My high school made everyone take the asvab. I must have scored well on it because the military was up my ass. I remember uniformed soldiers regularly ringing the bell and asking for me. I had zero interest in joining the armed services, but they kept coming. My mom started answering the door for me; yelling at them to get lost and leave us alone.
You'd be surprised how many private schools receive federal funding.
But honestly this isn't the worst thing. As long as it's interacted with in an honest manner the ASVAB is an excellent career test. So an honest interaction with it would be counselors telling students their results and showing them career paths that line up with those results. To be clear, we're talking about civilian career paths.
The problem is I don't hear about it being done that way anymore. (My highschool did exactly the above) I only hear about it being used by recruiters, for recruiting.
When I took my asvab I was surprised when they told me my mechanical aptitude was really good...didn't know a Phillips from a flat head but wound up as an aircraft mechanic which was fuckin dope!
Oh God, I was an idiot. My recruiter said I qualified for everything. I told him I wanted to be an Airborne Infantryman. He repeated, Everything, could write my own ticket. So I decided... To double down on an Airborne School and Infantry contract. If I could go back in time I'd give that man a beer, slap myself, and forge my own signature on a military intelligence analyst contract. I'd have loved that job, learning languages, embassy postings (travel), and being all up in everyone's tea. But no 17 year old Maggoty had to be a dumbass.
I’m not opposed to a mandatory community service year upon turning 18, where a person who is physically and mentally able is required to spend 12 months PAID to work in a government organized community service program. This can help new adults gain new skills, create contacts, get references, and get off on the right foot financially.
But “military” is definitely not the right direction. IMO
the high school I went to had a mandatory number of hours of community service in order to graduate. It was neat, the kids did a very wide variety of things.
I mostly agree. I think having a "do it by age 30" rule or something might be a little better than requiring it at 18 (I graduated high school at 17 and was already in university at 18 so this would have messed things up financially as well as mentally).
The problem is that just discriminates against lower and middle class people more than anything.
It is work experience that has no meaningful value for a career (especially if EVERYONE has it) that mostly just serves to delay when people start college/trade school/whatever. Which hurts their ability to "hit the ground running" because they need to relearn what little they retained from high school but also impacts lifelong learning rather significantly. Whereas anyone who can pay off a doctor to say they have flat feet or some other non "yucky" issue will skip it.
And also? It is more or less worthless for the military. For anything short of cannon fodder, a year is nowhere near enough time to train someone to be useful. Even room clearing (e.g. Rangers) needs significantly more training to be less likely to shoot friendlies than foes. A lot of the problems in the Ukraine war (on both sides, honestly) can be traced to this. A soldier who can do more than "hold the line" needs significant training.
And while I think a return to having a strong emphasis on civil engineering and infrastructure as public service would be a great idea... without an education that is basically just hard physical labor. So now we have even more kids starting with debilitating injuries before they even begin their "real" career.
Federal service is very broad though. Just consider ask the different Federal Agencies and the roles they fill.
For example, when I was in college I had a 6 month internship with the National Park Service doing trail maintenance for a national park. It serves me no purpose as a resume item but I look back on that time extremely fondly even though it was the hardest physical labor I've ever done. It was incredibly physical work with really 10+ miles of hiking every work day. The NPS across the US has an huge budgetary backlog of trail maintenance going back decades.
That all is just an example but I'm sure the NPS could make great use of thousands of young workers to improve our parks. Similarly, I'm sure across the board the Federal Agencies would have a vast multitude of roles for this Federal service, including working for the DoD but in non military roles. Most of the agencies would have vast amounts of work that isn't covered by their budgets so it just doesn't get done.
I have my doubts. In my experience, the absolute worst customers were the ones who wanted to lecture you because ~I used to work in retail.~ I think some people just suck.
Ok, but also I see this causing populist style attacks on disabled kids too. Especially those with invisible or “minor but valid” disabilities that disqualify.
Fun Fact: This section of Project 2025 was written by Christopher Miller.
You might know him from such things as “On January 5, Miller issued orders which prohibited deploying D.C. Guard members with weapons, helmets, body armor or riot control agents without his personal approval.”
WTF is this about? I showed up stoned from skipping class in 10th grade and took the ASVAB back in the day. I placed in the top 1% of the nation not remembering a single question. I was told I qualified for any position in the military. I got DQ'd so it was for nothing. Why is this an issue now?
Armed services don’t have enough recruits, so they want a bigger pool to chose from. If every kid has to take ASVAB, then they have a much bigger pool of possibilities, including being able to actively recruit better suited people. The other point was to expand jROTC, to do exactly that.
