Wouldn’t a martial-arts program be a better option?(Photo of Master Jung from Koreanmartialarts.com
Okay, I’m all for getting rid of JROTC in the public schools. But I also recognize that there are some kids — about 1,600 — who like the program and get something out of it.
So the School Board has been looking around for an alternative — and I’m sorry, but this is never going to work.
Ethnic studies is a great idea, and ought to be part of the SFUSD curriculum. But the kids and parents who support JROTC aren’t going to see it as a viable alternative. And it’s pretty clear why.
Ethnic studies sounds like a class. JROTC is popular in some circles because it’s not just classroom education. It’s physical activity, it’s fun, it’s leadership development and it has a community-building element. The most popular part of the program, I’m told, is the marching band.
You need something that offers the same sort of attractions, but isn’t a military recruitment tool. And it seems to me there are plenty of options.
School Board members have talked about trying to find a program that feeds into the San Francisco Fire Department or even the Police Department. I don’t love the police option, but hey: Better to get kids interested in law enforcement than in the Army (and it might actually help San Francisco recruit some local people with community roots to be police officers). And a junior firefighter-paramedic program would have all kinds of benefits. The district hasn’t been able to work anything out with those options, though, in part because there’s no existing infrastucture; you can’t send 14-year-olds to the Police Academy, and the city’s paramedic classes are limited to people 18 and older.
But there’s another solution, too — and it seems pretty obvious to me.
San Francisco already has at least 50 good martial-arts schools and clubs that teach kids. I’ve been involved in Tae Kwon Do for almost 20 years, and my son is now a student at the Korean Martial Arts Center , and I can tell you that these classes offer physical fitness, confidence building, leadership development, and create communities and team spirit. You get uniforms. You learn to respect yourself and others. Good programs, and there are plenty around, teach conflict resolution and nonviolence.
And it’s fun and really cool.
Best of all, the infrastructure already exists.
The SFUSD spends $800,000 a year on JROTC. Most martial arts clubs in San Francisco are financially modest operations, and most instructors aren’t in if for the money. Getting a group of local martial arts clubs to set up satellite programs in the schools would be cheap. (The schools already have facilities and insurance, and the uniforms and equipment are — by the standards of what we spend on JROTC — inexpensive.
The kids now get phys ed credit for JROTC — another big attraction — but that’s a stretch anyway, since the state now requires phys ed teachers to have a California teaching certificate and none of the JROTC instructors qualify. Figure out a way around that for martial-arts instructors and you’d have it made.
I called Jane Kim, a school board member who’s on the curriculum committee, and she told me she was a little startled by the Ethnic Studies proposal, too. “We’ve been pushing the district to create an Ethnic Studies plan for a long time now,” she said, “but I was surprised to see that they combined that with replacing JROTC.” She’s a little dubious about this plan, too.
“We’re going to keep the marching band, though,” she said. “That’s a given.”
Which is a start.