Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: High Schools

  • No Child Left Alone By Military Recruiters

    The No Child Left Behind Act which went into effect last week has some surprising implications for high school students. Buried deep within the funding benefits is Section 9528 which grants the Pentagon access to directories with students names, addresses and phone numbers so that they may be more easily contacted and recruited for military service. Prior to this provision, one-third of the nation’s high schools refused recruiters’ requests for students’ names or access to campus because they believed it was inappropriate for educational institutions to promote military service.

    This portion of the Department of Education’s initiative to create better readers, testers and homework-doers is a departure from the previously federally guaranteed privacy protections students have traditionally known. Until now, schools have been explicitly instructed to protect the integrity of students’ information – even to guard students’ private information from college recruiters. Students must consent to releasing their personal data when they take college entrance exams.

    However, since September 11th , educational institutions have slid down the slippery slope in doling out student information when solicited by the FBI and now the Pentagon. Only one university – Earlham in Indiana – declined to release student data when approached after the terrorist attacks last fall.

    The No Child Left Behind act paves the way for the military to have unimpeded access to underage students who are ripe for solicitation for the military. This blatant contradiction of prior federal law is not only an invasion of students’ privacy but an assault on their educational opportunities as well. Too many students are lulled by the siren songs of military service cooing promises of funding for higher education. Too many students have fallen between the cracks due to underfunded educational programs, underresourced schools and underpaid teachers. They are penalized in their educational opportunities for the systemic failure to put our money where our priorities ought to be: in schools.

    It is critical that students, schools and school districts have accurate information regarding this No Child Left Behind Act in preparation for the forthcoming military solicitation. First, the Local Educational Agency (LEA), not individual schools, may grant dissemination of student information. When recruiters approach individual schools, the administration should refer them to the school district office where they are supposed to visit in the first place.

    In some cases, the recruiters on site have coerced employees at individual schools to sign previously prepared documents stating that in refusing to release student information, they are not in compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act and risk losing federal funding. All requests for student information should be referred to the school district’s office and not left to the discretion of individual school employees. School boards, Parent-Teacher Organizations and Student Council/ASB groups can mobilize to support the administrations who are not willing to distribute private student information.

    Second, students or their parents may opt themselves out of this recruitment campaign. So as not to be in violation of the previous federal law which restricts disclosure of student information, the LEA must notify parents of the change in federal policy through an addendum to the student handbook or individual letters sent to students’ homes. Parents and students can notify their school administration and district in writing of their desire to have their records kept secret.

    The San Francisco School District has maintained a policy of non-recruitment by the military and is leading the nation in their efforts to educate parents and students on their right to privacy. As advocates for their students, the district is sending home individual letters to parents outlining their options for protecting their child’s information.

    At the heart of this argument over students’ records and privacy is the true purpose and meaning of education. Is the goal of education to provide a fertile field of students ripe for the picking by the military which will send them to the front lines of battle, potentially never to return? Is the essence of education to dichotomize the availability of quality education between those with ample finances and those with no financial mobility?

    Or is education meant to develop students’ minds, hearts and talents through self-discovery and academic exploration? Does education aim to promote critical thinking skills, empathy for others, understanding of individual roles in community service, and a sense of global connectedness? Was education designed to be an equitable opportunity for all students?

    A newspaper from the U.K., The Scotsman, recently interviewed a young American woman on an aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Eighteen-year-old Karen de la Rosa said, “I have no idea what is happening. I just hear the planes launching above my head and pray that no one is going to get killed. I keep telling myself I’m serving my country.”

    But is her country serving her?

    The relationship between militarism and education is evident. The current Department of Education budget proposal for 2003 is $56.5 billion. The recently-approved Department of Defense budget is $396 billion, nearly seven times what is allocated for education, and more than three times the combined military budgets of Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Sudan and Syria. An escalated war in Iraq could add more than $200 billion to the defense budget as well.

