BS: No Child Left Unrecruited

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 Oct 04 - 09:38 PM

"Star Troopers" was of course, when originally written a brilliant parody of the US Militaristic Society. The Movie cleverly updated the technology, but left the politics alone... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Sorcha
Date: 21 Oct 04 - 09:19 PM

I don't recall any of us kids getting recruiter calls....I graduated in 69, brother in 74 and sis in 76. Since neither of our kids live here anymore (but they still call) I get to have some fun with them. Oh, do you really want a single surviving son of (same) who is a convicted felon?.....they usually hang up pretty quick. Also, I don't recall ever taking this test you are talking about.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: dianavan
Date: 21 Oct 04 - 07:51 PM

Rapaire - I think we must have given similar bogus answers. If we could understand that these tests were BS, then whats wrong with people today that think that the results are accurate?

d

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Oct 04 - 08:57 AM

Recruiters called us at home back in the '60s.

I took the Cutter Vocational Aptitude Test in High School. I thought it was silly so I fooled with it. Turned out I was most suited to be a mortician.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: dianavan
Date: 21 Oct 04 - 12:02 AM

Doesn't anybody in the U.S. have any brains left? (excepting Mudcatters, of course).

I was asked to take a standardized test in grade 6. It was supposed to show my aptitude for certain types of work. When the results were returned, my best chance for employment was to become a taxidermist!

All standardized tests are there to fulfill somebodies political agenda. They are not given for any other reason.

d

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Alice
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 11:48 PM

My son has gotten the phone calls from recruiters (he is 17). I don't remember my brothers getting such calls on our home phone, and that was during Viet Nam. When did they start calling kids at home like they do now?

Alice

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Sorcha
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 03:57 PM

Well, in the US at least, women are not allowed in combat positions..so they don't get to kill people, usually.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 03:26 PM

The mission of the military is "to close with and capture or kill the enemy." Not peacekeeping -- the military isn't set up for that -- but peacemaking, because there is nothing quite so peaceful as a dead man.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: PoppaGator
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 02:36 PM

Sorcha, good for you! ...for asking "Will she be allowed to kill people?" thereby getting the recuiters off your daughter's back. Of course, she would be not only allowed, but encouraged, to do so -- but to admit as much would be bad public relations, wouldn't it?

Reminds me of Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in the movie "Stripes." They go the Army recruiting office, and the sergeant asks them, "Are either of you two men homosexual?"

The response: "No, but we're willing to learn."

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: belter
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 02:26 PM

Up until the mid to late 19th century, the navy primarily "recruited" by using press gangs. That is they kidnaped any more or less able bodied man they could get there hands on. Ofcoarse most desereted first chance they got. As for as I can see, the difference between press gangs and a draft is the amount of paper work.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 09:07 AM

Bruce Wright was a year or so ahead of me in college. Bruce received a letter stating his failure to register for the draft meant his immediate induction -- and Bruce, a good citizen, responded with her picture and a copy of her birth certificate. She received a nice note apologizing for the mistake.

In her senior year she was drafted again and told to report for immediate induction.

She wrote a letter saying that she didn't think her fiance wanted to postpone their wedding. She didn't hear from the Draft Board again.

Actually, the ASVAB is a pretty good test. Military recruitment, however, should be done like any other college or employment recruitment.

Even back in 1963, when I graduated from HS, I was asked to dance by all of the services.

Like Nancy Reagan said, "Just say no."

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: freda underhill
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 08:16 AM

In my former refugee work, I have met young people from African countries and from Afghanistan who were child soldiers. They were used as cannon fodder by invading forces who have killed thier parents and then conscripted them into their own armies.

The Human Riights Watch report into child soldiers in Africa 2004 (http://www.hrw.org/wr2k4/11.htm) tells the sad story.

(excerpt follows).....
As the end of wars in Sierra Leone, Angola, and elsewhere freed thousands of former child soldiers from active armed conflict, new conflicts in Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire drew in thousands of new child recruits, including former child soldiers from neighboring countries. In some continuing armed conflicts, child recruitment increased alarmingly. In Northern Uganda, abduction rates reached record levels in late 2002 and 2003 as over 8,000 boys and girls were forced by the Lord's Resistance Army to become soldiers, laborers, and sexual slaves. In the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where all parties to the armed conflict recruit and use children, some as young as seven, the forced recruitment of children increased so dramatically in late 2002 and early 2003 that observers described the fighting forces as "armies of children."

