~ support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy-and gain advantageby it in some way. © 2008, Nancy Welch. Deborah Brandt,Literacy in American Lives No Child Left Unrecruited "This Video Game We Call War": By now educatorsknow all too well that the bipartisanNo Child Left Behind Multimodal Recruitment in America's Army Game (NCLB)Act of2001 and the 2001 SolomonAmendment require public secondaryschools plus colleges and universitiesreceiving federal funding to Nancy Welch, University of Vermont open their campusesand student registrationrecords to military recruiters.At my , This article focuses on America's Army Game, the first-person­ local high school-in a district where well before the current recession more than : shooter video game now being peddled by the U.S. Army for a third of public school students qualifiedfor reduced or free meals-teens can : classroom use. In my community-based literacy class, where take home at-shirt for running the VermontGuard's inflatableobstacle course ' students partner with children and teens at a local youth set up in the cafeteria during lunch.At my university-in a state recently ranked : center, this "game" helps us to grasp and problematize last for public higher-educationaffordability-juniors and seniors receive emails literacy sponsorship and recruitment-the idea that literacy from the nearby Army recruiting station with the header "Military Pays Off : education involves not just learning a new set of practices but StudentLoans." Anti-war,veterans', and progressiveteachers' groups across the ' also trying out a social identity. Through this class, I argue for country have decried what Gregory Sotir of the CoalitionAgainst Militarismin • a pedagogy of multiliteracies that's committed to counter- Our Schools calls the "high-pressuresales techniques"-accompanied by "eye­ : recruitment: to enlarging ideological space so that critical candy trinkets" and "he-man danger mobiles"-that recruitersbring onto school : questions can be formed and alternatives entertained. grounds (''NCLB and the Military").In a Spring 2008 report, the American Civil LibertiesUnion charged that, with the military targetingchildren as young as 11, ideo games recruit identitiesand encourageidentity work and reflection the has violated Senate-ratifiedinternational standards against child V on identitiesin clear and powerfulways. If schoolsworked in similar recruitment(" Practices"). ways, learning in school would be more successfuland powerful .... James Paul Gee, What VideoGames Have to Teach Us About Leaming Yet as deepening recession, costly mandates, and state and federal cuts sap and Literacy school budgets, and as military recruiters strain to meet their quotas (at the same time that both parties in Washingtoncall for a "surge" in and Unlike most army games that simplyprovide yet another arena in which to play flirt with new fronts for the War on Terror),U.S. public schools and the military the tried-and-truegame of point and shoot,Americas Army game is making are moving into an even closer "collaboration," one aiming to bring army accessible-even desirable-the identityof soldier to those who play... recruitment out of the cafeteria and into the classroom. Just before the start Stephen Hannaford,U.S. Literacy Politics, University of Vermont of the Fall 2008 school year Brenda Welburn,National Association of State Using the [AmericasArmy] gaming platform, a number of applications Boards of Education (NASBE) executive director, and NASBE past-president have been developedfor the coming year to enhanceProject Lead the Way's Brad Bryant sent letters to state board of education members across the country engineeringcurriculum, currently in 3,000 middle and high schoolsnationwide. urging them to sign up for the U.S. Army-sponsored"Building Strong Futures America's Army Team,New Army GameApplications Look to Boost Together" conference held in mid-Septemberat Fort Jackson, South Carolina. TechInterests The conference,promised Welburn,would "stimulate and sustain dialogue with one of our nation's largest employers of our public school system" (Welburn, Sponsors ... are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable,

Reflections• 162 Reflections • 163 :l±::;., :l±::;.-