    Students are continually guilted into shouldering the burden of responsibility when they do not succeed in school and all too often accept as inevitable their fate of being sucked into military service. The Leave No Child Behind Act is a wake up call to students to reclaim their privacy, to reinvest their energy into demanding quality education and to remind their leaders that stealing money from education to pay for military is unacceptable.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. December 10th, Human Rights Day, serves as the platform to challenge the No Child Left Behind Act. NAPF encourages students to get informed and become active in asserting their right to privacy and to quality education. For more information, visithttps://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/new/getinvolved/index.htm.

  • Military Recruiting Law Puts Burden on Parents

    Originally Published in the Washington Post

    Christopher Schmitt is careful to protect his son from companies that want to give the teenager credit cards or sell him sneakers. So at this year’s parents night at his son’s Fairfax County high school, Schmitt was dismayed to see a new form in the usual stack of permission slips and reminders.

    This one invited him to sign if he wanted his son’s name, address and telephone number withheld from the Pentagon. Otherwise, the information would be included in a directory of the school’s juniors and seniors that will be given upon request to military recruiters.

    Schmitt signed the form — quickly.

    “Most people probably missed [the form], and it’ll probably be too late,” Schmitt said. “There is a commodity with your consumer history. With the military, the commodity happens to be your children’s information. . . . Once there’s a point of entry, you don’t know where the information is going to go.”

    High schools across the nation must provide the directory — what one school official called “a gold mine of a list” — under a sleeper provision in the new No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted this year. Military officials pushed for it to counter a steady decline in the number of people who inquire about enlisting.

    Many schools already allow military recruiters on campus, sponsor ROTC programs or provide student information to the Pentagon if parents give permission. But many school officials say the mandatory provision — which puts the burden on parents to opt out rather than in — has them in an uncomfortable position.

    Part of their role as educators, they say, is to minimize intrusions so students can learn. Now, they risk losing federal funds if they don’t hand over students’ names to recruiters who, in the words of Chantilly High School Principal Tammy Turner, “want to capitalize on our captive audience.”

    Michael Carr, spokesman for the 38,000-member National Association of Secondary School Principals, said: “Student privacy is a big, big issue with schools. There are a lot of people trying to get identities of students — to get to that market.”

    There has been no uprising against the provision. Many parents and teachers see the armed forces as a possible career path and say that recruiters should have a chance to make their pitch.

    “There are great opportunities for these kids in the military,” said Donna Geren, a retired Navy commander whose son, Kyle, is a senior at West Potomac High School in Fairfax. “A lot of times, kids don’t find out about the scholarships they offer if schools are not allowed to share this information. I don’t see any downside to this.”

    Fairfax School Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech said that few parents have returned opt-out forms, but he thinks it may reflect a lack of attention rather than lack of opposition. “It makes me believe parents basically glossed over it,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll start getting calls from parents when they hear from the recruiters.”

    Although the number of military enlistees has remained fairly constant, the pool of prospective recruits continues to shrink, according to William Carr, director of military personnel policy for the Defense Department.

    More students are going to college, and in the 1990s, the tech boom created plenty of jobs, so the military was no longer the employer of last resort. Even students who express an interest say their parents don’t approve, especially as talk of war with Iraq escalates.

    In the past decade, the number of high school graduates who said they intended to join the military dropped from 32 percent to 25 percent, Carr said. At the same time, one-third of the nation’s 22,000 high schools refused recruiters’ requests for students’ names or access to campus, and the cost of recruiting one person rose from $6,000 to $12,000.

    After the military took its complaints to Congress, Rep. David Vitter (R-La.) sponsored an amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act, a sweeping federal measure passed last year that makes schools accountable for student achievement. Vitter said that military recruiters, who offer scholarships and jobs, deserved to be on par with college recruiters.

    The student directories will be used to contact students by phone and mail, William Carr said. The recruitment effort should not be compared to telemarketing in any way, he said, and it would be illegal to use the data for any purpose other than recruiting.

    “You cannot equate military readiness to a free baseball cap,” Carr said. “There’s a considerable difference.”

    The provision isn’t a perfect solution for recruiters, said Charles Moskos, a professor and military recruiting expert at Northwestern University, but it is more realistic than trying to persuade Jenna Bush — or, better yet, rap star Eminem — to join the Marines.

