I found this article on Bush’s Troops to Teachers program troubling. Why do people assume that career military personnel who be good teachers? Education should not foster authoritarian tendencies and ‘group think’.
“It’s a natural to go into education as a second career,” said Lt. Col. Rick Mills, director of Chicago’s Junior ROTC program. “Military personnel are well-equipped both in leadership and management.”
Leadership and management. How inspiring. “We will turn your little mush minds into well-oiled American learning machines!” I found this next part to be casually patronizing:
The 49-year-old teacher sees a lack of role models for young black men in the public schools, and he became a teacher in part to fill that void. Other military retirees should consider doing the same, he said.
“A lot of young urban kids, they find themselves trapped in the cycle of poverty and gangs,” Buckner said. “Knowing what being part of a team really meant, I felt I could help those kids who were perhaps going down the wrong path.”
I’m really suspicious of the fact that ROTC operates primarily out of high schools in more poverty stricken urban areas. I suppose the rich kids don’t need to sell themselves to the military to ensure they have the money to go to college.
Yet another example of why “higher” education is just a thinly disguised mechanism for deepening the class/race gap.
As a teacher, I can tell you exactly why this “plan” will work exactly as it’s meant to. It’s not about the military. Making our children into the next generation of soldiers by having a teacher that is one is ridiculous. There is no covert attempt to brainwash students into joining the corp. The truth is far worse than making the next military machine. It’s the horrible fact that our educational system has so entrenched itself in discipline and “management” that we miss the point of teaching student that WANT to learn. Our culture is not about teaching and, sadly, even LESS about wanting to learn. Soldiers in the classroom don’t worry me because they’re soldier. It worries me because it seems like that’s what it takes to force learning down our kids’ throats. If our culture can’t make you want to learn, we will cram it down your craw and make you say, “Thank you sir, may I have another.”