Britain’s youth: the gang that couldn’t shoot straight
I’m in two minds about this:
A major review of the military’s role in British society says that encouraging more state secondary school pupils to join the cadet corps would improve discipline among teenagers while helping to improve the public perception of the army, navy and air force.
Improve discipline among teenagers? If you think teenagers fighting in pubs is bad now, wait until they’ve had some military training. Pub brawling seems such a factor in army life, one wonders if they teach it in boot camp. Why do you think people are warned not to start trouble in pubs in Hereford?
The review was conducted by MP Quentin Davies who gave an example of loyalty and honour himself when he defected from the Tories to New Labour without calling a by-election.
Davies believe[s] the virtues of discipline, physical exercise and team spirit outweigh any concerns over the use of firearms.
Yes, Quentin, tell us about physical exercise, discipline and team spirit, do.
Davies wants secondary school pupils to receive basic military training as a means of developing greater affiliation with the armed forces.
That’s a redundant requirement when you think about it. New Labour, with its flagrant disregard for the armed forces - sending them to war without the proper kit, failing to look after them properly when they’re injured, botching their inquests when they’re killed - has done great things for ‘developing greater affiliation’ with the military.
Public support and sympathy for the military must be at an all time high. If only the government equivalents were. When the anti-military crowd are wringing their hands over the treatment of soldiers you know that no further pro-military propaganda is required.
Cadet training will have its advantages, mind. It’ll pinch off the flow of whining liberals within a generation. It’ll ease prison over-crowding as well. Getting young people to shoot foreigners abroad instead of Britons at home should take the burden off the criminal justice system.
As the solider says in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life:
Here is better than home, eh, sir? I mean, at home if you kill someone they arrest you, here they’ll give you a gun and show you what to do, sir. I mean, I killed fifteen of those buggers. Now, at home they’d hang me, here they’ll give me a fucking medal, sir.
It all makes perfect sense. We need to stamp out violence and gun crime on our streets by teaching kids about fighting and guns.
Posted on April 6th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I have a view that seeing that the public schools have the OTC (or whatever it’s called now) then there’s a strong case for the proles to get some weapons training too. But that may be needlessly provocative.
ejh’s last blog post..Spain
The cadets was aces - I got to shoot all sorts of guns, abseil out of a helicopter, and all kinds of stuff that’s absolutely brilliant when you’re 14 (like night manoeuvres - basically playing Commando with half the school and real guns, even if they weren’t loaded).
The arsing about with drill instruction, boot polishing and saluting did my head in, though - taught me a very healthy disrespect for authority, and was the reason I quit after a year: I didn’t like being told what to do. Discipline? Bollocks.
Nosemonkey’s last blog post..A bit of admin
Did you see that photo the other day of, I think, Jordanian paramilitary people jumping out of a helicopter onto the wings of an aeroplane? I bet they got home and their kids said something like “Daddy! You were just like Nicholas Cage!”
ejh’s last blog post..Spain
I can’t speak for the cadets, but I’d never had a proper fight before joining the Army - once in, I’d be sporting a shiner (along with most of my sqn) at nearly every monday morning parade (and needing x-rays on more than one occasion). I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was actively encouraged, but certainly expected.
I’ve said this before, but most of the belief that the Army ’sorts you out’ comes from the fact that a recruit will (or at least would, back then) at some stage get the snot kicked out of them.
Much of the ‘learning teamwork’ comes from then kicking the snot out of other people… As a team.
Jherad’s last blog post..Wannabe terrorists?
“Improve discipline among teenagers? If you think teenagers fighting in pubs is bad now, wait until they’ve had some military training.”
Well, you know, things like martial arts and boxing are the exact opposite of undisciplined violence. I did martial arts as a child, and the first thing they told me was never to do any of these moves in the playground. And I never did. The cadet corps can perform a similar role. A lot of people who had been dismissed as no-hopers have built decent lives for themselves after service in the army.
Yes, there are some idiots. But if the army had a better recruitment policy, and if it focused itself around self-discipline and pride, there could be something in it.
And I’m a Lib Dem.
asquith’s last blog post..BNP: Wrong
yes, but I’m willing to bet that your participation in martial arts was at least in some way voluntary. Making you much more likely to listen to what was being told to you and wanting to do it right.
Unlike an involuntary membership of the cadet corps, which some kids might not take too kindly to.
Schools that offer service in the cadets don’t (as a rule) make it compulsory - there’s normally a community service alternative, where you can go and help old ladies tidy up or pick rubbish out of hedges or something. Peer pressure naturally leads to most teenage boys opting for the cadets so as to appear nicely macho (in a non-gay way, naturally), but as I say, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Parts of it can be good fun, and by no means leads to being brainwashed.
While understanding and sympathising with the squeamishness about military recruitment in schools, some kind of service aspect to education (military or social) can certainly have benefits. In fact, the thing that surprised me most about this whole affair was finding out that state schools don’t already have cadet forces… (Yes, I am a bit of a posho…)
Nosemonkey’s last blog post..A quick note to the Olympics protestors
Yes, but any participation in this scheme will be voluntary. While I opposed the Iraq adventure, I have a lot of respect for the armed forces. Additionally, I support gun rights, and I don’t see why progressive people tend to be against them.
asquith’s last blog post..BNP: Wrong
Good god. The very thought.
We are moving ever closer to the American idealism every day aren’t we.
PCSO Bloggs’s last blog post..Policing The Olympic Torch Relay
Cadet corps? At my independent single sex school in the 1980s they wouldn’t let girls play cadets, saying it was too harsh for our sensibilities.
The very same people thought it humane to send teenage girls dressed only in knickers and vests onto a sandy field battered by fearsome Irish Sea winds to break each others ankles with lacrosse sticks. Very ladylike, I think you’ll agree.
Hockey sticks for ankles, surely? Lacrosse sticks for heads.
ejh’s last blog post..Spain