Military in classroom

How do they trick the rest of them into signing up though? I actually got into a bit of a "discussion" with my mother (she's a public school babysitter, er, teacher) over allowing the military salesmen in her classroom. She tends to have the "at risk," underachievers in her class and the sell is that the military is "a way out" to a better life that these kids would not otherwise be able to achieve.

It's funny how we send these kids off to be completely unproductive members of society -- in effect, they become parasites -- as a means of giving them a chance. I had an international relations prof in graduate school who used to rip on the military's waste of resources by saying, "Soldiers get paid to die. That's it." Students usually responded negatively to this rhetoric, but he's right . . . except for that fact that there is a huge military class living as dependents on the wealth transfer from the rest of society. The same prof was always a bit distressed that some nations never actually use their cannon fodder. "They just sit around all day doing push-ups and sit-ups," he said.