maybe under President Trump
Posted on 11/01/2016 5:30:15 PM PDT by Kaslin
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the Pentagon is going to be assessing which schools are making life difficult for military recruiters with a plan to "educate" institutions about the law and ease access.
In describing the "Force of the Future" initiatives on a visit to City College of New York’s Manhattan campus today, Carter included the effort in "some important new things to help each of the services improve their recruiting efforts to increase our access geographically, demographically and generationally."
"For example, I've heard from some of our recruiters that some high schools aren't giving them the access they feel they need to be able to do their jobs. Now the law requires schools to give our recruiters a basic level of access, and while it seems many schools are complying with that, recognizing the DoD might offer their students an exciting and impactful careers, some others are putting up roadblocks. This is wrong," he said.
"So as part of a new program to help recruiters, we're gonna survey them and identify where exactly they face impediments to access and what the most useful types of access actually are so we can educate those educators who may not be complying with the law or who may be making life harder on their students and recruiters and find a way to improve that."
Carter said the goal "is to better educate schools about our mission and help them realize they should want to let us in because it'd be a missed opportunity for their students if they don't."
The Armed Services will also be "experimenting," he said, "with having their recruiters be more mobile, leveraging technologies so they can recruit across a wider geographic areas."
"And they'll also review some of the benchmarks kids currently have to meet in order to join the military," the secretary added.
Carter said recruiters have told him of "spectacular potential recruits" who didn't meet benchmarks such as "current physical fitness, tattoos they got when they were younger, single parenthood and the like."
"Now, some of these things we'll never be able to compromise on. We'll always have to maintain high standards. At the same time, these benchmarks must be kept relevant for both today's force and tomorrow's, meaning we have to ensure that they're not unnecessarily restrictive. So we're gonna review and update these standards as appropriate," he said.
Currently, Carter said, military recruiting "tends to be most successful in the South, the Southwest, Big Sky country, and most difficult in the Northeast."
"And that's paradoxical since the Northeast is among the regions with the highest percentage of young Americans who have the qualifications to serve," he added. "...These geographic gaps represent an opportunity -- a great opportunity for us to draw talent from places where we haven't been."
The Defense Department, he said, is "going to change how we highlight our mission through advertising."
"Although the Defense Department used to advertise the value of military life as a whole, we got away from that over the last several years. In some ways, we're a victim of our success with so many people signing up after 9/11 and the Great Recession. Now we're getting back into it. I mean, we're starting to advertise the value of military life and public service again in the service's recruiting ads," Carter continued.
"...We won't be selling the newest phones or trying to get you signed up for the newest credit card. Ultimately what we're selling is service and mission, a chance to be part, as I said, of something bigger than yourself that will not only do something good for you, but that you serve others."
Not only potential recruits will be targeted by the ads, he said, but "parents, grandparents, coaches, teachers, guidance counselors and more who might influence a potential recruit."
The Pentagon is also going to create a DoD speaker's bureau to send out to audience such as "schools, parents, teachers, principles, coaches, career counselors, civic groups, cultural groups, youth groups, companies and more."
Just say that if recruiters cannot come on campus, all government funding to the school is revoked.
I went to a military JROTC high school. And, I was then amused watching ROTC in college, because I could out drill/dress any of them when I was 15. And, I wasn’t carrying the pansy-arse public school mentality. A friend, no ROTC background, walked down to the recruitment day near graduation -signed up to be a Marine helicopter pilot. Earned the distinguished flying cross. No joke.
Initial consideration of the issue presented by this tread is this. The Constitution’s Clause 16 of Section 8 of Article I trumps any INTRAstate school policy prohibiting school access to military recruiters through the Supremacy Clause (6.2).
But some (all?) schools are possibly not aware of the Supremecy Clause because schools are foolishly evidently foolishly not teaching the Constitution anymore.
Corrections, insights welcome.
I agree that single parents should NOT be joining the military. Who is going to watch the de facto orphan during deployment?
Active Duty ping.
I served as a Navy Recruiter in New England in the late 80’s, early 90’s. It was shocking to see the effort that high school counselors put in to blocking my access to perform any kind of presentation to their students.
Oddly, it was the less affluent communities that sneered the most at me. They were to busy stuffing B.S. student loans down their senior class’s throats, and lining them up with any school or beauty college that would accept them. It was all about “college numbers”. There was no higher education credit given to a counselor who “let” a student join the military, no matter how much training they were to receive. Most of the teacher were in on it too.
It became a battle, where I would tell those kids that the counselor was putting their own best interests above that of the students. I couldn’t stand their arrogance, and still look down on the profession, in general, because of it.
maybe under President Trump
Why wait, revoke state funding from schools so kids have a better chance at life.
I may take flack for saying this but I’m somewhat wary of the idea of military recruiters in high schools. Because I HAVE seen military service sold to starry-eyed youngsters with G.I. Joe fantasies or thought that being an infantry grunt beat flipping burgers. Then they got packed off to Vietnam 2 & 3 in the middle east.
I know what I’m speaking about here because this happened to my own pastor’s daughter who was told she could ‘escape’ her parents by joining the Army with the ulterior motive of it ‘straightening her out’...then she got deployed to Afghanistan as a medic and the reality of that brilliant idea hit home. She made it back. Other families weren’t so lucky.
People, the captive audience those recruiters are enticing are the exact same kids that conservatives correctly observe have absolutely no business deciding the nation’s future at 18 because they’re still a mentally unstable bag of hormones with no life experience. We are not in a war of survival and there is no required draft. There is precious little reason to be squandering the dwindling number of native-born American children who survive legalized infanticide in a conflict that has stretched on longer than World War Two with no end in sight.
And let’s not forget the recent scandals with the VA, all those soldiers who did NOT get what they were promised and never. damn. will. in addition to the myriad of stories of recruitment bonuses that never materialized and exaggerations by recruiters.
And for the record I am all for yanking federal benefits from schools that won’t allow recruiters. If they want the dinero they can put up with a slick-dressed salesman for the Marines once in a while...and if they whine about it they can do WITHOUT the tax dollars.
I’m not sure how I feel but thank you for your perspective.
AF Recruiter for a very short time in Late 80’s. Same routine.
I hold a special place of contempt for High School Guidance Counselors. They are filth.
Your view is well founded
I knew recruiters that were absolute lying scum. Knew others that were honest and hard working-the best interest of the kids were part of the equation along with the mission
Solution: Take the current leadership out of recruiting-they are brutal assholes that drive the line recruiters to stupid things in order to make goal.Instill a true military chain of command and support instead of the bastardized Mafia Like organization in place
Quota’s? I can see the need, but the brutal bottom line emphasis is fostering the lying pricks that exist now.
On another note-in a limited defense of recruiters, many people have a tendency to hear what they want and conflate what they want to hear. The disappointment afterwards is blamed on the recruiter. Plenty of responsibility to go around
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