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Addressing the Army's 'alarming recruiting crisis'

Addressing the Army's 'alarming recruiting crisis'

Chad Groening
Aug 31, 2022
Addressing the Army's 'alarming recruiting crisis'

A conservative military watchdog says a new program might be helpful in closing the Army's huge recruiting gap, but not as much as stopping the "woke nonsense" would.

The Future Soldier Preparatory Course pilot program -- already being conducted at Fort Jackson, South Carolina -- will provide education and training to help American youth reach academic and physical fitness standards for military service.

ASVAB scores traced back to poor teaching, teachers' unions

The recruiting difficulties in the U.S. armed forces include poor scoring on the ASVAB test but a military watchdog says the culprit behind that is the public school system.

With only 23% of young people meeting enlistment standards (see related article), Army Chief of Staff James McConville says part of recruiting problems can be attributed to declining scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.

Elaine Donnelly, who leads the Center for Military Readiness, faults the “education establishment” and in particular the teachers’ unions for the classroom failures.

“The high-tech military, the all-volunteer force,” she tells AFN, “requires certain basic skills that need to be taught and nurtured in schools.”

It appears young men and women are not learning the “basics” in school, she adds, which makes the U.S. Army’s remedial training a disturbing trend.

With only 23% of young Americans fully meeting enlistment standards, Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), says it is no secret that Army enlistments are way down. And the recruiting shortfall has been exacerbated by the Department of Defense's unyielding demand that all service members be vaccinated against COVID-19, despite growing evidence of the shots' ineffectiveness.

Donnelly, Elaine Donnelly

"The remedial programs like this, when people who want to join the military don't quite meet the test, physical or academic, they've been done before; they can be helpful," Donnelly says of the preparatory course. "There is a concern in the follow-on training, whether or not they will be prepared for that, but the Army is quite desperate for recruits right now, so it's understandable they would introduce this program."

But Donnelly expects the military's recruiting crisis will continue until the "woke nonsense" stops.

"Teaching critical race theory, having drag queen story hours on military bases, divisive anti-extremist training -- all of these kinds of things alienate the people who are needed to encourage recruits to sign up," she submits. "I'm talking about parents and influencers; when they start getting into to all of this woke nonsense, it does discourage influencers from giving encouragement to young people to join."

According to the U.S. Army, approximately 2,000 applicants who may be eligible to participate in the course have already been identified. The results of the pilot program will be reviewed in the early part of fiscal year 2023 to determine if the course was effective and should become permanent.

But seeing no end to the wokeness in sight, the CMR president says the "alarming recruiting crisis" is only going to get worse.