Schools to teach kids the arithemetic of war. posted by Richard Seymour

I reported a while back on the attempts by the government to indoctrinate children, including the Defense Schools Initiative. This involved selling kids on putative MoD values on such matters as "citizenship, humanitarian aid, ethnic diversity, human rights, veterans, conflict resolution and crisis situations". The Defense Schools Presentation Team, co-launched by the unctuous Blairite, Major Eric Joyce MP, and then defense secretary Geoff Hoon, seeks to indoctrinate kids through various topics in the curriculum and works with the Department for Education and Skills to that end.

This is a response to the acknowledged problem that "Public support will be vital to the conduct of military interventions", and that "Trust and respect for institutions generally is in decline and the Armed Forces and MOD are not immune. Adverse media coverage of aspects of defence activity may encourage such attitudes. Projecting an image to potential recruits of military service as a rewarding career may become more challenging.". It is part of a long-standing policy by the government, based on understandings reached and built upon during military campaigns of the 1990s.

There is a real drive on this by the government at the moment. Schools Minister Jim Knight, writing for the Euston Manifesto website (yes, that augean stable of 'progressives') following the catastrophe in Lebanon, has insisted that the armed forces should sponsor schools, setting up what he called "Armed Forces Trust Schools". Gordon Brown wants more school cadet forces. Sir Ian Russell, the former head of ScottishPower, has been asked to look at involving "private benefactors and companies to help fund new cadet forces in state schools, particularly those in deprived areas." They're going after the working class kids who, failed by the system, will be used as cannon fodder to defend it and advance its aims. Earlier this year, a school in Scotland handed children over to the armed forces for the day - with no prior parently consent. They were "made to take part in exercises that included 'imagining they were in a minefield' and 'acting injured', and told by an officer that he was 'having more trouble with you lot than with Iraqi terrorists'."

All of which is designed to teach working class kids that 650,000 Iraqi deaths = fun, adventure, civic duty, humanitarianism and ethnic diversity.