"Upcoming Events"). Alongside the instrumentalistimplication that students' however,Americas Army promotersclaim that throughthe trainingmodules educationsmight be tailored to Army-as-employerneeds, Welburnproclaimed (whichinclude Basic Marksmanship,Obstacle Course, U.S. Weapons,and that "shared ideals" had brought the Army and public schools-"the two "MilitaryOperations in Urban Terrain"or "Shoot House"), studentscan "explore most egalitarianinstitutions in the country"-together (quoted in National kinematicsin a ballisticsproject," ''visualize a parabolatrajectory and calculate Association of State Boards of Education, "State EducationLeaders Join with the varied velocities,"'"drive' a vehicle around a virtual obstaclecourse as well U.S. Army"). In a version of John Dewey goes to boot camp, Bryant stressed as perform a virtual helicopterdrop," and, overall,increase "mastery, especially that in addition to providing the opportunityto hear high-rankingofficers in technicalstudies" through experiencingthe game's "rich virtual simulation" discuss "how the Army helped them become lifelong learners," the conference (America'sArmy Team,"New Army Game").After pilotingthe video game in would give board members Ohio classrooms,the Army promisesthatAmerica s Army Game will be ready the opportunityto test their weapons simulation(Brenda, I signed you "for deploymentin all pre-engineeringclasses throughout the countryin the up for the Ml6 simulation),do humvee [sic] rollover simulation,and 2009-2010year." overcomeour fear of height [sic] with the Towerexercise. Can we say With this repackagingof Americas Army Game for the classroomhas also high scho61hands on learning! (Bryant, "Friends and Colleagues"Y come an assertion of the game's liberal educationalvalues. In place of Madison More, Bryant enthused,the U.S. Army planned the conference"at no cost to our Avenue's lingo of"strategic communication,""positive messaging,"and members-it is on their nickel." All expenses,including travel from the fifty "branding" that the military had used to describe the game's purposes, Ohio's states plus U.S. territoriesserved by the NASBE, were to be paid by the Army. state superintendentis advancingAmericas Army's new-foundpedagogical principlesin terms we might associatewith the educationalphilosophies of John In additionto hosting the "Building StrongFutures Together"conference, the Dewey or Lev Vygotsky: U.S. Army recentlyannounced that its "3d RecruitingBrigade which coordinates "When we were approachedby the U.S. Army late last year (2007), Army recruitingand communicationsefforts throughout the greatermidwest" we realized the great opportunitythis project represented for engaging is ''teaming up" with Ohio public schoolsto "promotestudent interestin the students in a learning environmentthat excites them ... This marks a real engineeringand technicalfields" through classroomuse of its popularfirst­ shift in the education paradigm to utilizing a technologyplatform that person-shootergame Americas Army (America'sArmy Team,''New Army students are familiar with and enjoy!" (quoted in America's Army Team, Game").Developed at the Army's MOVES (Modeling,Virtual Environments and "New Army Game") Simulation)Institute at a cost of about $8 million and releasedin 2002,America s Army Game invites a user to take a soldier through four basic trainingmodules What the state superintendentdoes not mention is that even as Ohio's and then "deploy" either for more training( e.g., advancedmarksmanship) or to Departmentof Educationand the U.S. Army were unveiling their new online "missions,"mostly in virtual Middle East and CentralAsian settings.Until partnership,the state's governorhad just announced$540 million in budget cuts, very recentlythe Army has emphasizedthat the game is meant to advertisethe including$25 .9 million from the public schools. Somethingother than "shared militaryto '"kids who are college bound and technologicallysavvy"' (Col. Casey ideals" appearsto be driving these two institutionstogether. On the one side, Wardynskiquoted in Kirby, "The AdvertisingGame") and help in '" gettingthe we have cash-poor,human resource-richpublic schools; on the other, lavishly U.S. Army name out there in a positive light ... like Coca-Cola"' (Army recruiter funded and personnel-hungrymilitary recruiters:It's a match made in free­ quoted in Downing,"Army to Recruiters").AsAmericas Army project director market heaven. Col. Casey Wardynskitold anchorson a January 17, 2008, segmentof the This movementof Americas Army Game into classrooms(the poorest of morning show "Fox and Friends,"the game doesn't "show expert information. which, as JonathanKozol amply documentsinShame of , are already It's designedto be like a virtual test-driveof soldiering... " Most recently, being invadedby corporatecurricula and for-profitcontrol) should alarm all

