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The militarisation of youth in poor, black American public schools continues to supply the Bush wars with new recruits :

Dozens of teens dressed in uniforms provided by the US Marines stand at attention in the gym of a Chicago public high school as a drill sergeant goes through a list of the day’s do’s and don’ts.
One in 10 public high school students in Chicago wears a military uniform to school and takes classes — including how to shoot a gun properly — from retired veterans.

That number is expected to rise as junior military reserve programs expand across the country now that a congressional cap of 3,500 units has been lifted from the nearly century-old scheme.

Proponents of the junior reserve programs say they provide stability and a sense of purpose for troubled youth and help to instill values such as leadership and responsibility.

But opponents say the programs divert critical resources from crumbling public schools and lead to a militarization of US society.

“To call these young people child soldiers might be technically inaccurate, but it does reveal the truth of it,” said Oscar Castro, a spokesman for the National Youth and Militarism Program, an advocacy group.

Military recruiters already have the right to give presentations in public schools and to access databases with the contact information of all public school students whose parents do not remove their children from the list.

While military officials say the junior reserve programs are not used as recruiting tools, about 30 to 50 percent of cadets eventually enlist…

This is particularly troubling given that the programs are concentrated in low-income and minority neighborhoods, said Sheena Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the Chicago branch of the American Friends Service Committee which lobbies against the programs.

“If you want to teach discipline and leadership then do it for everyone and don’t make them wear (military) uniforms,” Gibbs said. “Students (at regular schools) protest that they have to still share books but the military academy has laptops.”

At Chicago’s Marine Military Math and Science Academy, the first public Marine academy in the nation and the fifth military academy run by the city’s school district, it’s easy to see how signing up for service would be a logical post-graduation step.

The argument that such military training helps wayward kids learn discipline and how to behave is valid enough.

But equally valid is the argument that such military-in-schools programs are rare indeed in the more affluent white suburbs of the United States.

Rich white kids rarely go to fight America’s wars.

They go to university.

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