Posted on 03/08/2011 5:46:08 PM PST by Virginia Ridgerunner
Justin Merrill had wanted to join the military for as long as he could remember.
"Everyone on my mom's side of the family was a Marine, and everyone on my dad's side was in the Army," explained Merrill, 18, of Danville, Montour County, in central Pennsylvania. "I wanted to do something to help my country."
But Merrill's plan was jeopardized last year, when he learned that the Army did not approve of the high school diploma he was on track to earn from Agora Cyber Charter School.
"When I told my recruiter, the first words out of his mouth were, 'I'm not sure you can join the military because you're not going to a brick-and-mortar school,'" Merrill recalled.
As enrollment in Pennsylvania's 11 cyber charter schools swelled to about 25,000 students statewide last year, Merrill and others who hope to enlist in the military after graduation are finding their plans derailed by an obscure Department of Defense policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at yorkdispatch.com ...
Apparently online degrees are only acceptable when public school teachers use them to add $15K to their salaries with a master’s degree in “people studies” or some stupid sh!t like that.
So a GED is not acceptable anymore? A graduate of these cyber-schools should have no problem acing that test.
I got my GED in 10th grade so I could join the Navy at age 17.
I got my GED in the 10th grade too.
But just to get the hell out of there...
As a science college instructor, I don’t believe that a graduate from a cyber school has the same education than a graduate from a brick and mortar school. Lab time is essential for a proper command of biology and chemistry. And those videos of dissections, or of chemical reactions, do not come anywhere close to the real deal. That said, I believe a cyber degree is better than a GED. Maybe the tier system needs to be changed to accomodate this variety of recruits.
Would someone who never had the social skills to spend 6 hours a day in a classroom be any good in a bunker or a submarine. Maybe a nuke silo in Nebraska. Do we still have those?
I'm upset with some of the medical bureaucracies and specific people who make these decisions, not the military as a whole
Should’ve told the recruiter he was gay, problem solved.
What does dissecting a frog or cat REALLY teach me about biology?
Answer - not much. And I majored in Biology in college.
Don’t recruits take the ASVAB anymore?
Maybe they should just give everybody who wants in a standardized test. Measure whatever you want to measure. Take the best. Is that so hard?
Then wouldn't that count against home-schoolers as well?
“Would someone who never had the social skills to spend 6 hours a day in a classroom be any good in a bunker or a submarine. “
Probably better than those whose social skills are learned from their peers in the typical public school...
The ol’ “social skills” again.
OK, I homeschool my daughter. She is well socialized and dances about 30 hours a week this year, her senior year of high school. She is currently taking an online college class, not a cyber school, in US History. She is also doing Calculus with her Engineering father.
SOME people want to do OTHER things than sit in a d@mn school all day, because they ARE well socialized.
In fact, most schools campus designs are based on low security prisons. So, I guess brick and mortar schools prepare people to end up in jail, right?
yesh.
They claim over 4500 students btw. How much individual attention from the "certifed teachers" do you think they get?
My daughter is learning social skills from...ADULTS, and older siblings, and kids at church, and not from the juvenile jerks and communist teachers found in schools. She is soooooo deprived.
Social skills from a machine? You go, HAL!! How many times have you heard that the military is all about bonding with your unit. Or, is that not on the internet?
I homeschool, and I believe there had been problems of homeschoolers getting into the Military years ago.
It was solved in the Bush years, if I remember right.
But, that was before the cyber school thing started to take off. Some of the homeschool book dealers have the option of DVD’s or online classes now.
The standard, “oh, you need to do labs in a lab, so that computer class won’t count” meme is out there. But here is the reason. If brick and mortar schools aren’t as necessary, can you imagine the changes to the school system we have in place today? Thousands upon thousands of schools, and universities, will become obsolete. Along with most of the teachers.
This is why homeschooling has been such a threat to the established education hierarchy. Any concerned parent, regardless of their education level can give their children a good and solid education. The stratified school system is old and out of date.
LOL! Back in the day (Vietnam), you could be drafted or join if you had a pulse, no other requirement needed. How times have changed. ;-)
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