Posted on 11/05/2006 4:44:47 AM PST by Pharmboy
SENATOR JOHN KERRY says he flubbed a joke aimed at President Bush when he warned a group of students last week that they would get get stuck in Iraq if they didnt work hard in school. The president says Mr. Kerry demeaned the military by suggesting its men and women were uneducated.
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Is the military a career of last resort for the uneducated?
Though the military has a smaller proportion of college graduates than the country at large, it turns out that it has a higher proportion of people with high school diplomas, according to a comparison of figures from the Pentagon and the Census Bureau.
About 97 percent of the 1.4 million Americans serving in the active duty Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines have graduated from high school or the equivalent, according to Pentagon figures. That compares with 85 percent of all adults 25 years or older who reported they had completed at least high school, according to the Census Bureau.
Roughly 17 percent of the active duty members of the military have a bachelors or graduate degree, the Pentagon figures show, while in the nation as a whole, 28 percent of adults reported they had at least a bachelors degree.
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College graduates have historically been underrepresented because the military focuses most of its recruitment efforts on high school students, and many of them join so they can eventually earn a college degree with the help of the G.I. Bill of Rights.
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The quality clearly improved after we ended the draft and went to an all-volunteer force, said David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland. My sense is that it is going down now slightly at the margins, with fewer high school graduates signing up, but thats only at the margins.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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JOHN KERRY =
Pictures of vietnamese Re-Education Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
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Hold it, I think you're gonna like this Picture:
'THE SOLDIERS BEHIND THE BANNER'
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1731280/posts
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A great example of what I was referring to. Thanks.
The reason for that is that they plan to go all out for Hitlery in 2008. With sKerry out of the running Hitlery won't have to out-pander sKerry for the nut-case left's support and can pretend to be a moderate during her campaign. Unfortunately there are far too many people who might fall for such a ruse.
My oldest brother graduated from high school in 1954. He was the oldest of 6 children. We lived on a sugar cane plantation where my dad worked. There was no way he could afford to go to college and he so wanted to join the Army. He said he could get an education there. And he did, and he did well. He retired 26 years later with 2 tours in Viet Nam, and many other countries where he could take his family.
He returned home and went to work with the state. He worked for the state until his death, 6 years ago today. He was buried with military honors on November 7, 2007, the day President George Bush was elected President for his first term. They both won that day.
And all he had gone into the army was a high school diploma.
Thanks (through you) for your dad's service. The GI Bill is good.
I think you are correct in your estimation. Military benefits allow many soldiers to pursue or finish a degree somewhere down the line. Because they are "nontraditional" students they often take longer than the six years graduation rates are based on. Having encountered several military education programs, there probably is a higher proportion of degrees awarded to 25-35 year olds in the military or recent veterans than the general population. The data is there, it would be an interesting study...
The dog ate mine.
ping
something to Add to that.
When Viktor Belenko took his MIG 25 to Japan. And came to the US. As he was shown around. He did not believe what he was being shown. He thought it was all a CIA setup for him. (a super-market with no long lines.. ya right)
It was not tell he was taken to a carrier and shown flight ops that he started to believe what he was being shown and told was true. As he said:
Ive never seen men work with such proficiency and coordination. They moved so casually, he marveled, without ever being given an order and without anyone shouting at them.
theres no way you can force men to work like that. They must believe in what there doing.
How many of those 18 year old collage pukes have peoples lives in there hands from the job they do.
Add to that not everyone is setup to be a collage bookworm.
The reason that collage is pushed so. Is its a chance for the RATs to get kids away from there parents to fill there heads with mush.
When I got off of active duty I had 24 collage credits just for Navy training I did much less for anything extra.
One of the good lines from the first Rambo movie:
"There I flew helicopters, drove tanks, had equipment worth millions. Here l can't even work parking!"
Everything you say is true...as much as I value my college education, I recognize certain aspects of it now that I did not back then...for example, I remember how taken I was with Sociology. Oh, it made so much sense to me...it was how all societies should be run...I was assigned a book called Walden II, which I thought was wonderful.
I realize now that it was all socialism it was pushing. Embarassingly...I fell for it. Fortunately, my experience in the Military kept me from becoming a liberal, and I made it through the Eighties intellectually and ideologically intact.
With respect to Ranbo...my favorite movie of all time is called "The Best Years of Our Lives", it won the Oscar for Best Movie in 1946, and dealt with the story of three men coming home from the war. One of them was a sailor who had lost both hands, one was a senior Army NCO, and one was an Army Air Force Bombadier who had flown in B-17's over Germany. The movie dealt with the issues they faced returning home, and how they had so much responisibility in the military, but now had to go back to jobs like working as a Soda Jerk. It also dealt with Post Traumatic Stress, but they didn't have the classification of it back then. If you have never seen it, I cannot recommend any movie more highly...the movie is just as relevant today as it was in 1946.
Let us not forget the maturity of the average 20 year old troop as compared with the average College sophomore.
Help spread the word. Feel free to E-mail these "Jon Carry" pictures around to all you know who would appreciate it and get inspired to GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!
"We support those not as smart as John Kerry"- At the Army-Air Force Game
GREAT story!
World turned upside down eh?
Except for those that score well on that exam given by the military to 11th graders. My daughter did VERY well on that test and the recruiters are constantly after her. We get something in the mail every week and a phone call once a month.
She is a good tester, but they would send her home the first week. Smart, but clueless. Full of potential, but short on ambition. On second thought - maybe they should take her........
>>> The Best Years of Our Lives <<<<
If its the one Im thinking about I havent seen that in years.
Is that the one with the Navy guy at a bar and some other guy is spouting off about vets. And the Navy guy pulls a service pin off him and ready to get into a fight with his
hooks?
Wooohooo! ADR Ping!
I LOVE those Cods! Talk about bearing good news on wings...MAIL!
That's the one...the guy is talking about how we should never have fought the Japanese or Germans...we were manipulated into it and should have been fighting with them against the Soviets.
Great movie...
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