Moderation in Recruiting High Schoolers "Unpatriotic"

One of the more insidious but lesser-known provisions of ESEA 2001 (AKA NCLB) is that schools must provide the name, home address, phone number, and other personal identifying data to military recruiters, unless parents specifically opt out of it. In addition, military recruiters have virtually unfettered access to high schools. Some days at the high school where I teach it's like a scene from A Few Good Men, all the uniforms stalking the hallways and pacing the cafeteria.

But my district, the Milwaukee Public Schools, may be taking a step to preserve students' privacy:

The effort, led by board member Peter Blewett and backed by some students and parents, puts Milwaukee among a growing number of cities where opponents of the war in Iraq have targeted provisions of federal law that were little-noted until recently. [. . .]

As a result [of the law], recruiters visit high schools frequently, often setting up tables in cafeterias or making presentations to groups of students. Around age 17, teenagers receive frequent mailings from all branches of the military and may be contacted directly by recruiters.

MPS officials estimate that "opt-out" forms are filed for less than 1% of students. The percentage in other school districts in Wisconsin is believed to be in the same ballpark. [. . .]

A Milwaukee School Board committee spent more than two hours Tuesday night debating changes proposed by Blewett, which would restrict military recruiters to three visits a year at high schools and aggressively seek to make parents aware of how to keep student information from going to recruiters.

The committee passed a milder proposal that calls for increased efforts to inform parents of the opt-out rules while awaiting legal advice on what limits can be set for recruiters in schools.

This modest reform--which does nothing to limit access to students by military folk--has been identified by the bad half of the Cheddarsphere as unpatriotic and an attempt by "anti-war zealots" to "deny a future" to MPS students.

From where I sit--my futon, literally, but think metaphorically--this measure by MPS is a way to preserve students' privacy. The information that we are required to hand over to the military is information that, if we gave it to just about anybody else, we'd get sued under FERPA. Even if we accidentally left confidential student contact info in the fax machine at Kinko's, we'd be screwed. Yet we have to hand over the info to the military so that their sagging recruitment numbers can look better.

My students by and large are not stupid: They tell me (without my saying a word) that they hate Bush and his war in Iraq. They know that Republicans haven't done much for African Americans in general and urban African Americans in particular. A handful of seniors every year choose the military, but the vast majority--I'd say upwards of 98%--decide for themselves that fighting Bush's war is not the future for them.