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Ed Webb

Thousands of Youths Are Compelled to Join Military's Junior ROTC - 0 views

www.yahoo.com/...-join-militarys-154348130.html

USA US military education schools minorities

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Dec 22 - No Cached
  • JROTC programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.
  • A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households
  • parents in some cities say their children are being forced to put on military uniforms, obey a chain of command and recite patriotic declarations in classes they never wanted to take
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • 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
  • While Pentagon officials have long insisted JROTC is not a recruiting tool, they have openly discussed expanding the $400-million-a-year program, whose size has already tripled since the 1970s, as a way of drawing more young people into military service. The Army says 44% of all soldiers who entered its ranks in recent years came from a school that offered JROTC.
  • military officials point to research indicating JROTC students have better attendance and graduation rates, and fewer discipline problems at school.But critics have long contended the program’s militaristic discipline emphasizes obedience over independence and critical thinking
  • Schools also have a financial incentive to push students into the program. The military subsidizes instructors’ salaries while requiring schools to maintain a certain level of enrollment in order to keep the program. In states that have allowed JROTC to be used as an alternative graduation credit, some schools appear to have saved money by using the course as an alternative to hiring more teachers in subjects such as physical education or wellness.
  • freshman enrollment in JROTC “often operated like a prechecked box: students were automatically placed in JROTC and they had to get themselves removed from it if they did not want it. Sometimes this was possible; sometimes it was not.”
Ed Webb

No winners in the tragicomic colonial blame game | Emmanuel Macron | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...tragicomic-colonial-blame-game

history opinion Africa colonialism empire France Italy Russia

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Dec 22 - Cached
  • Being anti-colonial is now trendy. Modern imperialists are thus less forthright about the nature of their country’s conduct in Africa than their predecessors. Many of them, regardless of their actual inclinations, are paying lip service to human rights, and framing their politics and policies as anti-colonial. So much so, they happily accuse each other of neo-colonialism. Meloni’s criticism of France’s “colonial currency” is accurate. Macron’s criticism of Russia’s “predation project” in Africa is also accurate. And even Lavrov and Putin are not lying when they talk of the West’s “bloody crimes of colonialism”. But these “hot takes” are not worthy of celebration coming from political leaders who have no interest in critically engaging with their own countries’ neo-colonial policies or taking steps towards building mutually beneficial relationships with African nations.
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