Reflections• 164 Reflections • 165 '* educators. My focus will be on the challenges it raises for literacy educators. and access to education; they also recruitthe services of a populace trained What happens when the pedagogical perspectives of multiliteracies-with its in practices and attitudes by which sponsors hope to gain advantage. For the fuller appreciation of the "increasing multiplicity and integration of significant United States in 1958-enjoying the seemingly endless prosperity of the long modes of meaning-making"in a multilingual,multimodal, multimedia world, post-WorldWar II boom but anxious too about the technological advancements posited as the progressive alternative to "page-bound," "rule-bound," and of the Soviet Union-the NDEA was indeed intended to recruitAmericans to "more or less authoritarian" technocratic literacy (New London Group, "A college with the aim of securing advantage over Cold War rivals. Furthermore, Pedagogy ofMultiliteracies"}-are championed by the Department of Defense? as historian Richard Stacewiczpoints out, U.S. school curricula was enlisted If the designers of Americas Army Game do indeed understand that, as James to "mold" the "citizen-soldier"through widely used classroom texts such as Paul Gee writes, "Video games recruit identities and encourage identity work The Story of Democracy,which cast U.S. military adventures as "'taking up and reflection ... in clear and powerful ways," what kinds of identities are our responsibilitiesin a world threatened by communism and poverty"' and being recruited? If the learningAmerica sArmy promotes is "successful" and admonished students to '"protect the nation and its principles by serving in "powerful," successful and powerful at what and for whom? the military when called on"' (25-26). With the escalation of the and mass social movements came Johnson's signing of the Higher Education These are questions I've posed to students in my "U.S. Literacy Politics" Act of 1965 and Richard Nixon's 1970 push to expand federal financial aid class as we examineAmericas Army Game through Gee's claim that, part and for college. These we can read as examples of"guns-and-butter" educational parcel with trying out a set of practices, literacy learning involves taking on a sponsorship,aiming to recruit the allegiance of a population politicized by the social identity such as scientist, linguist-or soldier.But before I move into the decade's events. No Child Left Behind, borne of an era in which the United classroom, I want to place the problem of U.S. educational sponsorshipwithin States was recovering from its post-Vietnamaversion to sending soldiers abroad political and economic trends that are not the sole creation of one eight-year and in which collective memory of social movements had waned, appears thus presidential administrationbut result from a thirty-year period of conservative to extend into the present century forms of sponsorshipthat would harness ascendancy accompaniedby the decline of social movements that have education to domestic and foreign policy goals.2Like the Cold War before it, the historically been progressive education's primary sponsor.As I write, all signs War on Terror casts the United States as an "altruistic democracy,dedicated to suggest that the three-decades-longreign of conservatismin the United States individual freedom and committed to protect the free world" against an enemy has come to an end with voters rejecting not only any return ofReaganism but "intent on destroying freedom" (Stacewicz, WinterSoldiers 24) and does so in Clintonian conservatismas well (see Selfa, "Politics of Change"). But with order to authorize the current national security agenda and spending priorities. prolonged economic stagnation and both parties in Washingtoncommitted to "defending our interests" around the globe, when and whether the U.S. military Yet there is also at least one key difference to acknowledgebetween federal will be withdrawn from , from Afghanistan, and from our schools remain designs on education in the Cold War era and today. The NDEA sought to open questions. funnel students into colleges and universities; it aimed to promote, but did not mandate, areas of study that might improve U.S. performance in its technical Brought to You by the U.S. Army and ideological contest with the USSR. In fact, ifwe regard the past 100 years Of course, we can say that the military presence in today's school buildings of federal educational sponsorship-whether motivated by expansionist (Morrill is nothing new. Rather, it marks the continuation and upgrading of 20h­ Act) and imperialist (NDEA) ambitions or obtained (Title VI and Title IX of the century forms of educational sponsorship-think here of the 1958 National Civil Rights Act) through the force of social movements-we find the steady Defense EducationAct (NDEA}-that likewise linked support for schooling expansion of access to and, in key periods of struggle, profound democratization to national security goals. Sponsors of literacy, Deborah Brandt emphasizes, of education, including higher education. The latest and most significant do nut simply deli11erliteracy instruction and, more broadly, the means for developmentsin federal educational sponsorship, on the other hand, take place

