46 in the collection
U.S. Military Recruiters' New Pitch is Aimed at the Parents
Ohanian Comment: Although this "article" appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, it reads like a press release. Clearly, one goal of NCLB is to get more kids into the military. Anybody with relatives in the military knows just how "winning" a career option it is.
Drew Brown and Dune Lawrence
WASHINGTON - Ask Mark Jones how he's doing and he says, "I'm living a dream."
Jones, 35, is the founder and CEO of his own VIP protection service. He's an avid skydiver, a competitive ice-sculptor, and a professional cook. And he says he picked up all these skills in one place - the U.S. Army.
Like many American soldiers today, Jones, a former Army Ranger, had it in his blood: Both his parents were drill sergeants.
"My mother was an extremely big inspiration - being a drill sergeant and running around in that Smokey the Bear hat," Jones said.
A new Pentagon recruiting ad campaign, featuring Jones and four other role models, aims to persuade more parents to see the military as a winning option for their children. Parents usually can make or break the deals that recruiters want their offspring to sign.
But according to a 2002 Pentagon survey, most parents today view military service as a last resort, far behind continuing school and finding a job. The exceptions tend to be parents like Jones' who have served in uniform themselves, and their numbers are shrinking in these days of a downsized, all-volunteer military.
Growing parental bias, or even just ignorance of the military, threatens to compound the military's, and especially the Army's, difficulties attracting all the high-quality recruits it needs to staff and maintain increasingly sophisticated equipment and meet growing commitments in dangerous places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
The proportion of new recruits who were high school graduates dropped to 91 percent in fiscal 2000 from a peak of 98 percent in 1992, according to the Pentagon's latest personnel study. That means a force that's less skilled and harder to train and a military skewed to lower-income groups with fewer career choices. The cost per recruit is up sharply, too, from $6,500 a decade ago to $11,600 after adjusting for inflation.
And that was before the Iraq war. Combat there may be impressing young adults, but it's probably frightening many parents and that will hurt recruiting, said Charles Moskos, a sociologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who specializes in the military.
"The ongoing casualties we are suffering in Iraq will definitely have a negative effect on recruitment," Moskos said.
If he's right, services stretched thin by duty in Iraq and Afghanistan could soon be stretched even thinner.
The campaign and recruiting Web site at www.todaysmilitary.com aim to show parents that the military offers great training for almost any career. It features attractive young veterans talking about how traits acquired in the military - attention to detail, a sense of mission, leadership skills, and such traditional martial values as honor and courage - helped them succeed in civilian life.
It will take a lot to convince parents such as Daisy Saunders, a Washington suburbanite with two adult daughters. She might have proposed the military to them "if that was the last thing they could consider," she said recently, "but there were so many other things they could do."
That doesn't mean Americans don't appreciate the military, said George Rogers, executive vice president of Mullen Advertising, the Boston-area public-relations firm that developed the campaign.
Eight out of 10 polled, Rogers reported, said they saw the military as a positive contributor to society. "The problem is that when you ask parents, they say: 'Well, that's great, but it's not for my kid.'"
David R. Segal, a sociologist at the University of Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization, agreed with Rogers.
"Parents aspire to middle-class occupations for their kids," he said. "And the military is not perceived as a middle-class occupation."
That's a growing concern as the military marks the 30th anniversary of the end of the draft.
The Defense Department would like to draw recruits from all segments of society so the burden of defending the country is borne equally by all.
A 1999 Pentagon study found that while the military drew most of its recruits from the middle and lower-middle class, "the socioeconomic status of recruits is slightly lower than the general population." A study last year found that only 6.5 percent of enlistees had some college education, as opposed to 46 percent of civilians the same age.
Whites make up 62 percent of all armed services and 65 percent of the population. Blacks make up 20 percent of the armed services, compared with 14 percent of the population. Hispanics are 11 percent of the military and 15 percent of the population. Asians, Pacific Islanders and others make up the rest.
— Drew Brown and Dune Lawrence
Philadelphia Inquirer
2003-08-07
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/living/education/6474788.htm
INDEX OF MILITARIZATION OF OUR SCHOOLS
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