Shane Claiborne guested yesterday at the CNN Religion blog. It was a great article and well-written. I’m torn between just linking it (knowing many of you won’t click) and reprinting the whole thing (knowing it’s quite long.) I guess I’ll have to do my best with the following excerpt.
Historically, churches founded colleges and universities and made it possible for kids to attend. Recently Evangelicals have rediscovered social justice and we’re working on the poverty problem on several fronts, but education isn’t currently at the forefront. I’ll let Shane tell it, but please consider reading the whole piece. His story takes place at Edison High School in the poorest part of Philadelphia…
Out of about 500 kids graduating in that class at Edison, around 40 will go to a four-year college and about 50 will join the military. That struck me. More kids in the graduating class will go into the military than will go to college.
I also learned that Edison High School holds another tragic record – the most graduates to be killed in the Vietnam War of any high school in America (54 kids), no coincidence that it is located in North Philly rather than the suburbs. Heaven forbid Edison end up holding the record for Iraq casualties as well.
It was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said,
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
And as we see a bankrupt school system we can truly feel the blowback of the bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is that bumper sticker hope that a day will come when the schools will have all the money they need and the military have to hold a bake sale. It’s time for our kids to dream of another future than wars and rumors of wars.
I am reminded of a returning veteran from the Iraq War who told me of how financial difficulties compelled him to join the army. And then my young vet friend said, “We may not have a draft in America, but we have an economic draft… kids like me are joining the military because they see no other future.” And they are dying as they try to build that future. He ended up becoming a conscientious objector and being discharged.
In my neighborhood, military recruitment is very clever and selective – recruiters go door to door with military brochures that say: “They told you to go to college, they just didn’t tell you how… Join the Army.”
It occurs to me that those of us who are Christians and other people of conscience working to end war and violence (and build an “Army of None” as we like to say) have a tremendous burden of responsibility on our shoulders. We must create other ways for kids to go to college than military and ROTC scholarships.
Thinking Out Loud 
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