Chapter 12: Soldiers or Students?: JROTC, the Military Presence in Schools, and Educating for Permanent War

For thirty years, the U.S. public has been told stories about failing schools, failing students, failing teachers—particularly in low-income districts and communities of color. A frequent response has been to privatize and corporatize education, surveilling students and teachers through metal detectors and video cameras or standardized testing and scripted curricula. Increasingly, as public schools are decreed a failure and students characterized as lacking discipline and motivation, the U.S. military is brought in. While the U.S. military (in nearly 150 countries, with over 650 military bases) maintains U.S. global dominance, the U.S. military is more and more often declared the answer to (manufactured) crises in U.S. public schools.