Giving youth the choice of entering the military is a great idea and seems pretty ideal for the government. The government would be able to have men for their troops and will be able to use these men as means of protection for their country. But the men that join also get benefits out of the military too. The book states that the government will provide for tuition costs and expenses for college and postsecondary schooling for the veterans. The whole concept seems flawless and both sides win. However, the fact that the military was only open to men and not women made it less likely for women youth to get a job and an education. Also, men were drafted at a point to join the military and did not enter at their own will. The government’s idea of implementing more jobs is to force young men into the battlefield and hopefully take it as an experience and continue on with a collegiate career afterwards. Some people join the military because of the benefits they will get. I know on some job applications you have to indicate whether or not you were in the military or not, and it is very likely that those who have served will get the job. This creates an unequal playing field for those who do not want to join the American battle force because it is very evident that their are many risks. As mentioned before, there was a draft, but now people can enter the military on their own will. Whether or not they are doing it to show their nationalism and patriotism, we will not know, but it is safe to say that they will get many benefits out of their experience.
This chapter also touches on SAT testing and I don’t believe it is the best way to assess one’s knowledge and capabilities. The SATs were created to measure intelligence and a person’s place in the labor market. That is, if you are smart, then you must be well off in society, and if you are dumb, well, that’s just too bad for you. But the issue with the SATs is that many students are forced to take it for their college career but the scores are never used again to determine anything else. If you score higher than the average child, you will be able to get into the school. But for the child who scores lower and gets into a mediocre college, he also has the choice of transferring. In that process, SAT scores are not needed anymore, and that child could very well end up in the same college as the child who scored a lot higher. We have already established that we do not believe the SATs directly reflects any kind of intelligence, but there is no happy medium. Schools will always stand by testing and students will try to get rid of it. Also, the fact that the regents exams are so closely formatted as the ACT subject tests makes it seem like it would only make sense to get rid of one of those tests. However, it is advised by teachers to have students take the ACTs in case their SAT scores are not high enough. But if a student does well in school and bad on the SATs, his or her chance will to get into their dream school will still be jeopardize. The most interesting point the book makes is that these tests are used to judge people’s place in society. That just seems absurd because book smarts is very different from street smarts and any other kind of smarts. But these tests only test on material learned from books. So what is a better system for testing that we can implement on the school system to ensure maximum opportunity for children to succeed? and should the government step in to regulate what and how is being tested?
