“A borderline issue”: Are there child soldiers in the United States?

ABSTRACT

The human rights literature on child soldiers has long emphasized conflict zones in the Global South, fostering the stereotype of the gun-toting African child while ignoring militarizing practices in the West. Of note, the existing human rights legal framework fails to address the reality of Western youth exposed to military recruiting in their schools. Seeking to address this limitation, we examine some of the primary methods the US military employs to “penetrate” American high schools in search of new recruits. We discuss the apparent targeting by military recruiters of communities with large numbers of low-income students, immigrants, and youth of color. Indeed, in many educational settings, students with limited access to college preparatory programs find themselves ensnared in a “web of militarism” that sharply limits their career options. Drawing on primary source material and military recruiting documents, we demonstrate how US schools are sites for the socialization of youth to a culture of militarism and, ultimately, the production of child soldiers. Thus, we argue that the military presence in US schools be included in the debate over the militarization of youth. We conclude by assessing the discourses and organizing strategies employed by US “counter-recruitment” activists, including some of those who use human rights-based arguments to curb militarism in American schools.

Notes

1. The authors filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the recruiting services of all relevant branches of the military. Although not exhaustive, the military eventually provided more than two thousand pages of material. The documents detail the extent of school recruiting activities—the number of recruiter visits to a given high school and the type of recruitment activities undertaken while there—in all of New York State and Connecticut, as well as parts of California, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania for (approximately) the 2011–2014 school years.

2. Lacking other readily available data, we use this common measure of the economic status of students and their families, although “eligibility for subsidized school meals is clearly a blunt indicator of economic status” (Dynarski 2016: BU6). Nationwide, approximately one-half of (public) middle-school students qualify for subsidized meals. Students in families earning less than 185 percent of the federal poverty threshold qualify for a reduced-price lunch, and those whose families earn less than 130 percent of the federal poverty threshold qualify for a free school lunch. School districts with a low percentage of qualifying students are generally well off economically.

3. In its most recent country report on the UN Committee On The Rights Of The Child (2016), the US government did not address the issue of targeting minorities and vulnerable groups.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott Harding

Notes on contributors

Scott Harding, PhD, is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Connecticut. He is coauthor of Human-Rights Based Approaches to Community Practice in the United States (Springer, 2015) and, with Seth Kershner, Counter-Recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools (Palgrave McMillan, 2015).

Seth Kershner

Seth Kershner is an independent writer and researcher whose primary focus is the US military's presence in public schools. His work has appeared in many academic journals and anthologies, as well as popular outlets such as Rethinking Schools. With Scott Harding, he is coauthor of Counter-Recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools.