The Future of JROTC: Serving Asian American students in our Public Schools
October 10, 2008
More than half of the San Francisco Unified School District’s students are Asian American. Many of these students are high achievers and come from homes where academic achievement is highly valued and supported. This support is a crucial element in the academic performance of these students—research shows that family support is one of the most important factors linked to high academic achievement.
The School District has developed committees and support that help Asian American families to participate in their children’s schools. These include the Parents Advisory Council, whose creation I wrote, where Cantonese-speaking parents participate fully, with translation provided, in representing the concerns of Asian American families. We also have a translation unit at the district level and translation services available to schools sites and training for parents to learn how to be part of the decision-making process at their children’s schools.
Our school district has been the highest-achieving urban district in California for the last seven years, and Asian Americans play a big part in that record. But this success takes a lot of hard work on the part of teachers, administrators, staff and especially the students themselves.
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Some students, even Asian Americans, struggle to succeed in school under difficult circumstances. They need more opportunities to keep them engaged in school, to make sure they have meaningful experiences that enrich their lives and make their academic success possible. We often hear students tell us that it is co-curricular and special programs that help them to feel that they belong and inspire them to go to school and work hard.
One of the most universally positive is the Junior Reserve Officers Training Program in seven SFUSD high schools. In my sixteen years on the School Board, I have never heard a cadet in this program testify to anything but the positive impact on his or her life. Criticism only comes from those who do not participate in the program, and they criticize not JROTC in SFUSD but the military in general.
It is therefore disappointing that the Board of Education has been attacking the JROTC program in San Francisco’s public high schools for years, eroding support for this program that has served hundreds of thousands of SFUSD students for over ninety years.
This year the Board voted in a hastily called meeting, when students could not fully participate and after school was out for the summer and the fall schedules were set, to deny physical education credit for JROTC. This caused very difficult problems for schools and students as they returned to school and had to shuffle hundreds of students’ schedules, hire teachers at the last minute and throw schools into chaos. This also cost the School District hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have been used for other important purposes.
The majority of JROTC cadets are Asian Americans; half are girls. This undermining of the program is at best insensitive to the cultural realities of Asian American concerns. Sadly, this is being led by a School Board that has a majority of Asian American members.
Ideologically driven decisions that do not seriously consider the impact on students endanger the future of Asian American students. Take this into consideration when you vote for school board on November 4. Many candidates are hedging their positions on JROTC. They support the program when they speak to some organizations and are against it at others.
We need School Board Commissioners who will make difficult decisions when they need to be made for the good of students. Politics that are not about education should not be driving our educational decisions and should not be polarizing the School Board election. I am proud to be a faithful supporter of JROTC, even when it is politically difficult.
Prop V on the November ballot is a policy statement that will urge the School Board to restore JROTC in SFUSD. It deserves your support. Thousands of community members are involved in supporting this program because they know it is good for all of our students.
Jill Wynns is a four-term incumbent on the San Francisco School Board who is running for re-election in November.
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3 Responses to “The Future of JROTC: Serving Asian American students in our Public Schools”
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I agree that some of the school board candidates are hedging their bets on JROTC. I have come out in support of reinstating JROTC and have posted my views on my web site at http://www.rachelnorton.com/issues/jrotc
Jill Wynns said, “In my sixteen years on the School Board, I have never heard a cadet in this program testify to anything but the positive impact on his or her life. ” Technically, that’s true; at a school board hearing I testified in front of her as a former, not a current, JROTC cadet. However, what I said was essentially what I have posted on this website before:
About 30 - 50% of JROTC students go into the military, according to testimony given to Congress by the four chiefs of staff of the armed services - including General Eric Shinseki - in Feb. 2000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JROTC). What does this mean in human terms?
