Utterly Meaningless » Blog Archive » HEADS UP
  • HEADS UP

    Filed at 7:19 pm under by dcobranchi

    Uncle Sam wants you (or, more precisely, your kids):

    The Army will try to reverse the downturn later this year by adding an additional 800 recruiters and exploring options that include focusing on home-schooled teenagers and signing up more soldiers who score in the lower half of military aptitude tests.

    … Laura Derrick, president of the National Home Education Network, said she believes the Army is smart to focus on home-schoolers but there aren’t enough of them “to put a dent in what they are looking at.”

    Derrick said a significant number of children who are home-schooled are in military families. One challenge for the Army will be figuring out how to contact them.

    “Home-schooling families aren’t that easy to reach,” she said.

    Damn straight, we’re not. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature.

    4 Responses to “HEADS UP”


    Comment by
    Laura
    July 1st, 2005
    at 2:27 am

    Exactly.

    I don’t know where he got the idea I think the Army is smart to focus on homeschoolers. I went back and listened to my recording (I tape only my end of the conversation) and sure enough, I said nothing remotely like that. The actual quotes are verbatim, though.


    Comment by
    Daryl
    July 1st, 2005
    at 5:34 am

    I understand the privacy concerns, but doesn’t taping only one side still leave you open to being mis-quoted?


    Comment by
    Beverly Hernandez
    July 1st, 2005
    at 9:31 am

    Yeah I’ll say they want our kids. My son has received quite a few phone calls, but he’s not usually home…what 18 year old is? The other day a fully decked out soldier showed up at my door looking for my son. I told him he wasn’t home and didn’t want to join the Army. He insisted on leaving his bag with a couple fliers in it “for his friends.” My son just laughed and said “What a waste of time, don’t they have anything better to do?” And I have to agree…a total cold call while my son was over an hour away at work.


    Comment by
    Laura
    July 1st, 2005
    at 11:00 am

    There’s really no way to prevent being misquoted (except perhaps to refuse to talk, and even then… ). I make a tape when I can so that I’ll have a record of what conversations took place with which reporter. I spend a lot of time explaining the same things over and over, and I don’t want to sound like a broken record or forget something if/when I talk to them again. 🙂

    I do sometimes write a little note to remind myself if there’s information I need to look up or something immediate like that, but I can’t think and talk and write or type very well at the same time, unfortunately, so I just record and make written notes later. Usually I don’t even refer to the tape – I just make notes from memory, but sometimes I need the memory jogger, especially if things have been very busy. Eventually stuff gets taped over.