military recruitment

Tue

Mar

2016

Young and Desperate? I want you to fight my wars!

New translation available

Submitted by hannah

“Don’t join the Army.”

“Don’t do what? Don’t leave here? Don’t learn new skills?”

These are the words from the new recruitment advert from the British Army to recruit new members to its ranks. It depicts a...

Tue

Mar

Campaign launched to reform “disproportionate” military visits to Scottish schools

Submitted by antimili-youth on Tue, 08/03/2016 - 15:13

By Michael Gray, CommonSpace

Forces Watch, a military reform group, and the Quakers faith group have launched a petition to the Scottish Parliament in favour of increased transparency and scrutiny of armed forces visits to schools.

Previous military data revealed a “disproportionate” 1783 visits to 377 Scottish education institutions across a two year period, with at least a third of visits concerning careers advice.

Fri

Feb

Why Is My Kindergartner Being Groomed for the Military at School?

Submitted by Gary on Fri, 05/02/2016 - 13:23

Military recruitment efforts, whether societal or sponsored directly by the US military, reach children as young as preschool, priming them to think of war and soldiering as cool and exciting, without any discussion of the trauma and death they bring. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

By Sarah Grey, Truthout

When he got home from Iraq, Hart Viges began sorting through his boyhood toys, looking for some he could pass on to his new baby nephew. He found a stash of G.I. Joes - his old favorites - and the memories came flooding back.

Tue

Jan

SkoolLive - School Jive - A new, interactive digital invasion of our high schools by corporations and the military

Submitted by Gary on Tue, 19/01/2016 - 18:42

High school students line up to use the new SkoolLive kiosks

Pat Elder -

For years DOD recruiting commanders have attempted to circumvent student privacy protections that are designed to shield minors from the wholesale transfer of student information from the nation's high schools to the Pentagon's Military Entrance Processing Command.

The DOD markets "career opportunities" through the schools, relying on a variety of methods, from Channel One, a 12-minute, highly commercialized, daily TV program that reaches as many as 5 million children a day, to various posters and announcements touting military service or other schemes like the Career Exploration Program. For the most part, however, these outreach efforts ultimately rely on the schools as a third party from which to extract student data. Until now, the DOD's quest for greater access to children has been somewhat stymied by pesky state and federal laws that regulate the flow of student information from the schools.

Fri

Dec

British Army urged to stop using armed teenagers to guard barracks

Submitted by antimili-youth on Fri, 18/12/2015 - 13:10

By Shiv Malik, The Guardian

ForcesWatch report calls on UK military to stop recruiting minors altogether, as armed forces bill due for third reading

Britain’s military should stop using armed under-18s to guard soldiers’ barracks, a report into Ministry of Defence recruitment practices is set to say.

Thu

Nov

DoD Starbase Militarizes Education for Disadvantaged Children in the USA

Submitted by Gary on Thu, 26/11/2015 - 17:55

The U.S. Department of Defense recently released their 2014 DoD Starbase Annual Report covering this program's impact on 10 to 14 year old children in U.S. public schools. One of the Starbase organizers is Major General Lee Tafanelli, of the Kansas National Guard, and his comments reveal how normalized and commonplace has become the language of militarization inside U.S. Schools. As part of the "community covenant " strategy of the Pentagon to "own" townships and school districts to support and participate in military focused science and math programs, children are now openly given science education directly related to defense issues. Starbase proponents focus their outreach in poorer districts , where children are at greater risk to conditions of poverty or lack opportunities afforded to youth living in more affluent areas and attending better funded schools.

Mon

Nov

Education as Enforcement:Militarization and Corporatization of Schools

Submitted by Gary on Mon, 02/11/2015 - 16:25

The Chicago Memorial Day parade is Saturday, May 23, 2015, had 80 percent of the parade was hundreds and hundreds of children, in military uniforms, proudly marching behind military banners.

Kenneth J. Saltman - Public schools in the United States have increasingly come to resemble the military and prison systems with their hiring of military generals as school administrators and heavy investment in security apparatus—metal detectors, high-tech dog tag IDs, chainlink fences, and real-time Internet-based or hidden mobile surveillance cameras—plus, their school uniforms, security consultants, surprise searches, and the presence of police on campuses.1 But it would be a mistake to understand the preoccupation with security as merely a mass media-driven hysteria in the wake of Virginia Tech and other high-profile shootings, and myopic to ignore the history of public school militarization prior to September 11.

Sat

Oct

Do Military Recruiters Belong in Schools?

Submitted by Gary on Sat, 31/10/2015 - 02:46

David Cameron, who attended the Combined Cadet Force at Eton, has set a target of creating 100 new units in state schools by September in order to build “character, grit and determination” in teenagers, thereby improving their exam results.

By Seth Kershner & Scott Harding -

The United States stands alone among Western nations in allowing military recruiters to work inside its educational system. Section 9528 of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act requires that public high schools give the military as much access to campuses and student contact information as is given to any other recruiter. However, University of Kansas anthropologist Brian Lagotte finds that school officials do not fully understand this policy and often provide military recruiters unrestricted access to their campuses. Many schools allow military recruiters to coach sports, serve as substitute teachers, chaperone school dances, and engage in other activities. In some cases, recruiters are such a regular presence in high schools that students and staff regard them as school employees.

Fri

Oct

French school condemned after students try out unloaded assault rifles

Submitted by antimili-youth on Fri, 30/10/2015 - 07:41

Defence ministry promises disciplinary action after Flastroff school’s ‘meet-the-army’ workshop saw pupils aged 10 and under pose with Famas rifles

France’s defence ministry has said it will take disciplinary action over a primary school “meet-the-army” workshop at which pupils aged 10 and under took part in an exercise with unloaded assault rifles.

But educational authorities, while summoning teachers to explain the incident at a village school in Flastroff, in north-eastern France, suggested it had been more the result of a surfeit of enthusiasm than anything sinister.

The workshop might have gone unnoticed but for a photograph posted on social networks showing a dozen children lying flat out like soldiers, fingers on the triggers of Famas assault rifles.

Fri

Oct

Military Classrooms? Strategy wargames played out in German schools

Submitted by antimili-youth on Fri, 30/10/2015 - 07:08

Here is a short report by Peter Oliver from RT News about the recruitment operations of the German Armed Forces, Bundeswehr, and activists resisting against this increasing flow of war propaganda in Germany.

Military Classrooms? Strategy wargames played out in German schools

Tue

Sep

Israel’s army and schools work hand in hand, say teachers

Submitted by antimili-youth on Tue, 29/09/2015 - 12:03

By Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye

Close ties means Israeli pupils are being raised to be "good soldiers" rather than good citizens

HAIFA - The task for Israeli pupils: to foil an imminent terror attack on their school. But if they are to succeed, they must first find the clues using key words they have been learning in Arabic.

Arabic lesson plans for Israel’s Jewish schoolchildren have a strange focus.

Those matriculating in the language can rarely hold a conversation in Arabic. And almost none of the hundreds of teachers introducing Jewish children to Israel’s second language are native speakers, even though one in five of the population belong to the country’s Palestinian minority.

The reason, says Yonatan Mendel, a researcher at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, is that the teaching of Arabic in Israel’s Jewish schools is determined almost exclusively by the needs of the Israeli army.

Pages

Languages

Countering Military Recruitment

WRI's new booklet, Countering Military Recruitment: Learning the lessons of counter-recruitment campaigns internationally, is out now. The booklet includes examples of campaigning against youth militarisation across different countries with the contribution of grassroot activists.

You can order a paperback version here.