It Takes a Village…or…a Parent

More and more young people are failing physically and academically. Who’s to blame and whatever shall we do?

It’s been well-documented that many high school grads are now too fat to meet the U.S. military’s physical requirements. Now it turns out that many of those same kids may be too dumb.

Hmm. Can they vote?

The nonprofit Education Trust released a first-ever report this week showing that more than one in five young people don’t meet the minimum standard required for Army enlistment.

Nonprofit? Nothing against the Education Trust, but that means benevolent, non-partisan and unbiased, right?

Among minority candidates the ineligibility rates are higher: 29 percent. In Minnesota, the disparity for black applicants was even more startling: 40 percent were found to be ineligible. Among Hispanics in Minnesota the rate was 20 percent, but among whites, it was 14.1 percent.

Who’s to blame? How can we fix this? Can we commission a bureaucracy and empower it with generous funding to tackle this issue or might there be a way to skip all that and draw a self-serving conclusion via a first-ever report and save the trouble?

This is more a distressing indictment of the U.S. education system than it is a testament to today’s Cheeto-eating, Xbox-playing youth, say the authors of the report.

…ignore the Cheetos and the Xbox, folks. Those are what we call outlying data points…they lie outside our predetermined conclusion.

It strips away that illusion that the military can be an easy landing ground for those not bound for college, and it suggests that national security is at stake.

Whoa! What?! National Security?!!

(!!!)

Well then, by all means we must move forward will all due alacrity and resolve!

By that of course I mean we must increase funding to education, create a National Department of Parenting, appoint Michelle Obama as its head, and tax the rich to pay for it for surely they are culpable for this.

“Our schools have to be upping their game if we are going to supply the military with the kind of folks they are going to need 15 years in the future”

“The welfare and security of our nation is one and the same as the welfare of our young people,” said Amy Wilkins, vice president for government affairs and communications for Education Trust.

Thank you. Without this first-ever report in hand, we might have thought this alarming issue was a distressing indictment of American parents, who by their absence, abuse or worse yet, their apathy, have raised a generation of fat, dumb kids.

It’s good to know they’re off the hook and our wiser, more educated overseers are eager to absorb yet another personal responsibility.

Today a grateful nation (or about 50% of it) commends you for your tireless service in the interest of an ever growing and burdensome federal government.

7 thoughts on “It Takes a Village…or…a Parent

  1. My husband and I are veterans, and have 2 sons currently serving. It never ceases to amaze me how many people continue to believe that the military is a place for people who can’t get a “good” job.

    50 years ago, you didn’t need a high school diploma to join the military. 25 years ago, you did, but you could get a waiver if you had a GED. Now you have to have a diploma. There is an entrance test that everyone has to pass (in addition to all of the physical and other requirements).

    What this study seems to be telling us is that a high school diploma doesn’t mean much any more. It used to be that dropouts were smart enough to still pass the test, but now, we have a sizable number of people who graduated high school, but are not as functional as those who didn’t graduate in the past.

    Serving in the military is a wonderful thing, and the military is the most equal opportunity employer I have ever dealt with. There are certain physical limitations that exclude a person, but other than that, if you can’t be a soldier, it is your own fault – through behavior or laziness. Far too many young people keep themselves from having that opportunity

  2. Was that 20% figure arrived at before or after the end of DADT?
    On a related note, could that 20% join the Mexican army? We used to sell them our obsolete military gear.

  3. It is the parents. Yesterday I saw an interview with ex-coach Brad Childress and his wife. When the subject of their Marine son came up, mom said she “tried everything” to talk him out of enlisting. Dad said he “tried to help him explore other options”. Thankfully, he had a stronger sense of honor than his parent do.

    These are wealthy and privileged people who raised a healthy, well-educated child. It’s not just the po’ dumb folk failing this nation.

  4. Kermit, interesting. I always thought NFL coaches were pro-American conservatives. Bart Starr, Mike Ditka, Mike Tice are some examples.

    Hey, are foreign schools better than American? A recent study (via NRO) researched ethnicity in other countries, and tied them to same group here. Example, how does a Norwegian do in Norway, vs a decendent of Norwegians who goes to school in the US. Turns out, the kids in the US do better than their distant cousins in other countries. Exception was Asia, which ties Asian-American results.

  5. I’ll never forget talking to a recruiter friend of mine a few years back, who talked about the challenges of recruiting for the National Guard. Walking into a high school, he knew that 9 out of 10 kids were not qualified, either mentally of physically, to enlist.

    When recruiting was tough, the military spent millions to help recruits pass their GED or put them in study programs to help them pass the ASVAB (Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude and Battery) exam.

    All in all, I am surprised the Strib actually used the word ‘dumb’ in the headline and the story. Not very politically correct of them. But I guess you can get away with it when it is a story about kids and the military.

  6. “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life…but it does make you addicted to the government.”

    Or, a columnist for the Red Star!

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