I had no interest in the military but took ASVAB thinking of it as practice for SAT, which I did care about. However the tests were different enough to not be good practice, plus then I was constantly recruited by all branches. I expect they want to be able to do more of this
For those not familiar with it, it is an aptitude test that covers a wide range of topics. The results can be informational. Beware if you score well enough to fill a job in the army that is really understaffed, you will never get the recruiters to stop calling.
We took it senior year and I really didn't know about it at the time. I must have flipped some switch because every branch started calling, and a navy recruiter actually came to my house wanting to talk about nuke school. I was like I don't want to bomb anyone with nukes thank you very much lol.
I took it, had an army recruiter show up a year later and asked to speak with me. My mom said I had already enlisted, the guy goes, "Oh, we already got em?"
"No, the Navy did, he left for bootcamp last fall."
Also had my recruiter step between the Navy MEPS guy and I to tell him to fuck off and find me a job I wanted. He would not let the nuke thing go, and my recruiters already knew I had no interest and backed my other job choices. 😂
I wonder how low you have to score before the military doesn't bother to recruit you, because I had to take the ASBAV in high school and I just filled in bubbles at random since I had no interest in dying in Iraq. I still got a high enough score that recruiters kept bothering me for years.
I scored very high (I peaked in high school). The Navy was at my house a short time later offering me a job as a nuclear tech in a submarine. Sit in a sub for months on end? It was a hot and quick "no" from me.
"I'm sorry, I had an accident lately. Lost a hand and half my lung, and lost parts of my gray matter. Anyways, what would be my starting rank? General?"
If you refused you had to go sit in the cafeteria by yourself and weren't allowed to even study. Just sit there with your eyes open not doing anything for like 4 hours.
If you refused you had to go sit in the cafeteria by yourself and weren’t allowed to even study. Just sit there with your eyes open not doing anything for like 4 hours.
Every time I hear stories like this, it reminds me of my old high school. As it was the only public school in the city and there were no alternatives, it was damn near impossible to actually get expelled unless you were physically threatening or dealing cocaine in the halls.
They tried punishments like this too for a variety of reasons. Not being ready for gym class, or some hands-on class that requires a uniform. In-school suspension for minor infractions. Dress code violations. Stuff like that. They were happy that most of the kids bothered to show up and not cause problems at all. Kids were gonna sit there with their headphones on, head on a desk, and probably taking a nap. Attempting to tell the kids they couldn't do that was probably going to be met with a middle finger. What were you gonna do, suspend them? That's what they wanted in the first place. It was a 3 day vacation to them.
They had us take it in the 90s in my high school but we quickly knew it was worth nothing so everyone tanked it on purpose. We were already weary of standardized testing and knew just what to ask the teachers.
I went to high school during peace time — that used to be a thing way back when — and I think my school required it for ROTC but maybe it was more of a strong suggestion rather than a requirement.
We also had possibly the worst possible system for military recruiters. You had to choose between the regular P.E. class, weight lifting (if you played a sport), and ROTC. The end result was that ROTC was always like 2% committed future service members (who would have joined the military with or without high school ROTC) and 98% awkward people avoiding sports at all cost. (Or the worst fate of all, 1st hour PE so you were the person who smelled like stanky teen gym clothes in every one of your classes.)
Our school offered it, and you got out of your other classes to take it. I’m still in the military, some 18 years later, and I’d still suggest it for everyone as an option like mine was. I wouldn’t even feel too badly about schools requiring it. It’s just another test, without any obligation after. But, for a lot of lower income families, and for students who don’t perform too well, this opens another option for them after they graduate. Especially one that, with some potential risks to your body or life… could absolutely pay for your college.
I took it in high school just to have some extra testing under my belt for some reason that made sense at the time. It was probably the easiest test that I'd taken all 4 years. They're not testing for who can be rocket surgeons, but for people who have practical smarts. There were a couple of questions where you were given a series of 10 connected gears and giving the rotation direction of the first had to predict the last. Yeah, not calculus.
Glad I'm not in high school anymore. But this is kind of like in line with how schools prep you for getting used to being shuffled around because after school, you're likely going to end up in a job that's going to function similarly. So now instead of JROTC people bothering you in high school (like mine did) to recruit, now you're going to have the government under Trump being like "we NEED you" and you've got no choice but to go.
Isn't this like a preface setting for a draft? Sounds like it to me. This all says it's a draft without trying to say or feel like it's one.
In some schools. In my public school, we took practice ACTs and SATs.
Just because something's "been done for decades" isn't a good reason to keep doing it, much less to expand the practice. I mean, 50 years after the draft ended, but men still have to register, isn't a good reason to sign up women.
I'm not saying keep it because we've always done it, I'm saying it's always been around. This is to get people riled up about something that's always existed.