Reply to Florida now allows vets and their spouses to teach without degrees

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why the military. Why? What is so special about the military? I don't "get it"

Can someone explain the thinking. Even if I don't agree, I want to know --- what are they thinking?[/quote]

The reason that there is a premium placed on placing veterans into jobs is that we as a nation need a standing military.  In order to protect the freedoms and the first world culture that we have here, we need a military that will protect our way of life from outside threats be they nations like the former Soviet Union/now Russia) or terrorists (whether European, Middle Eastern, Asian).  The US is a unique nation being the top of the world order and needs a significant standing military.  It is also used to protect our citizens abroad in many locations world-wide.  We could be a nation like Israel which demands that all youth of certain ages must serve in the military.  But instead of reinstituting the draft (I am old enough to have had to register for the draft when I was of age), we now use a volunteer force.  I have known friends who were drafted for service right out of high school.  Young men and women can choose to enlist or they can go to officer training academies like West Point, USN Annapolis, USAF Academy, etc, or they can go to regular colleges through the Reserves (ROTC).  For many years now, we have been able to fulfill our military needs with a volunteer force.

In the course of the volunteer service, they not only give up many productive years of a work life, they also give up a lot more.  They no longer get to live in the wealthy first world society that they are protecting.  They are uprooted and moved around every 2-4 years to new assignments.  They are frequently put into very dangerous situations and many of them risk their lives routinely.  They are the ones deployed for any active military engagement.  They lose their chance to build and nurture relationships whether family, significant others, children, or just good friendships.  They frequently miss out on family events, significant parts of their children's lives, and so on.  Additionally, many are often traumatized by the life that they lead.  Many have been injured in the service to their country and we, our society.  Many have seen co-workers and friends injured or die.  Many have see people horrifically injured or killed and many suffer from abnormal psychology trauma from their years of service.

As recompense for volunteering to serve in the military, we give them incentives.  That includes incentives to go back to college after their service, decent retirement benefits so that they can serve for a number of years and leave to work in the civilian work force with side retirement benefits, and so on.  But one of problems many veterans have is that they come out and their military service is essentially a black hole on their resume.  Think like the effect of taking parental leave to raise your children the first several years and ending up with a 5+ year gap on your resume.  In most cases, these veterans have a complete gap on their resume if they entered the service right after high school.  Their military training may or may not be useful in the work world.

In the past, we've had a problem that a large number of veterans have ended up jobless when leaving the service.  Many of them ended up homeless and some vagrant living on the streets.  For people who sacrificed a lot to provide service that most people are not willing to take, we do owe them more.  We owe them the enough that we need to make sure that when they return to civilian life that they are due a basic standard of living.  That they are not just used and then tossed out and abandoned.

If we aren't willing to do this basic compensation, then the level of volunteer enlistments will decline (and has been declining).  If the decline reaches a certain level, then they will reinstate the draft and there will be mandatory military service for a certain portion of our youth in order to meet the level of military participation that we need to maintain our military forces.  I, for one, would rather provide incentives to encourage people to voluntarily enlist rather than have my children go through what happened to friends.  You plan for your career out of high school, the college you want to go to, and then you get the letter that says your number was called and you put your life and dreams on hold.  And some of those kids never get those dreams or lives back.[/quote]

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