There have been difficulties in recruitment, going back to the time of W. I dont know of felons or those with mental health issues being allowed in. (Thinking on it, do you WANT a felon to be a trigger-puller? Or someone with mental health issues? It's a stressful line of work.) For the branches that have missed their recruitment and retention goals, they've had to lower standards and/or remediate those who couldn't pass the ASVAB, or are too fat to complete their physical fitness standards. The depressing part about substandard ASVAB scores, I remember the ASVAB being a PSAT-level standardized test. (Though its been a number of years since I took it, so my memory of it may be imperfect.) Equally depressing is that today's youts are, by and large, too fücking fat to meet even middling fitness standards as well. Taken together, its sad that, among all the branches, only the Marines have enough volunteers to enlist, that they don't have to lower standards to hit their recruitment numbers.
According to this, the Army have lower minimum standards, AND THEN, they still have to remediate volunteers and make some exceptions to hit their recruitment goals. The chair force and Navy have lower stated minimum ASVAB requirements, but then, they too have to make exceptions and remediate prospects; dunno if their expanded minimums are effectively as low as those of the Army.
Nah, I caught it, but its also a lazy trope nowadays. Now, there definitely are knuckle-draghers everywhere in the military then, but even moreso today, from what I've seen. I've also met some fairly well-educated types as well when I was active. To be fair, your post made me curious as to "how low" the Army had to go to have to remediate prospects to pass what I recalled as a PSAT-level exam.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/22/usa.iraq This is from 08: I know the government put out a report (Congress? DoD? Can't remember) some years ago that was pretty honest about this. I'll have to dig around and find it. Unless I'm dreaming I specifically remember them calling out unit readiness lacking because a higher proportion of soldiers were excluded from combat due to medications and behavioral issues.
The USofA has over 2 million troops at the moment, if you include active and reserves. If I round up all the waivers listed in those paragraphs I see about 1000 people. A very small percentage one would think. I guess the question is, of those 2 million troops, how many of them are young enough, fit enough, and smart enough to gear up and march for days while engaging an enemy... and how many are keyboard warriors? In this article from 2022, "77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems." This is an increase from the number of 71% in 2017. https://www.military.com/daily-news...mericans-are-ineligible-military-service.html
Bro ,you dont need to march to launch a drone army, bro! -Elon Musk looking for a new project to shit on.
Okay, maybe I misremembered. Maybe was something about those going into the AF needing to have a higher score, or something like that.
To be fair to you, the ASVAB, like pretty much all standardized tests, have different subsections. Basic arithmetic, reading comprehension, mechanical comprehension (i.e. "one gear turns this way, which way does the other gear turn"), and so on. All candidates take the same test, but different MOS emphasize different subsections. (A trigger-puller might not need a high score in math, but a keyboard warrior might.) And, the different branches place different weights on the different subsets of tests. So, after reflecting on what you'd post, its entirely plausible that your students found one branch more amenable to their scores than another, and/or that their subset scores did not match the MOS requirements that they were pursuing. But, everyone takes the same ASVAB. Hope this helps.
As a former teacher who actually stood between two guys, shirts off, ready to fight, I hate this cartoon.
Indiana cuts some degree programs: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...-discontinue-more-than-100-academic-programs/
Not to brag but I meet with the state senator's team 2 weeks ago, the mayor yesterday the congressman's team today. We are gonna go above the school to force them to accept some of these programs. They messed with the wrong person.
I wanted to have it serious discussion here with you guys about something. Considering the last 20 to 30 years we've been doing this whole word literacy thing and the ability to read in this country has gone down, do you think it is responsible for the state of our politics. I mean people don't read the paper or anything like that like they used to, so they turn to social media podcast is to explain things. As people have lost the ability to inform themselves since they cant read past the fourth or fifth grade level. This combined with financial struggles has allowed for the growth of disinformation and has made it harder for people to understand politics unless they see stuff right in front of your eyes. This is also led to the whole Law and Order entertainment thing because people don't know things and like the idea of somehow still knowing more than the supposed experts. So you may not be able to read and understand novels but your inherent belief that Karen Reade was set up is validated by this show and that show talking head and now you feel smart. And this is of course makes people susceptible to a lot of shenanigans and the right wing stuff filling in and allowing them to take advantage of a public with an inability to understand how politics works. Hence the rise of Trump and how a reality TV showman can become a cult leader. Open to your thoughts on the matter.
"I read it on the internet so it must be true". I don't think it is a coincidence that the time frame you give overlaps with reliance on the internet for information. There is simply an overwhelming amount of bad information there - I dealt with it all the time given my subject expertise. That said, the internet is not the sole problem. I've sat in church numerous times where the pastor mocked scientists and those who are experts in their field. Look at how many people think the world is roughly 6,000-10,000 years old: Ken Ham's Answer In Genesis, Creation Museum, etc., are simply cancerous. Critical thinking is not exactly easy and American society has for a long time had a problem with it.