Army Recruiting in Schools Needs to Stop
By Avah Keyhani, grade 8, California.
In 2016, more than 60 percent of military enlistments came from neighborhoods with a median household income between $38,345 and $80,912.[1] That means that there are more lower income families in the military, most likely because those families saw the military as a chance to help their economic standing. The truth is, if there was another way to lift families out of poverty, then the military’s recruitment rates would go down, and no one would be joining the military to get money for college or grad school. As it is, that’s exactly what they’re doing. They are using young people in lower income families and giving them a choice: join us and become a hero or live in poverty. Of course, the military kind of beats around the bush when it comes to murdering others and very possibly dying yourself. When you’re younger, you’re more impulsive and more easily persuaded, so the military preys on younger minds. That’s why military recruiters need to get out of schools and stop going after lower income families.
If a young person isn’t joining the military of their own free will, they shouldn’t be joining at all. The military doesn’t want college to be free because their recruitment relies on poorer people enlisting in exchange for funds for college. Many choose to be part of the military because of the promise of college ahead. Take that away, and their recruitment rates will drop (which is good). Common Dreams quotes a GOP lawmaker who Tweeted, “By forgiving such a wide swath of loans for borrowers, you are removing any leverage the Department of Defense maintained as one of the fastest and easiest ways of paying for higher education.” Does the lawmaker not realize he’s literally admitting that college degrees and crushing debt are being used as leverage? And that he’s saying that the military relies on young, poor people and threatens them with poverty? Commenting on this republican lawmaker, Our Wisconsin Revolution argued on Twitter, “The GOP is admitting that the military relies on poor young people to keep the war machine going, and that’s why they oppose canceling student debt…The price of a college degree should not be bloodshed or a lifetime of crippling debt.”
If someone wants to join the military because they enjoy dropping bombs on people, fine. But most people join to pay for a degree, or because of some advertisement. That’s wrong. People shouldn’t have to kill others to get a college degree. Nor should they have to live with debt. War has a terrible effect on the human mind and young people shouldn’t have to deal with that just to go to college or grad school.
The military targets lower income families. According to NNOMY “…Schools with a high proportion of low-income students serve as a magnet for the military. Take the example of two similarly sized high schools in two Hartford suburbs: Avon and Bloomfield. Army recruiters visited Avon High, where only 5 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, four times during the 2011-12 school year. Yet at Bloomfield High, where nearly half the students qualify for such assistance, recruiters made more than 10 times as many visits.” That means that they spent more than forty days at Bloomfield high (that’s more than once a week!) and four days at Avon. They spent so much more time at the school where half of the kids needed help paying for their lunch, and barely any time at the school where five percent needed help. That’s blatantly obvious and disgusting. The military is exploiting people that come from lower income families because people who come from lower income families will have a harder time paying for college.
Kids shouldn’t be subjected to the kind of violence the military engages in, especially those who are under twenty-five and whose prefrontal cortexes are not fully developed. According to Heathline, “While many people have endured the hell of war and escaped unscathed, young people who experienced personal trauma before service are the most likely to develop lasting mental health issues after serving in combat.” Well, what kids are more likely to have experienced trauma? Poor kids, which is exactly the group the military is going after. Also, can you ‘endure the hell of war and escape unscathed?’ Can you watch people die, maybe some of your friends and others by your own hand, and go back to life like nothing happened? I don’t believe so, especially if your brain hasn’t fully developed.
According to inequality.org, “Research reveals numerous physical and mental health risks from joining the military at a young age—including higher rates of substance abuse, depression, PTSD, and suicide.” This is common knowledge, knowledge that the military surely has, so why are they continuing to recruit kids even though they know what may happen to them further down the line? It seems like the military purposely feeds on younger soldiers who don’t quite have the mental capacity yet to think ‘wait, why am I doing this?’ If this country really cared about the next generation, they would be helping the kids make a life for themselves rather than recruiting them into the military and exposing them to violence.
The military isn’t something you should be joining to get a degree. The right to education should be assured, not something that lower-income families will either have to go into debt for or be willing to kill people for. And with younger people, who agree to join the military on the promise of paid-for college, it severely attacks their mental and physical health. If the government cares more about being the biggest bully in the playground than caring about their own young people’s mental health, they have no business being the government.
—Avah Keyhani, grade 8, California. She writes: “…I am a bilingual Iranian American who speaks Farsi and English. The most important things in my life are my family, friends, my books, and standing up for myself and my ideas. I would very much like to become a scientist and I have an interest in epidemiology. I was inspired to write my essay after reading about the amount of people who join the military at a young age and are scarred for life.”