Posted on 11/13/2006 2:21:36 PM PST by SmithL
SAN FRANCISCO public schools have problems, but a popular military-themed program isn't one of them.
Still, a four-vote majority of the seven-member Board of Education is likely this week to cancel the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps classes. The justifications are predictable: School leaders must stand up to the Pentagon's half-baked "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay service members, and to the war in Iraq.
This blunderbuss sloganeering fits snugly with an advisory vote last year barring military recruiting at schools. But the reasoning, compelling as it sounds to progressive San Francisco, is inadequate. The high-flown arguments fall apart when drill-and-discipline JROTC basics are examined.
Sorry, adults, but kids love this program as if it's family. There are 1,600 students enrolled in the classes, which fulfill physical-ed requirements. Punctuality, teamwork and camaraderie are the hallmarks. There, military drill competitions are as popular as football games. There are no weapons, just sticks and flags used in marching.
Some JROTC members go on to serve in the military, but the vast majority don't, seeing the classes as an enjoyable experience and a chance to learn new things: map-reading, leadership skills and self-discipline that goes with military-style assignments and crisp uniforms.
Myths need to be dispelled. Most students leave JROTC by their senior year, suggesting it's not much of a recruiting tool. The bills are minimal -- $1 million for salaries out of a school budget of $356 million.
Some anti-JROTC school board members want to sub the program with a morale-building alternative. School bands? International affairs clubs? Civics organizations? Maybe some of it would work, but no one has offered an alternative as coherent and well-run as JROTC.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I must admit I much preferred the old policy. NO GAYS ALLOWED!
I'm surprised there is someone in SF that will stick up for the program.
If only Lex Luther's plan had been successful in the 1978 version of Superman.
Doesn't the Solomon Amendment deny federal funds if a school bans JROTC, or is that only for ROTC?
Didn't colleges once try to ban ROTC programs and U.S. told them to go ahead and say goodbye to all federal funds? The programs stayed.
Can't the U.S. use the same muscle against public high schools?
They think they could put together a marching band on $1 million? They've been smoking way too much dope out there.
Here's what I call a marching band:
That's a pic from the #7 band in the state of Texas, Coppell High, all 320 of them.
Waiting to hear from Freepers affiliated with Flower Mound Marcus, LD Bell, and Duncanville, your 1-3 ranked bands in the great state of Texas.
What the hey, here's another:
Well, even in a poor urban H.S. in the South like ours, we have a girl who is graduating, and JROTC helped her get into West Point.
There's still time to apply, but they need to see their counselors ASAP!
As a student and cadet staff member in Air Force Junior ROTC, I just want to say how thankful I am that we don't have to deal with this crazy kind of misguided liberalism at my school. I just want to say that JROTC is by far the best class I have taken while at public school. The training, camaraderie and discipline is amazing. Thanks for the post. Will forward to my fellow cadets and my Senior Aerospace Science Instructor. Lt Col Brown (ret.) always talks about how if we don't know our freedoms and our civic responsibilities, we'll lose them. I hope and pray that San Francisco doesn't lose this essential program.
I use to be in Jrotc in high school from 2000 to 2004 I was on the Drill Team Color Gurd Rifle Team and Staff i was the S-2 S-4 and Xo.
My High School has a Gay-Straight Alliance, but a JROTC program is conspicuously absent. I think that tells you where school board holds their values.
You know, West Coast Freepers, that I would hope that you, and only you, would be given advance notification and that you, and only you, would be allowed to move and populate the remaining parts of California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, etc.
I hope that you understand that the foregoing was only in jest.
Valdosta GA. I was one of about 240 members of the Marchin' Cats, and a member of the Navy JROTC Drill Team. We used demilled Garands, not sticks or fake rifles.
A lot of members went into the Air Force, because Moody AFB was there. Some went into the Navy and Army, and I think I was the only one who joined the Marines. 8~)
Why not? CMP run out of de-milled drill rifles? What's wrong with weapons? They'd be de-milled, meaning non-firing, even college ROTC uses de-milled weapons for drill. (As opposed to field maneuvers or target practice when they use real ones, loaded with blanks in the former case and usually .22s in the latter. )
Of course using real, if de-milled, weapons might demystify them, might lead some of youngsters to the "Gun Culture". Might also cause some bad cases of the vapors among the staff and faculty at the school, but TS.
You had Garands? My Senior AFROTC unit didn't have any drill rifles when I went through, they still don't have Garands. From photos on their website, it appears they have 1903 Springfields. Other things have changed as well, They are now a Cadet Wing, we were only a group, and a small one at that.
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