Reflections • 166 11,1,;uum, • 167 in a bubble-and-bustrather than steadily expanding economy and seem designed just a small fraction of its annual recruitment budget (Clarren, "VirtuallyDead to funnel students not into colleges and universitiesbut into jobs (especially in Iraq"). Army surveys in 2004 and 2006 found that almost a third of young in the low-wage service sector) and the military (especiallythe infantry).The people between the ages of 16 and 24 had had some experiencewith the game 1996 Personal Responsibilityand Work OpportunityReconciliation Act, for and 60 percent of new recruits reported playing the game at least five times each example, eliminatedwelfare-to-college programs in favor of limitedjob training week (Jonsson, "Enjoy the Video Game?"). for welfare-to-work.No Child Left Behind vacated the question of college With this evidence of effective recruitment also comes a caveat: Whereas affordabilityand refilled the space with direct military recruitment.Although the virtually 100 percent of Army recruits at the start of the 1990s were high school stated target for Americas Army Game is the potentially "college-bound"teen,3 graduates,the Army has waived the high-schoolcredential requirement each today's Army aims to recruit that teen straight from high-schoolgraduation into year since 2003 for 20 to 30 percent of enlistees (Kaplan, "U.S. Army Lowers service.At www.goarmy.com(the companionwebsite toAmericas Army Game RecruitmentStandards"; Inskeep and Bowman, "Army Documents Show Lower offering recruiter-staffedchat rooms for gamers and "Real Heroes, Real Stories" RecruitmentStandards"). This sidebar to recent news stories about recruiting on its "Army Strong TV"), one must click through six videos of possibleArmy success may best explain the military's motivationto repurposeAmericas Army career paths before reaching one portraying ROTC. Much more common are Game for classrooms:to give the Departmentof Defense much more of hand portrayals of young men and women proclaimingto have successfullycombined in creating the pool of potential recruits from which it wants to draw.5That Gee the identities of soldier and student as they take college classes, including online cites Full Spectrum Warrior,the U.S. Army-fundedspin-off of Americas Army from military bases and war zones, while serving in lower infantry ranks. While Game, as an example of a "good" video game that is also, for soldiers, a "serious circa 1960 the media and educationwere enlisted to recruit young Americansto learning tool" ("Good Video Games and Good Leaming" 34) presents us with acceptanceof the draft, today we see a full battery of persuasive means-stop­ a challenge:of taking seriouslythe identities and worldviewsto which U.S. loss, citizenship-for-service,military recruitmentmasquerading as math and Army-sponsoredlearning tools would recruit participants. engineeringclasses and also as guidance counselingwith the rebrandingof the Armed Services VocationalAptitude Battery into the nonprofit"ASVAB" to Multiliteraciesand the Questionof Critical Learningin English 107 offer schools "career exploration"services (ASVAB,"Overview"}-at work to When I bring Americas Army into my classroom, it's not within the usual staff an "all-volunteer"army for two theaters of war and military bases that ring frames for decrying the game as instigating anti-socialviolence. Nor is it within the globe.4 President-electBarack Obama's pledge to forgive college loans in the frames most often advanced by new media and cultural studies scholars exchange for national-including military-service, appears to join rather than that highlight identity negotiation and transgressiveplay while ignoring the depart from, the list. ideologicallandscape games like Americas Army or Grand TheftAuto present.6 Both the anti-socialviolence and transgressiveplay frames would position us Moreover,despite formidablerhetorical difficulties-the widespread antipathy incorrectly,I believe, to