Why is the U.S. Military Pushing K-12 Students to Build Drones in Dayton?
By: Seth Kershner
▻http://antimili-youth.net/articles/2014/10/why-us-military-pushing-k-12-students-build-drones-dayton
As a journalist and researcher, I’ve spent the last several years investigating the expanding network of links between public #education and the U.S. military. With my colleague Scott Harding, I’ve also been researching the grassroots response to this phenomenon: the counter-recruitment movement.
Activists along with outspoken scholars and education writers like Henry Giroux, Kathy Barker and Amy Hagopian have all questioned the propriety of placing recruiters and other types of military personnel into close contact with children, which the United Nations defines as anyone under the age of 18. In a 2012 resolution, the American Public Health Association called for the demilitarization of schools, citing the creepy way that recruiters, acting as little more than trained salesmen, ingratiate themselves to win the trust of teens.
Over the past ten years, the military presence in schools has also been condemned by the New York Civil Liberties Union, Rutgers School of Law and Child Soldiers International, among other organizations. Reading trade publications like the Army’s Recruiter Journal, I’ve become accustomed to seeing extreme examples of military collaboration with public schools. Still, I was surprised when I read an edweek.org article last month about high school students in Dayton, Ohio, who are learning how to solve military problems using unmanned aerial vehicles – more commonly called #drones.