The next time you are at home and the phone rings, be sure to check the Caller-ID. If you have younger brothers or sisters, do not be surprised if you find that Donald Rumsfeld is on the line.
Unbeknownst to most parents, students, and educators, President Bush's plan to reform public education in America includes giving every high school student's phone number to the Pentagon.
Since its establishment in early 2002, most Americans have become familiar, at least by name, with the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). A major plank in President Bush's 2000 election campaign platform, the act remains today the keystone of his wide-ranging educational reform package. As the Department of Education web page (http://www.ed.gov/nclb) reads: Signed by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002, the No Child Left Behind act gives our schools and our country groundbreaking educational reform, based on the following ideals:
- Stronger Accountability for Results
- More Freedom for States and Communities
- Encouraging Proven Methods
- More Choices for Parents
Superficially, NCLB is a foolproof proposal, sure to achieve great results. But among the many horrors concealed deep within the six-hundred-and-seventy page plan to transform America's schools lies something startlingly unexpected: a passage devoted entirely to the subject of the U.S. military and its new love affair with American teens.
As David Goodman reported in the November/December 2002 issue of Mother Jones Magazine, NCLB contains "a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student -- or face a cutoff of all federal aid." In other words, the NCLB gives the U.S. military complete, unfettered access to the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of every student attending public high school in America.
For many Americans, it might be difficult to tell how this differs from the already existing policy for military recruitment. The distinction is simple. Prior to the NCLB the military could make recruitment phone calls, but only after the young men and women they would target had turned eighteen and filled out registration cards. In this way, young Americans willfully and knowingly passed on their contact information to the military.
Now, however, the military is compiling its database of student addresses and phone numbers without the students or their parents ever knowing they have been added to the list. Students and parents have a right to know this is happening; they have a right to provide consent (or not) before their privacy is penetrated. NCLB brazenly denies them those rights.
But why does legislation supposedly aimed at improving education for American youth include a section providing special permissions to the U.S. military? Moreover, what does military recruitment have to do with making the nation's classrooms better? In reality, there is no valid relationship, but rather an attempt to prevent the politically disastrous possibility of conscription. And given the current U.S. engagements in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, and elsewhere, a draft in this decade is becoming a serious risk.
Other questions demand answers in wake of the NCLB. Why have parents and students yet to be adequately notified? Some time in early 2002, all high school principals received a letter signed by U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of Education, Ron Paige, notifying them that failure to comply with the new law and release students' contact information would result in the revocation of federal funding for their school systems. Principals were instructed and later reminded that they must notify their school communities of information disclosure to the military at the beginning of each school year.
But even if most school administrations have complied, a mere letter sent home does not represent an adequate response to such a heavily loaded policy change. An engaged nationwide dialogue between parents, students, and educators should have immediately emerged. Americans need to be aware and united on the issue, demanding first an explanation from the Bush administration and then the permanent elimination of the portion of the NCLB that requires universal discloser of student information.
Speaking directly to this issue, Jill Wynns, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, commented in Goodman's article: "I think the privacy implications of this law are profound. For the federal government to ignore or discount the concerns of the privacy rights of millions of high school students is not a good thing, and it's something we should be concerned about."
Indeed, the disregard for students and families' rights by the federal government is appalling. Even more frightening is the absence to date of discussion of the issue. Why are parents and educators not enraged by such a covert assault on their children and students? Maybe some are, but they have not yet shown it. It is likely that many just do not know.
Parents and educators would be upset and able to demand change if they were actually informed of the issue at hand. Since Jan. 8, 2002, however, there has been virtually nothing but silence in the media. Evidently, the secret military plans buried in the NCLB are not sexy enough of a topic for coverage in primetime newscasts or the headlines of leading national newspapers.
If nothing else can spark the emotion and outrage required to properly address this issue, perhaps passing along the following quote from Goodman's article will get Americans thinking:
"'The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman,' [said] Major Johannes Paraan, head U.S. Army recruiter for Vermont and northeastern New York. 'Or maybe if the kid died, we'll take them off our list.'"
Timothy Creedon is a junior majoring in History.
