What might have happened if the corporate reformers who now plague public education had set their sites on privatizing the U.S. military instead?
Teachers, of course, are a far softer target. Most of us must come to school unarmed and very few of us are trained in hand-to-hand combat. Most of us are women, but, let me emphasize, far from helpless. If we were helpless, neither man nor woman would survive the classroom! We are trained to care for children, however, not to defend ourselves or launch counter attacks. We now live in a surrealistic world where we must battle to protect the interests of public schools and the children in them.
Can you imagine military charters providing mercenaries with increasing opportunities for merit pay and personal profit? Can you imagine statisticians concocting value-added measures for our soldiers, formulated to decimate the last of the ranks called to duty in the name of public service and honor?
The beautiful thing about junk science for some, I suppose, is that there is no end to its possibilities. Someone could surely find measures to prove our U.S. military is failing. You can manipulate statistics to prove any "damn" thing you want. They could then blame soldiers instead of policymakers, paving the way for privatization.
Billionaires could help the cause. Business-oriented military managers could institute extreme cost-cutting measures, such as skimping on protective gear and trying to strip soldiers of pensions rightfully earned, all to pocket more pennies for themselves. When you destroy its public servants, you destroy a nation.
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