He who pays the piper calls the tune II

Our little local paper reports that two high school boys are leading the charge against military recruiting at their campus. The boys are shocked, shocked that, in exchange for providing funding for schools through the No Child Left Behind Act, the school would like to be notified about the identity of students who can be contacted by military recruiters -- and this despite the fact that the students can (and in our neck of the world) do opt out:

Koch and Crawford say they are most disturbed by the act's Section 9528, which mandates that schools turn students' records over -- and risk losing "Title I" federal funding if they don't comply. *** Eighty percent of the district's 400 students have opted not to have military recruiters contact them as allowed by the NCLB Act, according to Tamalpais Union High School District Superintendent Bob Ferguson. "All parents are given a form to sign, which allows individual families to make the choice as to whether their son or daughter is to be contacted by the military recruiters," said Ferguson.

Just a few things: First, I'm again impressed by how little these parents think of their children. Clearly, each of these parents is thinking, "I've raised such a weak-minded, unprincipled child that the mere sight of a military recruiter will either (a) drive him into a panic attack from which he'll never recover or (b) undo all the years of anti-military training I've raised him with and send him willy-nilly into the recruiter's arms." Second, if you want the money, you take the strings attached. I'm just chronically disgusted by the American entitlement theory, which says that taxpayers have to shell out millions of dollars to various constuencies, with no reciprocal obligations. I'm hopeful, of course, that the newly reconstituted Supreme Court will deal with these shenanigans through its ruling on the Solomon Amendment case. Related posts: He who pays the piper calls the tune Benefits and burdens; and the fear of weak minded youngsters