    “That would change people’s minds,” said Moskos, who was in the Army in 1958 when photographs of a newly drafted Elvis Presley in uniform gave the military a Cold War boost. When he asks recruiters whether they would rather have their advertising budget tripled or see Chelsea Clinton enlist, he said, “they unanimously choose the Chelsea option.”

    The directory, Moskos said, is partly aimed at improving the quality of enlistees, seeking to attract students who stay in school and have other career options. But he isn’t sure it will work. “I don’t think the prime market is high school anymore,” Moskos said. “My research says the most effective recruiter is a friend or family member who made it a career.”

    Rick Jahnkow, program director for the California-based Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft, said the measure misplaces the responsibility. Recruiters “had a lot of pressure to meet their quotas, so they decided to pass the buck to schools,” he said. “Now it’s a huge hammer over the heads of schools, parents and students who will have their privacy invaded.”

    Part of the burden is turning out to be administrative. Shannon Tully, director of student services at South Lakes High School in Fairfax, said a recruiter came to ask for a computer disk with the names on it before she had time to prepare it. “We told him we didn’t have it, and a week later we get an e-mail saying we were a non-cooperating school.

    “They didn’t even let us know” he was coming, Tully said. “What are we supposed to be — a fast-food restaurant?”

    William Carr, of the Defense Department, said he was unaware of that incident and could not comment on it.

    John Porter, principal of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, said he doesn’t see any problems with the law. In the past, the school gave the Pentagon the names of students whose parents opted in, and now it will reverse the process.

    “I see it as one of many opportunities for kids to consider post-graduation,” said Porter, who opposes directories being released to any other group. “It’s a good career choice for some people.”

    Arlington’s assistant superintendent, Alvin Crawley, said that until now, the district has refused to release student directories to anyone, including military recruiters. This year, opt-out forms were sent to all 2,500 of the county’s juniors and seniors, he said, and 130 were returned. So far, he said, recruiters have requested the student directory for only one of the district’s three high schools, Yorktown.

    Jack Parker, principal of Potomac High School in Prince William County, said his school already was in the habit of giving names to military recruiters and letting them recruit on campus during lunch periods.

    “They are not trying to solicit anything,” Parker said. “And if a student doesn’t want to be called, we strike them off the list.”

    Christine Boehm, 17, who attends Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, is less concerned about privacy than about the expense of the unsolicited mailing she received from recruiters. “It’s a waste of government money,” she said. “I’m not planning on going into the military.”

    Kyle Geren, 17, said he has already been contacted by a military recruiter at home — and went to visit him. “I think it’s a good idea the recruitment office knows how to get hold of students before they leave school,” Geren said. “I’m keeping it open as an option.”

  • Military Recruiters Getting a Foot in Door: Federal Education Bill Requires High Schools to Share Student Data

    Published by the Boston Globe

    WASHINGTON – A little-noticed provision in a new federal education law requires high schools to provide names, addresses, and phone numbers of students to military recruiters. Schools that refuse to comply face losing federal education funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

    We opposed it primarily on privacy grounds, that students or parents should be able to control access to directory information, such as names, addresses, ages. That information shouldn’t be sent out to military recruiters unless parents want it sent out.

    Christopher Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union Under the rule, part of the No Child Left Behind Act signed earlier this year, Pentagon recruiters are entitled to students’ contact information unless parents opt out of sharing the data, a requirement that has alarmed civil libertarians and school administrators.

    ”We don’t wish to appear antimilitary. The military is a great first step out of high school for a lot of kids, and it is a fine career for some people,” said Bruce Hunter, a lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators.

    Nevertheless, the association opposed the provision because it took discretion away from local school boards. ”We weren’t happy because we’re a big local control outfit.”

    The law also requires high schools to allow military recruiters the same campus access as administrators give to colleges and job recruiters. Some schools, including those in San Francisco and Portland, Ore., had refused military recruiters access to their campuses on the grounds that the Pentagon discriminated against gays and lesbians.

    Education Secretary Rod Paige sent a letter last month to school administrators explaining the new regulations. Department spokesman Jim Bradshaw said the rationale for the rule was that the military ”felt this was needed to boost recruitment.”

