for inviting vets to speak about military service to her classes in Brooklyn.

In the spring of 1989, the Board of Education announced that the Air Force would run a JRTOC program in the high school renamed for Martin Luther King, the most prominent and influential apostle of non-violence in recent American history. Facing protests from teachers and students, the principal promised that the teachers could decide whether the school would accept the program. After a pair of debates between a retired Air Force General and Clarence Fitch (USMC, 1966-70, Vietnam 1967-68) from the New Jersey Chapter of VVAW, the teachers voted 2-1 against the program. But, when classes resumed in the fall, the JROTC program was in place, with two military science instructors paid by the Board. The teachers and students redoubled their efforts, organizing press conferences, class discussions, and testimony at Board meetings. Stressing the contradiction between military science and Dr. King's teaching, the campaign enlisted several prominent local African-American politicians, packed two successive monthly meetings of the Board, and finally delivered the coup de grace with a personal letter from Coretta Scott King.

The debate shaped up differently in Brooklyn. For the second year, VVAW joined with Black Veterans for Social Justice, War Resisters League, and Advocates for Children, in the Military Counseling Project, a counter-recruitment program sponsored by the 12th Congressional District Peace Advisory Committee. The central Brooklyn district, which includes Bedford-Stuyvesant, is one of the poorest in the nation. Its representative, Major Owens, has supported the project out of concern for constituents who find that the military does not always deliver on its recruiters' promises.

The project offers speakers (mainly vets) and a video presentation ("Choice or Chance," produced by the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors) to parents' associations, guidance counselors, and junior and senior classes, and participates in career days and job fairs. It has been well received by students, teachers, parents. We make a good case. The armed forces rarely offer useful training; failure is easy and its consequences often disastrous for the recruit; finally, whatever the advertisements and brochures may say, the military is not about education or even adventure—it's about war. The recruiters find our message effective; rather than deal with the questions we raise, they'll pass on any particular school or fair for the time, hoping we'll fade back into the woodwork.

At Prospect Heights, one of the district's high schools, a friend of ours invited us to talk to her home room and science classes, and we did. Once we were there, other teachers asked us to speak to their own classes, and we went. But, when we called our friend to review the day's activity, she told us she was in trouble: an assistant principal had informally reprimanded her, and an invitation to return during Career Week was cancelled. Fortunately, the local teachers' union successfully protested on the grounds of free speech and the value in the educational process of debating real issues.

A cynical attempt to trivialize and denature Dr. King's legacy. A heavy-handed try to silence a conscientious teacher. Important issues, yes, but not what's really going on. Four JROTC programs run in New York city, all in schools with overwhelmingly Black and Latin students. Several schools have applied for the program dislodged from King. And, in the 12th Congressional District, the assistant principals for guidance do not always return our calls or schedule our project. We saw the real problem in the stony faces of the Board as we spoke of recruiting abuses, military injustice, the horror of war. We heard it ourselves in the classrooms. What's the alternative?

The board sets policy for a school system in communities slammed by a collapsing economy, ravaged by the drug trade, occupied by the police, exploited by the landlords, brutalized by corruption. The schools provide vocational guidance, career counseling for students looking at a bleak future—too few jobs, at less than subsistence was; too little housing, for too much rent; too poor an education for a complex society spinning out of control. If the armed forces will take some of the best and brightest students—the teenagers with the self-discipline to resist the lure of criminal life and the ambition to ward off despair, that's an easy answer to a hard question. The military offers to get some of these young people out of the community, save them for some kind of future. If that's the best the public education system can do in 1990 New York City, who wants vets talking to students about any downside of military service?

We see their point, but it's not good enough. Sure, everyone wishes the world were a better place. Meanwhile, of course life does go on, and our children do have to make choices and start adult lives. But this option is special—it can get you killed for no good reason, this year in Panama, ext year in the Philippines, El Salvador, Korea, wherever the U.S. empire finds its investments threatened, its profits thwarted, its policies resisted. It's not good enough to offer to save some of our children by training and arming them to defend the society which destroys their homes, families, and friends.

One of the project's strengths is that the students know we tell the truth. We can't match the Pentagon's hype. We can't create jobs and scholarships. We can't create jobs and scholarships. We can't convert the school system's custodial function into genuine education for democratic citizenship. We can't build a society where the best opportunities lie in service to the community, where life gets better, not worse. At least, not overnight—not in time for this year's crop of 18-year-olds. But, demanding equal time with the recruiters raises these questions, and talking to these young women and men may save some lives. We'll keep on talking.