From Draft NOtices, July-September 2022
— Lauren Reyna Morales
In the summer of 2020, I was recruited by the non-profit Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO) to review core textbooks used by the U.S. military in the high school Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) program. Project YANO organized a team of 15 reviewers that consisted of individuals with backgrounds in either classroom teaching or education activism, or with special knowledge of subjects that JROTC claims to address in its curriculum (e.g., U.S. and world history, geography, leadership methods, etc.).
In total, eleven Army, Navy, and Marine Corps JROTC texts were reviewed. The reviewers included current and retired teachers, military veterans, and several educators with post baccalaureate credentials. I myself have been a classroom teacher for five years. I’m credentialed to teach English and Social Sciences in the state of California, and I also earned an M.A. in education from the University of Colorado, Denver. I personally reviewed an Army JROTC textbook titled, Leadership Education and Training (LET 3). I was eager to investigate the kind of curriculum JROTC utilizes to influence over 550,000 students at approximately 3,400 high schools. What, I wondered, is the U.S. military teaching to youth in their places of learning?
What I found inside the JROTC Army text I reviewed was awful. I’m not sure how any educator could review this textbook and give it a positive evaluation: at best, it is a compilation of stunningly deficient and problematic lessons. My assessment, however, is not nearly as passive nor forgiving. Broadly speaking, I found that the LET 3 text actively supports Eurocentrism and white supremacism by way of the values, concepts, and narratives that it enforces. The text also intentionally promotes the suppression of critical thinking and consciousness. Furthermore, it seriously fails to provide an accurate representation of what service in the military is like and does not give sufficient resources for students to explore other options for themselves.
For years, the ever-increasing militarization of U.S. police forces has been cast by its defenders as an indispensable tool for dealing with large-scale violence and mass-casualty events. Since the Uvalde massacre last month, that rationale lies in tatters.
In June of this year (1994), the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD) reached its 15th birthday. This may not seem like such a significant milestone when compared to the persistence of a national peace organization like the venerable War Resisters League (founded in 1923!). But, COMD's 15th year does take on special meaning when you consider the nature of the community in which we are based: San Diego is like a military weed patch; one that keeps on spreading even as the parasite is cut back in other places. Our military payroll is over $3 billion and our uniformed population is increasing with base closures. It is amazing that an anti-militarism group can sprout and persevere for so long in such a conservative climate.