approach this game, with its U.S. Army-embedded toward the war in Iraq, a mounting death toll in Afghanistan-military recruiters view of American soldiers and foreign terrorists, as a departure from rather than are also chalking up remarkable success, reaching or succeedingtheir goals for reinforcementof what is presented as a matter of routine on the nightly news the past three years. No doubt commentatorsare right that shrinking economic and in the speeches of politicians. Instead, I bring the game's ''basic training" prospects for young men and women plus the lure of more than $640 million in into this community-basedclass as we move from descriptiveaccounts of and signing bonuses in 2007 have helped (Baldor, "U.S. Military Meets Recruiting sometimesemancipatory claims about multiliteraciesto an examinationof Goals"; Youssef,"Economy's Bust is Boon"). Promoters also celebrate education's social settings, conditions,and sponsors that would set the terms Americas Army Game as a recruiting tool that's delivered great bang for the for both the uses of literacy and our ability to reflect on the "causes" (Brandt) buck. Army spokespersonLori Mezoff pointed out in 2006 that 160 million or "identities" (Gee) to which literacy's sponsors would recruit us.7 hours of play are recorded each year for this game on which the Army spends

Reflections • 168 Reflections • 169 -~ ,lli:

In U.S. Literacy Politics, students-primarily juniors and seniors who see this and frustrate-Jeff returns to the youth center with fresh perspectivesfor elective as intersectingwith their social service or socialjustice commitments­ seeing and appreciatingthe complex work taking place. During an afternoon partner with children and teens at a downtownyouth center. Over the years of puppetry,for instance, he is struck by the performance of one child, Shayla, those partnershipshave led to a range of activities such as making blogs, who creates a puppet named "Miss Perfect" and uses the puppet to mimic and recording spoken-wordpoetry, and performing stand-up comedy.A crucial mock expectationsfor a teen girl's appearanceand concerns. Recalling Gee's first step for my students has been to recognize that they are not "bringing explicationof"real-world" and "virtual" identities,Jeff writes in his journal literacy" to the youth center; the center is already rich with multiple, overlapping about Shayla's playful and serious interventionin the "projective" space in communicativeand representationaldomains that sometimes include but are not between: "She's not afraid to critique with her puppetry (perhaps without even limited to print. In particular,Gee's What VideoGames Have to Teach Us About realizing it, perhaps knowing full well what her intention is) the 7h/8th-grade Learning and Literacy helps students become co-learnersat the youth center: As culture of beauty magazines and looking 'perfect."' they begin to recognize its many "semiotic domains" and the children and teens' With Gee's semiotic domains and the New London Group's emphasis on design skillful use of many modalities-"oral or written language, images, equations, (whether in writing a poem, composing a blog entry, or making a puppet), my symbols, sounds, gestures, graphs, artifacts etc." (18}-these universityjuniors students and I are much better equipped for partnerships in this neighborhood and seniors recognize, too, how much there is that the children and teens have to setting; these perspectiveson literacy and learning enable us to collaboratewith teach them. the abilities, interests, and commitmentsalready present among these children In an early journal, Jeff first reflects on the meaning-makingdomains with which and teens. Yet even (or especially)at the youth center with its variety of spaces he is affiliated:"I know the literacy of running-I know that the difference for a great variety of activity,the needfor sponsors and the needs (or desires, between a 2:05 800 runner and a 1:55 800 is WAYmore than 10 seconds in requirements,and constraints)of sponsors are ever-present.The teens, wanting the way that a nonrunner would probably never realize ... _,1iHe then considers to Xerox and distribute a 'zine that includes a drawing of two hand-holding domains he knows only from the outside: smiling boys and two hand-holdingsmiling girls under a rainbow flag, have .... I also, alas, do not know the literacy of being EMT, like my friend to negotiate first with the center's board of directors who are concerned about J.