> I thought this was an interesting news story. It seems people have two distinct issues with the idea of military recruitment in high schools -- first, the idea of letting them do it at all, and second, the way it's being done, by giving out students' names, addresses and phone numbers so they can be targeted with recruitment letters and offers.
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> I don't really see why the first should be a problem. Promoting the military as a career choice, if it's done at a school careers day for that purpose, is exactly the same as what other industries do. It seems reasonable that the military should be allowed to have that option as well.
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> The second doesn't strike me as being so innocent. If I was at a school and found out that my name, address and phone number had been given to recruiters, either from the military or anywhere else, I would have SERIOUS problems with that idea.
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> I'm sure privacy laws here would prevent that happening. You can't just give out people's addresses and phone numbers without their permission -- let alone the idea of doing this to schoolkids! Does the USA not have such privacy laws, or is the military considered to be above them, as a branch of the government?
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> The other thing which occurs to me is whether US universities do the same thing. I've heard enough stories from US students here about the promotional things they've received from universities, to wonder whether it happens the same way. Or do you only get spammed by the universities you've expressed interest in already?

Maybe things have changed. Back when everybody with a warm body got drafted, the military recruiters would tell a guy anything to get his name on the dotted line. Usually it was something like this:

"If you wait until you get drafted, you will wind up in the infantry. But if you sign up now, we will wait until you graduate, then send you to electronics school and you will be in the signal corps. You will even have the option of transfering to the Navy or the Air Force. Volunteers are also more likely to get officer candidate school. Anybody who lets themselves get drafted isn't very smart."

So the poor sap signs on the dotted line. He would probably get to finish high school, because anybody who asked for it, could get a deferrment. What they didn't tell him was that he had to go through basic training, which included an aptitude test. If he didn't have the aptitude for electronics, he became and infantryman. Almost nobody without political pull got transferred to another service. Officer candidate school took only a limited number. Can you guess who they were? Even at that, many of them washed out and wound up in the infantry as a buck private.

But I'm sure times have changed and the saps probably get everything that they are promised. I'm sure everything is on the up and up in other countries as well.
Howard