My DMN colleague Michael Landauer is the editorial-page editor for our suburban editions. He has a contingent of "community voices" -- readers who weigh in regularly on editorial topics. Michael has done a good job searching out and cultivating high school students among them. Recently, he asked high school students in Collin County, which is to say the prosperous northern suburbs of Dallas, to write about whether or not they or their classmates saw military service as a viable option for them after high school.
I should mention before going on that Collin County is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, and by voter registration the most Republican county in all of Texas. So you can imagine how putatively conservative this place is.
Well, Michael just showed me the page proofs from the answers he got, and they are pretty depressing. The entire feature is not published on online yet, but Michael blogged a preview here, which I encourage you to read. The four high school students who wrote in -- Michael quotes one of them -- all say the same thing:
+ That few kids their age have any interest in the military, and don't talk to recruiters when they come to campus+ That their generation has been conditioned by their parents to think of their future and goals in life in terms of material success alone
+ That their generation doesn't harbor ill feeling toward the military; it's just that serving in the armed forces doesn't fit into their plan for achieving personal wealth and happiness, which, after all, is the point of life
I know, I know, this is an unscientific survey, and it's easy to understand why high school students today would be reluctant to join the military while it's fighting a war many people see as pointless. But none of the four students who responded brought up the futility of the Iraq war as a reason for their classmates avoiding the military. It was all about how serving the nation via a military commitment is not something upwardly mobile and ambitious young people like them should even consider, because the culture they're coming up in tells them that sort of thing is Not What Our Sort Of Person Does -- it would get in the way of becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a business executive.
Let me remind you that these young people live in and have been formed by a thoroughly Republican, suburban Texas society. And this is how they think. One of the kids, a young man, says tellingly, and guiltily, "Ideas of prosperity and hopes of success are injected into us from birth onward, spreading and festering in our minds until they are our sole aspirations. The expectation of success frames every aspect of our lives, and national service simply doesn't fit..."
One wonders how long the military we have now is going to be willing to defend a nation made up of people like this. This feature is a wake-up call to me to make sure I raise my children to consider military service, or some other kind of service path, an honor to themselves and to our family, and something they should well consider as a vocation. I think it's real easy to assume that they'll get this, when in fact the broader middle-class culture of achievement they're being raised in is sending them another message entirely.
I wonder what happens to a nation when a large number of its people come to think that being asked to make a personal sacrifice in its defense would be too onerous a burden on their path to wealth? I wonder what happens to a nation when the people who are serving in its military ask themselves why they should risk their lives to defend such decadent people?
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Mr Dreher,
Try to inculcate a sense of honor and service in your children. That's what my parents did. True, we have a long history of military service in my family. It is virtually inevitable that at least one child of each generation serves in the military - most did during WW II. None of us has ever made it a career, it is simply a logical step for a young person about 20 years old. All the best and funniest (and most risque) stories in my family emanate from time in the military. But aside from that, community service, Scouting, soup kitchens, area beautification, and spending time and helping with elderly neighbors were normal and expected. Especially at Christmas and during summer holidays.
The sense of honor is more difficult. Maybe it is only inherited, and maybe many Americans have lost it. But Mexican-Americans, other ethnic groups, and people from the rural South and West still maintain a basic sense of honor. The sense that you don't get into trouble, because it would shame your family's good name, not because you will be punished. The sense that your life's calling should also bring honor to your family, and not just earn you a big paycheck.
He who loves his life will lose it, after all.
Back in sunny Iraq again.
I'm from a military family, and my son's respectful of the military. He says if he saw a cause that was right and just, he'd join in a second. But, he doesn't see the Iraq war as just. Also, he wonders where all the older folks are who decided to get us into this mess. He's seeing a lot of young teens and early 20-somethings fighting this war, but where are the 40 and 50 year olds? It's not like there aren't plenty of 40 and 50 year olds who are as fit if not in better physical condition than some 20 year olds. Why aren't they--aside from those who are already in the reserves--enlisting, too, instead of arguing on the sidelines?
And I have to say, I don't have much of an answer for him. It's the older, richer folks who vote to go to wars; the younger and poorer ones have to fight it, like it or not.
What effect has the closure of military bases around the country had on removing the idea of military service as a valid option for young people? Where I live, San Francisco, since the closing of the Presidio one rarely sees a man or a woman in uniform. I understand that bases were closed as superfluous given the nature of modern warfare, but were they superfluous as showcasing committed men and women in a community?
Following up my last comment on ministry: According to the most recent issue of Christianity Today ("A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction"), the average annual compensation package for a solo pastor is $56,959, including salary and benefits. More interesting: solo women pastors make 10.4% more than their male counterparts.
I have three kids who are draft age, or almost draft age. They are resolutely anti-draft, because they don't see a point in this war. Were the United States actually invaded (Pearl Harbor style, or War of 1812 style), it would be a different story.
They have known people who enlisted. In their experience, the kids who enlist are the ones whose parents do not provide for them to transition to adulthood. These kids have no money for college, and no way to qualify for financial aid (because the families either have "too much money," i.e. own a house, or for individual reasons have decided not to pay for their kids' college education.) They can't earn enough at a part-time minimum wage job to buy a car and pay the prohibitive insurance rates on their own. There are very few well-paying jobs for non-college grads where I live; you're pretty much fixing yourself into perpetual poverty unless you have some idiosyncratic and unusual skill.
But why are all these kids without money for college? Because the lower middle class has been almost entirely cut out of the educational assistance picture. If you're really poor, you have a lot better chance of getting money for college (whether the academic ability is there or not is another question.) If you are middle- or upper-middle class, your parents generally will pay to send you to at least a state university.
But the lower-middle-class kids (the "working poor," or the low end of the middle class) are often SOL when it comes to money for college. They know their high schools did NOTHING to prepare them by vocational training, too. High schools have been dropping vocational training right and left - "everybody" has to go to college, don't you know, and it's far cheaper to add another classroom for an AP class than a shop to teach welding or auto repair or machining.
So it's no surprise that military recruitment materials themselves do NOT stress "honor" or "patriotism" or even "national defense." They stress CAREERS and COLLEGE MONEY. That is what lures in the lower middle classes, the "working poor," the poor too proud to take welfare, the rural people.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.