Here's an interesting scenario for the UK, say around 2005. Tution fees and
other costs for an average university course are now around £15,000 a year,
and up to £30,000 for the most prestigious unis. Of course for the thousands
of poor schoolchildren in places like Hackney, Newcastle, university might as
well be on the Moon, just finishing school with or without qualifications,
will be an achievement. Teachers, even moderately bad ones, are hard to get,
in these inner city schools, most of the school day is spent just coping with
disorder, little is learned. As globalisation and the unwillingness of top
companies to pay tax erodes govt finances and money available for education,
many schoolchildren in poor areas face a long-ish, deprived, boring and poor
life on the minimum wage or a rather more exciting and lucrative but shorter
one in crime.
Then along comes the army. We'll run your schools, impose discipline, get the
pupils learning. Also of course saluting the flag, learning battle drill,
wearing military-type school uniforms. No shortage of govt funding for the
army, whatever the globalisation/tax situation. Better yet, those that make
it through these military style schools (there's a 'pyramid' system whereby a
maximum of less than half the initial entrants can get to final year, most
are chucked back into the failing state system, so pressure to conform to
military ideals is more than intense) are offered free uni tution, paid for
by the army. In school they join the JROTC (Junior Royal Officer Training
Corps). Schooling is by army officers, complete with medlas and army
uniforms. Pupils handle weapons. The free uni bit only comes if the pupils
join the Territorial Army for a year (and if we're fighting, say N Korea by
then, uni may be delayed rather more than a year). Parents don't like the
idea of their children, girls as well as boys, joining the TA, and possibly
fighting their way into Pyongyang instead of studying international law and
relations, but what choice do the poor have? The wealthy, of course, are
effectively buying their way out of military service. Those who dont join the
military schools suffer even worse life-chances after 16.
Fanciful? Not if you saw BBC2, Sunday 23/3/03, at 6.45 pm, where this already
exists in the US (Republican of course not Royal).
Hillary Shaw, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT
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