Honestly, I seriously wonder if they couldn’t offer college funding how much interest there would be at all in high schools. I’d imagine it would be 0.
Yeah I think I know of only two people that joined purely because they explicitly wanted to. Rest I know of were either drafted, or did it for college or something.
I had a bit of an existential crisis in ~2018 when I went back to my majority black high school for a friend’s kid’s event and saw so. Many. ROTC kids there. It’s a very poor, very minority district and it was extremely to see kids who have been systematically impoverished and disenfranchised by the American empire sign up to fight, kill, and die for the same empire as a way out of that very poverty and disenfranchisement. It hit me like a punch in the face, and then a GOP candidate for local office walked up to me while I was still freaking out, and all I could manage was a completely incoherent response. Friends, I was not winning hearts and minds that day.
Yeah I grew up in a smaller town and I know of quite few folks from HS that tried to do something else with their lives and ended up going into the military because it was that or a landscaping job or something. They were all white kids so they aren’t nearly as disadvantaged as the individuals your describing. It is still extremely sad how the US military’s recruitment does rely on fear of poverty and crushing debt.
I also don’t have too much sympathy for the individuals that joined from my area since they’re pretty damn reactionary.