It's ironic that the US government is now actively recruiting schoolchildren into the US army. The process may be a little more sophisticated, the intention is the same.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: LilyFestre
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 07:09 AM

There was recently something written about this here, in my own community. The schools will keep your information private and will not send your children to the recruiting assembly (or whatever. If you send in a written letter stating that you do not want your child to participate and do not want your information given out, they will honor that.
    This school district condones corporal punishment and will use it as a disciplinary measure unless a note is sent in denying that "priviledge" as well.

Michelle

PS. I graduated from high school in 1986 and I remember taking the ASFAB tests in the 11th grade....anyone receving higher all got recruiting calls and such....didn't anyone else have to take those tests? Currently I am taking college courses and my university email is bombarded with stuff from the recruiter.....join the reserves, make extra party money, etc. I wrote and told the guy that I am an 800 pound 35+ year old woman and party money just is NOT going to motivate me to give up ANY of my weekends......LOL. They stopped writing after that!

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 04:17 AM

Quote from brucie "Makes a guy wonder if we are all part of a big machine."

Anyone remember Chief "Broom" Bromden from One Flew Over THe Cuckoo's Nest?
He was convinced that that Nurse Ratched (The Big Nurse) was a member of something called the Combine. The Combine gets everyone in the end....

I am beginning to think that Chief Bromden may have had a point.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 04:03 AM

Boy this is a depressing thread.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: DougR
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 01:30 AM

I think military recruiters have been allowed in the schools for ages, JTS. They certainly were in 1947, and that's a long, long time ago.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Amergin
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 12:21 AM

they dont want kids left behind from foreign economic wars.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Amos
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 12:03 AM

Oh!! So THAT's what "no child left behind" means!! Kinda like the 12 year old JungBunders who, in the last days of Germany's war were urged to pick up guns and head for the front to shoot at Allies....


A

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Peace
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 12:01 AM

However, we opened the 'corporate doors' to our schools when we allowed soft drink manufacturers access on an exclusive basis. We seem to be doing lots of that crap lately. Happening in Canada too. Makes a guy wonder if we are all part of a big machine.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: CarolC
Date: 20 Oct 04 - 12:00 AM

I've been thinking lately that the way they're structuring things here in the US the last number of years is for the job market and the economy to be just bad enough (through tax incentives for companies who send jobs overseas, etc.) for young people (middle and lower income young people) to be desperate enough to need to join the military in order to just get by in life. And the "no child left behind" initiative is resulting in a rise in the dropout rate. Schools would rather see people drop out than to test badly and cause the schools to be penalized for having low test scores. So that increases even further the number of desperate young people.

It looks to me like someone is seeing the US as noting more than a breeding and training ground for the warrior class of the "New World Order".

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:58 PM

I know it has been. And I remember people refusing to take it. I don't think the kids were told they didn't have to take it.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Sorcha
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:57 PM

Our kids got sooooo damn sick of the recruiters calling here...for son I started saying he was a convicted felon (not quite true) and daughter would ask if she would be allowed to kill people.....they soon stopped calling

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Amergin
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:53 PM

it was probably the ASVAB test...that has been going on for years and years....

as an aside when i attempted to joing the navy i scored an 84 on that test....over twice the average....i could have done anything if my hearing were better.

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: GUEST,SRS
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:37 PM

My daughter (junior in HS) had to take a test last week. Something they were taken out of class for. Turns out it is something to evaluate each kid as far as their ability should they join the military. Not only are they able to recruit in school, they're able to "cherry pick" by testing for the best they can get then putting on the pressure. It's a nasty business. I think that once she caught on, the test received some rather nonsensical answers (and more power to her!).

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:31 PM

Yeah, this is a slam dunk for the Bush folks... Pump out their chests and say that they have reformed the education system in America... Then Bush won't write the checks to fund the program but leaves intact the military's unrestricted assault on poor kids in the public schools to recruit them...

"Well, we're gonna get you outta the ghetto, and provide you opportunities to attend college and make something of yourself..."

Ahhh, lot of them kids wonderin where Bhagdad Community College is???

The only opportunity these kids are gettin' is an opportunity to come home either in a body bag or disabled for life...

And the no-child-left-behind beat goes on...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Peace
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:02 PM

The Bush administration has been having a field day with that legislation.

Subject: BS: No Child Left Unrecruited
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 10:54 PM

Did anyone know that one of the conditions for "No Child Left Behind" grants is that military recruiters be allowed in the school buildings and that the Schools give the recruiters the home phone numbers and addresses of each student? :eek

Michael Moore would have a field day with that little bit of info.