Your Children Marching To Orders
How Soon Will We See It?
Unless you’ve been living in a rainforest with monkeys for the last year, you know that Trump is moving quickly through Project 2025. Many of its proposals have been implemented through illegal executive orders. Now, SCOTUS has limited our power to uphold the illegality of those orders.
One has not yet been implemented. I suspect it may cause quite a bit of consternation in parents, both red and blue. Project 2025 calls for all students in schools that receive federal funding (all public schools) to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Basically, the military entrance exam. The text does not state secondary schools, but I will assume that is where this will take place since another bullet in the same section calls for increased access by recruiters in secondary schools.
Project 2025 does not state what would be done with this information beyond giving recruiters a heads-up. Let’s look at the state of world affairs. Trump has already bombed Iran, unprovoked and without Congressional approval. He has threatened to invade Greenland, Panama, Canada, and Mexico in various rants. That’s a lot of boots on the ground.
Is anyone betting that should he choose to act on any of those threats, or should the Iran situation explode, that the draft will not be reinstated, enhanced by all students already having taken the ASVAB?
The only way to not be tagged is to attend a private school that receives no federal funds (primarily religion based or excessively expensive) or to be home-schooled. Many students may already have been shunted into those private schools should the national school voucher program become a reality. It is no wonder homeschooling has increased by 51% since the 2017-18 school year. It will probably increase by a lot more, especially at the secondary level, if the ASVAB is brought on board.
Project 2025 also doesn’t state what the results might mean. There are four subtests: arithmetic reasoning, mathematics knowledge, paragraph comprehension, and word knowledge. With the computer version, the test intuits the next question based on whether a question is answered correctly. So, if you get the question right, your next question is harder; if it’s wrong you get an easier question.
Will all students who do well on the exam be recruited for the military colleges? Will students who score in the lower ranges be marked for the lowest military ranks? We know from Vietnam what that means.
A draft has never been popular. It would probably be even less popular when your military destiny is determined before you even get to cross the stage to graduate. It’s going to take a lot more than mass bone spurs to get around this.
Parents, are you prepared for this? Have you prepared your children for this to be their fate? If the answer is no to either question, you’d better start determining how your child will be educated for secondary school. Will you risk the possible radicalization inherent in religious private schools? Can you afford the few non-religious elite private schools? Or should you start investigating your state’s requirements for homeschooling?
This may not sound like a big deal since it hasn’t been enacted yet, but we know how fast Trump’s staff spits out executive orders for him to sign. It could become reality next week, next month, or in six months. Rest assured, since it’s in Project 2025, it will appear.
Oh, and heads-up teachers. Perhaps new career paths for some of you — building and implementing homeschool curriculums or being a homeschool teacher.