-I'm sure there's a whole culture that revolves around the ambulance, losing much-neededsupport from local and possibly socially conservative but I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about it. And just reasoning donors. While "sponsors may have their resources diverted to projects of self­ ·throughthis n6w, it seems as though the literacy of a situationis what interest or self-developmentby literacy learners under their aegis" (Brandt keeps people from wanting to try new things. I know that I wouldn't want 70}-the 'zine with its LGBT pride message goes to press-we do have to ride for a night with my friend J. because I would have no idea what her to account for how a sponsor would define and delimit design space. With and her friends would be talking about-and that would frustrateme and Brandt's conceptionof literacy s~onsorshipas deliveringboth "the material and make me feel stupid as I sometimesalso feel stupid when I'm playing Uno ideologicalpossibilities for literacy learning" (70), we can consider that in any with Ahmad and Harun [at the youth center]. I can confidentlysay there is given design space or meaning-makingdomain there are constraintson available an entire language surroundingUno, it could definitelybe classifiedas a resources and ideas. For example, about the critical discernmentand innovation semioticdomain. I'm sure many people share that experiencewhen there are that Jeff notes with Shayla's "Miss Perfect" puppet performance,several women particular semioticdomains they have not mastered. in the class wonder how she will manage hang on to that stance in a sexist society,without the sponsorshipof a visible women's rights movement or, close With these layers of recognition-that one does not become literate once and for all but is always approachingthe boundaries of new domains, those the memory of the women in this class, the "guerilla girls" movement. boundariesnot only inviting activity and affiliationbut also serving to deter With this view that sponsors "subsidize (or don't) the developmentof

Reflections• 170 Reflections • 171 ~- people's resources" (Brandt 70)-with resources including ideas, practices, now being modified for classroomuse-I ask students to think about questions and attitudes-I am also better positionedto help my students work on the shaped by our readings and discussionsso far, including: problem that arises sharply as they respond to Gee's distinctionbetween • How does this game appeal to potential recruits (recruits to the game? "active" and "critical" learning. Semiotic domains like "cellular biology, recruits to the Army? is there a difference?)through multiple modalities postmodern literary criticism, [and] first-personshooter video games," writes (text, sound, interactivityetc.)? Gee (18), require people not only to learn a set of practices but also to take on an identity: to "see themselves ... as the kind of person who can learn, use, • If, as Gee writes, video games "recruit identities and encourage identity and value the new semiotic domain" (59, emphasis in original).This is active work and reflection ... in clear and powerful ways," how isAmerica s Army learning-precisely what is on offer for classrooms from the U.S. Army and "recruiting"players for "identity work"? celebratedby the NASBE officers and Ohio's state education superintendent. • If a good video game creates a space between "real-world" and ''virtual" But how can a leaner be "willing," even "enticed" and "sucked into" seeing identities,allowing a player to reflect on "what I value and what I do not," ''themselves in terms of a new identity" (59) that will be "valued and accepted what space does this game offer? by others committed to that domain" (59, 65) yet also cultivate the reflective space-"critical learning"-for conscious scrutiny of and possibly intervention • Knowing how to "reload" an Ml 6 in a video game is not the same as in a domain's terms (40)? knowing how to reload an actual Ml 6. So if Americas Army Game aims to train potential recruits, what is the content of this training? The questionfor my studentsisn't an abstract one. Stephenraises concern about the ways of being a young man that he and other male volunteersat the As we take turns at the keyboard, spending a few minutes in each mission, we youtb center may 1:1epromoting, especially by "roughhousing"with the teens also note on the board a running list of observations,including: boys because it seems like a "natural" and "easy" way to "fit in." Emily writes Evocative uses of souncf.When the game boots up as well as between missions, that the youth center's teens are "extremelyinvolved in, as both producersand we hear a drum-and horn-heavy