    Major Sandy Troeber, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said the rules were ”brought about by congressional support for military recruiting efforts.” The Selective Service already requires men in the United States to register for the draft within 30 days of their 18th birthday.

    But a fact sheet provided by the Pentagon said that the cost of recruiting had doubled in the past decade and that ”access to students can significantly reduce the costs of recruiting.”

    The Pentagon had been trying for years to insert the recruitment provisions into education legislation to counter what they saw as a lack of cooperation from some high schools, according to lobbyists and congressional aides. But this year the education bill was so loaded with other contentious issues, such as school vouchers, funding matters, and testing standards, that lawmakers who might have fought the new recruitment rules had their energies focused on other provisions.

    ”It wasn’t on anybody’s radar. It was buried so deep in the legislation,” said Kathleen Lyons, spokeswoman for the National Education Association. The group has only recently begun studying the issue and hasn’t yet taken a position on it, she said.

    Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat of Massachusetts and a major negotiator on the Leave No Child Behind Act, had fought successfully for several years to keep the military recruitment rules out of education bills, but couldn’t win the battle this year, especially since bigger education issues were dominating the debate, Hunter said. Senator Tim Hutchinson, Republican of Arkansas, engineered the inclusion of the new language, said a Kennedy staffer.

    ”All this provision does is provide military recruiters with the same access to directory information that colleges currently enjoy,” Kennedy said in a statement.

    Civil libertarians are concerned about the rule nonetheless.

    ”We opposed it primarily on privacy grounds, that students or parents should be able to control access to directory information, such as names, addresses, ages,” said Christopher Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. ”That information shouldn’t be sent out to military recruiters unless parents want it sent out.”

    Under federal privacy laws, schools generally must have written permission from parents or students to release any information about a student’s education record, according to the Education Department. Exceptions include handing records over to a transfer school, to law enforcement in some cases, and to officials who need the information in cases of health or safety emergencies.

    Schools may release what is called ”directory information,” such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and date and place of birth, but they must also give parents the option of refusing disclosure of their child’s information. Schools can decide on their own whether to provide the directory information to outside individuals or organizations.

    The difference under the new rule is that schools will not have the discretion to refuse to provide such information to the military; they must provide the information to recruiters and allow them on campus at the Pentagon’s request.

    Groups such as the American Friends Service Committee and the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, an antimilitary draft organization, have been fielding complaints about the new rules, but are not sure whether they can successfully challenge them, especially in the environment created by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Analysts are looking at whether the rules violate existing privacy law, said Oscar Castro, an AFSC official.

    Jill Wynns, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, said the board’s attorneys are looking at the law to see whether the Bay Area school system can keep any part of its current written policy, which prohibits military recruiters from coming on campus and bars the release of any student information to military recruiters ”or anyone who asks for it.”

    ”We are very upfront about being biased in favor of higher education. We’re telling our kids, `go to college, go to college,”’ said Wynns, adding that schools do not allow businesses to recruit on campuses, either. The military has not yet asked for students’ contact information, but recruiters have demanded and recently been given access to San Francisco high schools for the first time in 12 years, she said.

  • Nonviolence 101

    Conversations pertaining to work often begin like this:
    “What do you do?”
    “I’m a high school teacher.”
    “What do you teach?”
    “Peacemaking.”
    “Huh?”
    And then it takes a moment to register. The follow-up question usually is, “Is that a real class in high school?”

    And thus begins the story of how classes on nonviolence wind up in high schools.

    I tell people about the various chapters, how we start out at the beginning of the semester with personal peacemaking and nonviolent responses to assault. Students always want to know how a pacifist would respond if he or she were to be attacked by a random stranger leaping from the bushes or from behind a dumpster in a dark alley. So I ask them how many of them have ever been physically hit by a random stranger in any way at any point in their lives. Maybe one or two people. Then I ask them how many people have ever been physically hit by a member of their family or someone they know at any point in their lives. Nearly every hand goes up. We worry about the boogeyman and abandoned buildings but fail to address some of the most conflict-ridden arenas, the places where we usually go like home, school and work.

