The Black Informant

African-American culture, news commentary, politics

Factors affecting military recruitment

(airforcetimes.com) VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Most of today’s youth are not eligible for military service because they are too fat, too weak, not smart enough and prone to drug-use and criminal behavior, according to a panel of senior military officers.

“We are all victims of our own past success. We all have a conscript mentality that there’s a never-ending supply of perfect high school graduates that are over the horizon coming at us to fill every job we have,” said Vice Adm. John Cotton, commander of the Navy Reserve. “I’ll tell you what, we’re about to be shocked, because they are not there.”

Cotton spoke on a panel on recruiting and retention with officers from the Marines, Army and Air Force at a conference on “transformation warfare” hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association in Virginia Beach.

Seventy-two percent of American youth between 17 and 24 years of age are not eligible for military service for fitness, academic and law enforcement deficiencies, Cotton said, citing national statistics that some 30 percent of male youths drop out of high school. (more…)

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June 28, 2007 - Posted by Duane | Uncategorized | | 4 Comments

4 Comments »

  1. although i’m not the most supportive of the military (more because of who serves in it–namely many poor, black, and/or brown youth), i know it is necessary and that oftentimes it provides the discipline and structure some need to, when and if they get out, advance in their lives (this happenened for a couple of my cousins). but shame that they can’t even get people out of the gate due to their being unfit physically (wow! and they’re young people too); not meeting academic standards (just a high school diploma); and/or having a criminal record. nearly three quarters of youth cannot qualify! that’s ridiculously high.

    i guess next we’ll be hiring mercenaries (maybe illegals–serve for citizenship; ok maybe not the best idea).

    Comment by esther | June 28, 2007

  2. Something you might want to consider reading in your spare time:

    Who Bears the Burden? Demographic Characteristics of U.S. Military Recruits Before and After 9/11

    And this from a Defense dept. study on the issue:

    The U.S. military is not a “poor man’s force.” That’s the conclusion Defense Department officials reached following examination of enlisted recruiting statistics gathered over the past year.

    [...]

    DoD tracks “representativeness” - as Gilroy calls it - very closely. And representativeness can take a whole host of forms - race, education, social status, income, region and so on. “When you look at all of those, you find that the force is really quite representative of the country,” he said in a recent interview. “It mirrors the country in many of these. And where it doesn’t mirror America, it exceeds America.”

    The data shows the force is more educated than the population at large. Servicemembers all have high school diplomas or the general equivalency diploma. More servicemembers have some college than the typical 18- to 24-year-olds. “To carry representativeness to the extreme, we would have to have a less-educated force or we would want a lower-aptitude force,” Gilroy said. (source)

    Comment by Duane | June 28, 2007

  3. thanks for the report (i haven’t read the full thing, only the blurb that’s here). i suppose i should clarify my point. those that enter on the bottom ranks clearly are not from middle class families. if the armed forces have the problem of not finding people due to academic deficencies or to a criminal record, they’re not tapping in to middle class families (because they know for the most part they’re not interested).

    more than likely if you’re an officer you’re not going to be poor.

    a local school district just did away with rotc in their schools. it’s interesting that the two elite schools in the district, mainly populated by middle class student, never had rotc in their schools; whereas, many of the schools with many more working-class or poor kids have for a long time.

    Comment by esther | June 28, 2007

  4. Still got a long way to go before we sink back to what it was during the Carter years.

    I noticed some demographic breakdown documents on my training company commander’s desk at Dix while cleaning his office one night. Average education in my 77′ trainee company was 9th grade, only two had any college, me being one of them.

    Comment by Purple Avenger | June 29, 2007

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