COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: No Child Left Behind
Military Recruiting Test Ensnares Over 600,000 Students a Year
Sam Diener, Peacework
February 2007
The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) was administered by
military recruiters to 688,016 students in 12,473 high schools nationwide
in fiscal year 2004-2005, according to data obtained from the Department of
Defense by Peacework through the Freedom of Information Act.
Military recruiters "sell" the free test to schools claiming that it will
help students make career decisions. In reality, the ASVAB is a Trojan
Horse, as it includes the entire content of the Armed Forces Qualifying
Test. Once a student has taken the ASVAB, her or his test scores and
contact information are routinely handed over to military recruiters. The
recruiters then call students, typically saying that, based on a
personalized analysis of their results, they are uniquely qualified for
particular military occupational specialties.
Analyzing the data on ASVAB frequency by state reveals that US colonies,
southern states, and rural areas in the west and Midwest, are
disproportionately targeted by military recruiters wielding the ASVAB (see
www.peaceworkmagazi ne.org).
Schools can choose to administer the test or not, and though the military
claims it is a voluntary test, students are often told it is compulsory.
Activists can convince school authorities to drop the test, to inform
students that it is voluntary, or to choose "option 8," meaning that
recruiters will not be given the contact information of test takers. Most
school administrators are unaware of these options. For example, according
to Arlene Inouye of the Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools, in
2005-2006, 39 regular high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School
District (out of 49) gave the ASVAB, and only 2 schools chose Option 8 --
in each case, as a result of activism.
Student activists can be particularly effective. For example, according to
antiwar.com, students in Lindale, GA, with only a weekend to prepare,
leafleted the students at their school on November 20, 2006, and convinced
an estimated two-thirds of the students not to take the test.
Peacework is making several spreadsheets of ASVAB data available for
download from www.peaceworkmagazi ne.org. The data includes the number of
students who took the test in each grade from every school in the country
that administered the test in fiscal year 2004-2005. With this database,
parents, students, and activists can explore which schools in their region
allow military recruiters to administer the ASVAB, and focus our efforts on
schools targeted most intensively by recruiters. For more information on
the ASVAB, please see the American Friends Service Committee's Youth and
Militarism page; to download flyers, see www.militaryfreesch ools.org/ jrotc.
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of