    That’s how the semester begins, by examining our own personal lives. This first chapter introduces students to nonviolence, the myths, the truths and the power of responding with nonviolent force to our precarious lives. We create a working definition of peace, of violence, conflict and of nonviolence. We explore where we need to create spaces for peace in our lives, in our communities, in our state, in our nation and in our world. We start to learn about consensus, following a process and taking turns. We begin to disarm our disbeliefs, our doubts and our misgivings about peacemaking. We start to let our defenses down in order to let peace in.

    After establishing a baseline for conceptualizing nonviolence, the class learns about historical figures who usually get the short end of the stick in traditional high school classes. Primary sources are a must in Solutions to Violence, the name of the course which I teach and which my mentor, Colman McCarthy, founded. We study Gandhi in his own words. We watch A Force More Powerful, the video series by York&Ackerman which aired on PBS in October 2000. We read Dr. King in his own words, and learn about the civil rights movement, hassle lines and nonviolence trainings. The class begins to understand the structure and discipline which nonviolence requires. We then read Dorothy Day, learning about intentional communities and communal living. The students I teach are accustomed to mass marketing, consumerism and capitalism, so Dorothy Day’s commitment to generosity, hospitality and precarity tends to shock them. That chapter demonstrates a very exciting learning curve.

    Next we read Gene Sharp, Tolstoy’s “Patriotism or Peace”, Daniel Berrigan and a very articulate piece by Joan Baez which examines a dialogue between a pacifist and a skeptic. We learn about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq as a result of the economic embargo, about the School of the Americas Watch movement, about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, about sweatshops and maquiladoras, about child labor and child soldiers, about economics and the Pentagon and about the environment and animal rights. By the end of the semester, the Students in Solutions to Violence know how to find alternative news and pacifist perspectives on the Internet from websites like Commondreams, Indymedia and the Nonviolence Web.

    What students really learn…

    “This class made a difference in my life. I see things in a whole new way now that I didn’t see before. I’m not saying this class changed my whole viewpoint on life, but it did help me to be a little more open-minded. I’m seeing a little more color these days than just black and white. I don’t think this class is about learning a bunch of stats and info. It’s more than that. I’ve learned to be a little more positive than negative. I hope that the class becomes required in the future.”

    I hope that my students learn the specifics of nonviolence, that they learn to tell the stories of nonviolence and that they grow in their understanding of key nonviolent figures both past and present. Even more than the facts, though, I hope that they learn about themselves. About halfway through the semester, I ask the class what they think my goals are in teaching Solutions to Violence. Items from the following list invariably arise each semester in their responses to that question:

    Compassion. Compassion is a difficult skill to teach. Everywhere around them in the world, they learn to be tough, not to show their softer side and that kindness is a weakness. Perhaps the best place to start is teaching with compassion. My mentor, Colman McCarthy, gave me some good advice about how to do this. He told me that before every class, he reminds himself to listen more than talk. He says that good listeners have many friends and poor listeners have many acquaintances. Many people like to talk just to hear their heads rattle. The skill of being a good listener is perhaps the most important one in the teaching profession.

    I have learned many things from my students just by listening. In fact, even if I just show up to class and don’t say a word, the students will create their own dialogue because they so often need a forum to vent their emotions and share their experiences. When we study Gandhi and review the nine steps for conflict transformation, “Work on your listening skills” is one of the toughest on the list. I ask my class if, when they’re having a conversation or argument, if they are truly digesting the words of the other person, or if they’re planning in their heads what to say next, letting the other person’s words go in one ear and out the other. We so desperately want to be heard and understood, but have little experience in truly listening with patient hearts.

    Compassion also comes from empathy. I always hope for my students that they make other people’s experiences a part of their own, whether they live in the same town or around the globe.

    Ownership of their learning. Students have very little opportunity to exercise their natural creativity in school in no small part to the reliance on standardized testing and multiple-choice exams. These brain-numbing techniques lull the students into a passive state of receiving information without truly testing the measure of its worth, without examining it for relevance and truthfulness. Standardized tests stratify students into categories that teachers, administrators and colleges are comfortable with, but have little bearing on what students have actually learned.

