Opting to keep your child’s personal information away from military recruiters now shuts them out of any recognition..
Buried within the federal No Child Left Behind Act is a provision that requires school districts to give personal information about students to military recruiters. Parents can choose to keep that information private but some local groups say school districts make that too difficult.
Duval County parents who want to keep their children from military recruiters face an all-or-nothing decision. They can either approve the release of personal information to recruiters or give up all public recognition including being pictured in the yearbook and listed in sports programs and the honor roll.
“If I want to opt out of the military, I have to opt my child out of existence,” said Bill Armstrong of Wage Peace, a group that challenged the policy. “That’s not really in the spirit of compliance when there’s that kind of negative result just trying to exercise their privacy rights.”
It’s all because of a provision of the No Child Left Behind Act that requires public high schools to hand over the student names, addresses and telephone listings to military recruiters who want the information. School districts that fail to do so risk losing federal education dollars.
U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., inserted the provision into the No Child act — a law about education standards.
Military recruiters applaud the law….
Duval County notifies parents at the beginning of the school year about its policy for giving out personal information. Parents have three options. They can approve the release of student information, restrict it to the military and colleges and universities only or they can prohibit the release of any personal information whatsoever.
But the last option has meant students would also be kept out of the yearbook, sports programs and listings of honors and awards.
Why bother with this school stuff? Would it not be more cost-effective to just render the children to the crusade barracks when they reach high school age?
It is not like most have any other career choices, and because some parents may have attempted to instill anti-American values like refraining from torture and sexual predation, in order to become usable assets, some de-programming will be necessary, and that’s tax dollars that could be used to purchase more napalm to melt the flesh off villagers.
