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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (52868)	7/9/2004 11:29:45 AM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793794

Hi Mary, I couldn't agree with you more that our military is the best in the world. I can't tell you how many people I have known over the years who joined the service without a high-school diploma and served tremendously. The number is literally too high. Often, kids who are foster children and have been tossed from house to house practically their entire life, seek to join the service at the age of 17 or 18. Their disruptive life, shuffling from one town to the other, one house to the other, and one school to another frustrates them into not finishing high school. Often, they are not lazy, stupid, incompetent or anything of the sort. They've just never had structure and a place to belong for so long it has affected their education. The military is a great place for these kids, and right now we make it extremely difficult for them to join. My point was, before we make the leap toward a draft, we should open up recruitment and make it easier for these kind of kids to join. The services should have processes in place, to consider the "why's" of high school education. In other words, there are too many black and white rules which disempower recruiters to take these kind of situations into consideration. I support a charity organization called "Stand Up For Kids". They feed homeless teenagers in cities around the country. And I've personally gone through the pain of trying to get an 18 year old decent homeless young man into the service. And I ask this question, what is better for our society, taking a homeless teenager into the service who might be living from a friends house, to the woods, to beneath a bridge overpasse, or leaving him on the streets because he doesn't have a high school diploma or GED? They're OUR kids and historically the services have done a terrific job of making decent citizens out of them. It's been a win-win for the services and our country. Therefore, we should remove the barriers to entry well before we tell our youth, join or go to Canada or maybe jail.