    I am interested in students learning. I want them to assume responsibility for their own education, and become partners with the school and their teachers in an active pursuit of knowledge. In Solutions to Violence, students have the opportunity to grade themselves, and each semester they report that this is the toughest assignment. The class writes about what they are learning, how they are learning and how it is affecting them in their daily lives. Then they must assign a comparable grade so that the administration is satisfied. Learning ought to be a cooperative process. Sharing power with the students demonstrates respect and attentiveness to their autonomy and gives them the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned. It is also tremendously valuable insight for me to know what parts of the curriculum reach the students and what elements of truth they have gleaned from the stories, videos and discussions.

    This semester, one student said the following: “Why can’t you just give us grades, Miss Wells? I mean, if you gave us grades then we could just be angry with you if we didn’t like them. If we give ourselves grades, we have to live with what we have done and either be angry or happy with our own effort. Can’t you just do our grades for us?” For me, this says it all. Students are too far-removed from the processes by which we measure them. Perhaps we don’t trust them to give honest evaluations of their work. Perhaps it ought to be part of the teacher’s job to evaluate the students independently. But I believe that empowering students to grade themselves is one of the best privileges to bestow on them. They must assume responsibility this way.

    Occasionally, students will respond with less-than-honest recommendations for their grades. So we review what they have written as a part of their evaluation, and use their overestimated grade as a jumping off point. What I have realized all too often, though, when a student grades himself or herself higher than I would have is that I have not accurately measured what that student has learned, and upon closer inspection, I learn that indeed that student has assumed a great deal of responsibility for taking back his/her education. Sometimes it takes a while to know what you know, though, and test-centered accountability does not take into account this gestation period for knowledge to develop.

    Knowledge about the world. Most students do not read the news section of the newspaper. Many students read the sports section, but that is just not comparable. Solutions to Violence teaches them how to dissect the newspaper, learn about the places in the stories and try to connect with the lives of those impacted by international events. We talk about letters to the editor, discuss news items and read through articles, point to places on the map and follow up with case studies about places that interest the students, like Palestine and South Africa.

    But Solutions to Violence is more than just encouraging students to be more informed. It is giving them the tools to take action and create change in their lives, in their school, in their community and in their world.

    In the past few semesters that I have been teaching in California, my students have incorporated their theoretical knowledge about how and why nonviolence works into practical action to address current needs in the community and in the world. For example, in response to learning about the mushroom workers’ struggles to win a contract for fair pay, better health and retirement benefits, the students organized a school-wide canned food drive to benefit the farmworkers. This particular action impressed me because it was during the last week of school and coordinated primarily by the seniors in the class, people who had tuned out of nearly every other subject and had their minds only on graduation.

    Nonviolence is not only about changing the world. Students begin to learn about how their hearts and minds can be transformed by considering peacemaking a legitimate skill. We read a selection from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Peace is Every Step, learning to be mindful of our breathing and to recover ourselves and refocus when our attention turns to anger and potential violence. Many times my students have reported that in a tense situation, one where they were ready to loose their cool, they remembered the conscious breathing exercises we do in class, concentrating on naming our in-breath and out-breath. When they were in control of their own emotions through mindful breathing, they felt less likely to react violently. It is this exact personal transformation which makes me believe that Solutions to Violence is a worthwhile class that ought to be a part of any standard high school curriculum.

    It teaches them how to be better friends, better children, better students and better people. It helps them define their talents, articulate their thoughts and cooperate with each other.

    I, too, am transformed each semester, impressed with the level of life experience and wisdom my students bring. I learn from them as much as they learn from me.

    Teaching peacemaking in school is the most logical non-reactive component to ending intolerance, racism, ageism and all other forms of personal, structural and institutional violence. I am hoping that more people will recognize this and that the movement to teach peace will be the saving grace for the sake of our young people, our communities and our world.
    *Leah Wells is a high school teacher and the Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. This article was initially published in the spring edition of Peacebuilding, the newsletter of the Peace Education Commission.