JROTC-lite
As you know, San Francisco has been engaged in all-out warfare against it’s Junior ROTC program. The latest effort to wipe out the program is to offer a “first aid class” (yes, really), to help those kids who want to do something meaningful with their lives. In a story deeply interlaced with local politics and upcoming elections, we learn about the JROTC-lite being cooked up. Please note the language I’ve highlighted, since it has the smell of “community organizing” hanging about it:
A majority of San Francisco school board members today pitched a replacement for the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, calling for an emergency response training course that would offer leadership training for the district’s students without the military overtones.
The proposal comes two years after the board voted to phase out JROTC and seven months before the program’s scheduled elimination in June.
The new program, which will be presented as a resolution before the full school board Tuesday, would require the district to create a high school leadership course called Student Emergency Response Volunteers (SERV) and include first aid training and emergency response skills.
[snip]
Students would learn important life skills and community service opportunities while exposing them to careers in law enforcement or emergency medicine, said Darin Ow-Wing, executive director of Community Educational Services, who brought the idea to board members.
[snip]
That alternative leadership program is currently being piloted in two high schools and includes a 9th grade ethnic studies course as the first in a four-year series of classes. The course was a last-minute selection in June to satisfy the school board’s demand for an alternative program, but few students have been attracted to it.
Maybe my antennae are just on unreasonably high alert. However, when I hear about a San Francisco school program, “without military overtones,” that supposedly teaches kids first aid and respect for firefighters, but in fact makes them learn ethnic studies and “community service,” all I can think of is ACORN.
What say you?