Forty years ago, I graduated from Galileo High School as a 1st Lieutenant in Army JROTC. Of my five closest friends in JROTC - four of whom were Chinese, all of whom were either cadet officers or sergeants - four went into the military after high school. Three went to Viet Nam. One saw heavy combat and came back suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. One was lucky enough to be stationed at a large base and saw occasional shelling but came back more or less OK. One I never heard from again, and I don’t know if he’s even dead or alive. One never went to Viet Nam and is OK. The fifth friend tried to join the Army but was rejected because of a physical condition. I joined the Army only to learn first hand how much of what JROTC taught us were lies, particularly about the role of America and the U.S. Army in the world, and what it means to be an American soldier. Out of six of us, five ended up in the military - and the sixth would have if he could have. So don’t believe it when they tell you that JROTC “is not a recruiting program.”
What was my experience in JROTC? JROTC taught us to believe totally in the Army and our government, to obey authorities above us, and to admire the values and virtues of the combat infantryman. Military literature given to us said things such as, “The American fighting man is the best fighting man in the world!” “Never give up!” “The mission of the infantry is to engage the enemy in ground combat, and capture or destroy him!” Army training films instructed us in everything from military organization, small unit tactics, and bayonet fighting to “citizenship” and “leadership,” as defined by the Army. I learned to handle weapons in JROTC, and found it easy to disassemble an M1 rifle and put it back together blindfolded, or to do a bayonet style lunge with a rifle at the throat of an imaginary enemy. Photos of soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets, tanks roaring across the ground, and soldiers charging out of a helicopter filled my mind. The pictures excited me. I wanted to be one of those soldiers. I wanted to join the Army right out of high school. This is what I learned from JROTC. So did my five friends.
What were the lies I learned about in the real Army? I learned from fellow soldiers returning from Viet Nam that the My Lai massacre - where an American Army platoon murdered 500 Vietnamese civilians - was just the tip of the iceberg and that such war crimes were mostly unreported, widespread, and driven by policy, not just “a few bad apples.” I learned how our government lied to set up the South Vietnamese government and the war, how our war there was illegal under international law, and immoral. This was documented by our own government in the “Pentagon Papers,” released by Daniel Ellsberg.
Soldiers returning from Iraq today are now telling us that Haditha and Abu Ghraib are likewise just the tip of the iceberg, and also driven by policy, not individual soldiers. And we all know about the lies of Saddam links to 9/11 and WMD that George Bush used to invade Iraq. One simply has to go to the Iraq Veterans Against the War website (http://ivaw.org/) to read many accounts, particularly in their “Winter Soldier Investigation.”
JROTC fills youths’ minds with pictures of heroic military images, excites the blood, and thus recruits young people with false images of war and “loyalty” to country. Yes, JROTC may be majority Asian; it certainly was in my time, too. But that just means our minority group gets majority brainwashing and exploitation, big time. Would you support a form of exploitation of Asians? Not if you recognized it for what it is. Our youth, Asian or not, should never be used as cannon fodder for Bush and Cheney’s rich friends and the big oil and arms industries who are profiting from the Iraq war. Is this what we want our children to die for?
As for JROTC teaching leadership, well…OK, I am now a leader in the peace movement. But I have met many movement leaders who have never been in JROTC or the military, and they are as good or better activists than me. There’s a lot of better places to learn leadership and discipline. Don’t fall for exploitation to learn it. We must stop JROTC now.
Sincerely yours,
Michael Wong
JROTC is an integral part of the SFUSD system. I agree, “they criticize not JROTC in SFUSD but the military in general.” Taking JROTC does not always lead to the military. If anything it gives a foundation to the teenagers who choose to take JROTC in school. I remember being at school in ALHS and a lot of my friends and classmates taking JROTC as an alternative to PE. Through the years i saw the discipline and leadership skills they had developed from being in JROTC.
It has been 5 1/2 years since i have been in high school and out of the people i knew who were in JROTC, only a hand full went to the military.
To not give credit for taking JROTC or to take it away would be a disservice to younger generations.