Military Helps High School Drop Outs Get Their GEDs To Join Up

[babylonsister]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070812/smartening-up-recruits/

Military Opens Door to More Dropouts
KIMBERLY HEFLING | August 12, 2007 03:18 PM EST | AP


ANNVILLE, Pa. — Brittany Vojta survived boot camp. It was high school she couldn't make it through. Now, however, she has benefited from a program the National Guard started this year in Pennsylvania for privates who drop out of high school after signing up.

In an old barracks at Fort Indiantown Gap, the 18-year-old Cleveland woman and other dropouts spent three intensive weeks in class this summer to help them pass their GEDs _ so they would meet the minimal educational requirement for staying in the Guard.

Straining to fill its ranks with the Iraq war in its fifth year, the military is taking on an ever bigger role providing basic education to new recruits. The strategy is potentially risky for the military as it strives to maintain the quality of its force, but it's giving dropouts like Vojta a second chance.

"Something happened in that soldier's life that was bad. ... We have the ability to stop another bad action from happening _ them getting discharged from the military," said Sgt. 1st Class John Walton, 32, who started the Pennsylvania program. He says it is not about filling quotas but helping the troops.

While that program is aimed at keeping recruits in uniform, the Army and Army National Guard also reach out to past dropouts _ some of them already years out of school _ with a promise of helping them get their GEDs if they enlist. More than 13,000 recruits have earned GEDs through the program, known as Education Plus, which started in 2005.

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070812/smartening-up-recruits/

[Donnachaidh]

1. hey -- they had a booth at a meeting for 8th graders preparing for high school

Awesome graphics of great big guns and great big tanks, and the recruiter in dress blues. All of that for kids who are just starting down the puberty road. As a parent I was appalled to see them swinging that camouflaged carrot on a stick to kids so young.

[Coexist]

2. interesting anecdote about this...

my son has a friend who wants to be a Marine. He is not concerned with getting good grades, because he doesn't want to go to college. We were discussing this with the father of another friend of his, who is retired military - he said, "well, I told him, you better care - you can't get into the military with a GED." I told him, "not so, anymore."

He didn't believe me. Thanks for the link to send him!

(on edit: must. use. spellcheck.)

[BlooInBloo]

3. "Help" = "diploma mill".

[Scooter24]

4. I don't even think recruiters come to our area high school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Park_High_School_(University_Park,_Texas)

Our students instead like to pass their time by bringing leaf blowers to school on "Fiesta Day" to represent their Latino yard service men and women. But then again, the average family income here is over $200,000 a year and the school is "ranked" 12th in the country so I guess they feel the students are practically off limits and the kids can do what they want.

Drive over to a DISD school and you'll find that recruiters are there weekly.

And they say they don't target the poor. :eyes:

[Corgigal]

5. I personally think it's the least they can do.

This is a good thing for those young people and even the military. It's the possible blowing these kids up over a war that doesn't matter that bothers me.