COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: No Child Left Behind
School districts are beginning to keep the results of a dodgy student aptitude test out of the hands of military recruiters
Megan Tady, in These Times
DECEMBER 7, 2007
One
thing is different this year about an aptitude test given to high
school juniors and seniors in a Los Angeles school district: The test
results won’t be going to military recruiters.
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) adopted a policy in May
to keep aptitude test results out of the hands of military recruiters,
and notified the district’s career counselors of the change last
month. LAUSD is the second largest school system in the country. Last
year, another major school district, Montgomery Public Schools in
Maryland, also enforced this policy.
Faced with questions of the future, every year high school juniors and
seniors shade-in oval, numbered bubbles on aptitude tests. The test
results may tell a student whether she’s well suited to work with
people or has the mind for mechanics or engineering.
But one of these aptitude tests isn’t just designed to help guide
faltering students to career enlightenment. Written by the Department
of Defense and marketed by the military as a “career
exploration” test, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
(ASVAB) informs military recruiters of which students to target for
enlistment. Unless schools opt out, students are required to sign a
privacy waiver before taking the test, allowing recruiters to mine
their test results for possible recruits. Often, students and parents
are unaware of the test’s true intentions, and at many schools,
this test is mandatory. Fourteen thousands schools and Military
Entrance Processing Stations give the ASVAB each year.
Privacy rights advocates and anti-war activists call ASVAB a devious
military recruitment strategy and an assault on children’s
privacy. They have been pressuring schools to either drop the test, or
enforce a little-known policy that keeps test results out of the hands
of recruiters, called Option 8. They’re also lobbying schools to
get parental consent before their children sit for the ASVAB and sign
the privacy waiver.
Schools can choose between several options to administer the test.
Option 8 allows schools to still give the test for career placement
purposes without releasing the results to recruiters. Cash-strapped
schools often use the ASVAB as an aptitude test because it is provided
for free.
“If school administrators feel there is no suitable alternative
and are truly interested in the alleged career exploration benefits of
the test, they shouldn’t be opposed to requiring parental consent
and selecting Option 8 to protect student privacy,” says Pat
Elder, a member of Peace Action Montgomery, who helped petition the
Maryland school district to adopt Option 8.
The LAUSD’s decision to adopt Option 8 came after strong demands
from groups like the L.A. chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the
Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools, and the National Network
Opposing the Militarization of Youth. The National Lawyers Guild, in a
legal memorandum submitted to the school district in June 2006, accused
the school district of violating its legal obligations to protect
students’ privacy rights when administering the ASVAB.
The LAUSD did not respond to interview requests.
The timed ASVAB tests students in arithmetic reasoning, word knowledge,
paragraph comprehension and mathematics. Along with the test results,
other information made available to recruiters include a
student’s name, address, telephone number, date of birth, social
security number, sex, ethnic group identification, graduation plans,
and academic and extracurricular interests.
The National Lawyer’s Guild warned in its memo, “With this
sensitive data, military recruiters can then tailor recruiting methods
to individual students, enabling the recruiters to mount a barrage of
intimate and intimidating attacks on impressionable minors absent
parental supervision.”
Elder says he is troubled by the way the military veils the
ASVAB’s purpose. “The army is touting this as a career
exploration program and is hiding the fact that it’s a recruiting
program,” he says.
Arlene Inouye, a coordinator with the Coalition Against Militarism in
Our Schools, says that students and parents aren’t the only ones
duped by the ASVAB.
“Career counselors that I’ve talked to really haven’t
known that it’s a military test,” Inouye says.
“It’s really been one of those underground, undercover ways
that military recruiters have used to recruit.”
The confusion might be because of the way the military markets the
ASVAB. The ASVAB website gives scant indication that the test is linked
to military recruitment. The description on the site says benignly that
the ASVAB is “designed to encourage students to increase their
level of self-knowledge and to understand how that information could be
linked to civilian and military occupational characteristics.”
The site contains no military images.
But other military websites and information are more forthcoming about
the ASVAB. A 2004 school recruiting handbook says the purpose of the
ASVAB, along with career guidance, is to “provide the field
recruiter with a source of leads of high school seniors and juniors
through the ASVAB for enlistment into the Active Army and Army
Reserve.”
In the handbook, recruiters are told that one of their “most
important responsibilities will be arranging the ASVAB in…
schools.” The guide also suggests that recruiters should be
present when the test is given.
Data from the ASVAB is also used at the Joint Advertising Market
Research & Studies (JAMRS), a Department of Defense program that
works to bolster the military’s image as a career option, and
create slick recruitment campaigns.
“There’s no question that the military looks at our high
schools as fertile recruiting ground for wars,” Inouye says.
As the military becomes increasingly strained, advocacy groups, parents
and students are growing more concerned about recruiting tactics in
schools.
“[The Army says], ‘Look, we have this wonderful
dream,’ ” Inouye says. “And it’s an illusion
and our young people are dying. I just feel very strongly that
it’s unconscionable that our society allows the recruitment of
minors.”
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