"Leave my child alone." No, this is not the reverberation of parental angst regarding President Barack Obama's Sept. 8 Back to School message telling kids to work hard, show up, pay attention, listen to their parents and not let failures define their future. These words are from parents with a more legitimate grievance against the privacy violations by military recruiters into the lives of their teenage children.
A provision in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act legislation mandates high schools to give recruiters the names and contact details of all juniors and seniors. Schools that fail to comply lose their NCLB funding. This little-known regulation effectively transformed President George W. Bush's signature education bill into the most aggressive military recruitment tool since the draft. Students can sign an opt-out form - but not all parents know about it, and there are slick ways around parents' requests.
No talk show hosts to the right of the dial have aroused parental furor about the military's virtual invasion into the lives of young Americans. Using aggressive data mining stealth Web sites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students' GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect, the soldier might know more about the kid's habits than do his own parents.
Now, that is something to be worried about.
Ann Ruddy,
Fort Collins
Originally appeared in the Ft. Collins Coloradoan on Septembe 21, 2009