orchestral score (with Top Gun-inflected understanders,of pop culture and teen culture,"but she worries that they "take for guitar bridges) of the kind that might play during the closing credits of a heroic granted and accept sexism and violence." Reflecting,too, on her own recruitment action film. On the virtual Fort Benning Obstacle Course and outside the to the identitiesof English major and writing tutor, she writes: "[H]ow do we Shoot House, we hear bird song, cicadas humming, distant rifle fire, and the reconcilethe fact that we have been formed to think and act in certain ways, occasionaljet overhead. that we are knowledgeablewithin differentsemiotic domains ... [but] are so immersedin the domain that we can't see it from any distance?As Gee asks, Recurring visual motifs and heavy use of text Also while the game boots up how we can get 'producer-likelearning, but in a reflectiveand criticalway' and between missions there appear silhouettesof heavily armed and armored .... ?" Deep concern about the identitiesand ideas to which we are recruitedruns infantrymen.They rush from a helicopter or form a fan of firing poses against through our discussions,along with an emergingquestion about how (and, for a rippling stars-and-stripesbackdrop. Overlayingthe image is text: main menu individualstudents partnering at a youth center for only fifteen weeks, whether) options along with the U.S. Army logo and "T" for Teen rating; then, between alternativescan be sponsored.To foregroundthese concernsand also to put missions, either "The Soldier's Creed" or "Army Values."While visuals compel What VideoGames Have to Teach Us to the test, we turn to Americas Army. our attention, students can recall bits of text: "I am an American Soldier," "I am a Warrior,""live the Army values," "never accept defeat," "never leave a fallen Basic Training comrade." In addition, all missions are accompaniedby a text emphasizingthat When I introduce the game's four basic training modules-the first step in one is learning "critical thinking skills" for "unpredictablebattle situations" certifyinga "soldier" for online deploymentand the aspect ofAmericas Army where one must make "split-secondfriend or foe decisions-particularly in

Reflections • 172 Reflections • 173 -.ili: * urban settingswhere enemies can hide among civilians."With this text, plus the U.S. Weaponscall only for a repetitivefiring of weapons, with no beat-the-clock detailed "specs" about availableweaponry, we have a sense that this game is skill-buildingand verbal feedback from the virtual drill instructor,Obstacle "educational"or at least borrows the ethos of alphabeticand technical literacy. Course has a try-try-againpleasure accompaniedby the drill sergeant's barks of "That may be your way, but that's not the Army way," "Make like a duck and The appearanceof but limits to customizatio,r.The main menu options appear low-crawlunder that barbed wire," and "Greatjob! Youjust gave 'hooah' a new to present a game rich with individualchoice-making, but we find no options meaning!" This is the mission we want to return to and play again. to customizeour avatar, who is addressedas "soldier" by the virtual drill instructors.We do not see our soldier's physical appearance.(We assume he's Recruiting"Natural" Instincts male and white since all other soldierswho appear in these training missions When we move from demonstrationinto discussion, students focus first on are male and either white or vaguely "ethnic.") The soldier must pass the four the repetitive weapon firing, which they immediatelyattribute to the aim basic training missions in order. Several options for post-basictraining missions of-the term Stephen, a psychologymajor and video gamer, supplies­ are presented-among them a disturbingscreen shot of a combat mission inside "desensitization.""Although the link between video games and violence may a hospital-but those are listed as unavailablefor our not-yet-certifiedsoldier. not be as simple as violent game = aggressive child," Stephen explains in class Some customizationis suggestedunder the main menu option "Personnel and later writes, the gap between "virtual aggression and real aggression" Jacket" where we learn, for instance, about weapons choices once a soldier may neverthelessbe "mediated by the 'desensitizing' effect of violent video is set to deploy. games (and other media)." To develop further this initial impressionthat, especiallywith the progressive humanizationof targets and tediously repetitive Strong emphasis onfiring weapons with progressivelyhuman-shaped targets. In weapons fire, the game "recruits" desensitization,we look at excerpts from two missions,Marksmanship and U.S. Weapons,the emphasisis on discharging Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall's Man Against Fire, first published in 1947. weapons, which come completewith formidablesound and "kick." Though There Marshall ponders the "problem" that in World War II "no more than one must learn the keyboard commandsfor loading a rifle or lobbing a grenade, 15 percent of men had actually fired at the enemy positions or personnel with there is no time pressure or reward for selectingmore difficulttargets. In Basic their weapons during the course of the entire engagement" (54). Marshall's Marksmanshipour soldier shoots at targets only vaguely human-shaped.In U.S. recommendation:that the military overcome this "resistance to the idea of Weaponsthe targets have a more distinctlyhuman form. In the final mission, firing" through repetitive training with human-shapedtargets and a greater Shoot House, the "targets" appear as cardboardcutouts of men, boys, and an emphasis on "fire volume" in place of"fire discipline" (82). "As with every occasionalwoman. Under timed conditions,the player is to distinguish"opfor" other duty in life," he reasoned, "it is made easier by virtue of the fact that a ("opposingforce") targets from fellow soldiers and civilians,though it becomes man may say to himself, 'I have done it once. I can do it again'" (79). With quickly apparent that the "opfor"s are masked or hooded while civiliansand these excerpts from Marshall-whose solution to the problem of soldiers fellow soldiers are unmasked and even appear at times giving a ''thumbs up." refusing to fight appears to have been enormously successful,with 90 to 95 (In the class demonstration,our soldier moves through the Shoot House without percent of Vietnam foot soldiers reportedly discharginga weapon in combat firing his weapon as I don't want to sponsor the shooting of targets who not only appear as human but also as racialized:The "opfors" whose heads and faces (Marshall 79)-we also look at a recent WashingtonPost story that opens with a gamer-turned-Armysergeant describing his first experiencefiring-at are partially visible behind masks appear marked, in hair and skin coloring,as Iraqi "insurgents":"It felt like I was in a big video game ... It didn't even faze "Arab" or "Iraqi." After walking through this mission, our soldier is both praised me, shooting back. It was just natural instinct.Boom! Boom! Boom! Boomf' by the virtual drill instructorfor not shooting civilians and castigatedfor not firing at all.) (Vargas,"Virtual Reality Prepares U.S. Soldiers"). At this point in the discussionI introducethe term "alienation,"defined as the Missions are by turn tedious and compelling.While Basic Marksmanshipand

Reflections • 174 Reflections • 175 :li:;._,

objective and progressive estrangementof human beings within capitalist social and very effective": "[U]nlike most army games that simply provide yet another relations from the process and products of their labor (Marx, Capital 548) and arena in which to play the tried and true game of point and shoot,America s also from what Marx held to be human nature (Wood,Karl Marx 20).9 I bring Army Game is making accessible-even desirable-the identity of soldier to in this definitionof alienation for two reasons. First, I want to draw out that in those who play (and doing so in a very misleading fashion at that)." Marshall firing a weapon isn't a "natural instinct." Instead it is a pedagogical Class discussion about what gives this game "raw realism," even while, as prol!lemthat training, as the overcoming or alienation of human nature, tries Stephen also writes, there is so much that seems "misleading," opens up to address: training in the "subordinationof man to the machine" (Marx, a further view of this "identity cultivation" and why Stephen calls it both Philosophy of Poverty 57) or the soldier to the mission. Second, I want to turn "effective" and "dangerous." On the side of"misleading," students focus us to aspects of the game that we felt as the very opposite of"desensitization," primarily on visual representationand any claims the game might make to raising the question of whether they are separate from or still related to the providing technical training: knowing how to throw a frag grenade with game's overall recruitmentwork. On the Obstacle Course, for instance, the class keyboard and mouse isn't the same as knowing how to handle the real thing; describes feeling emotionally,even physically engaged. This is the mission we while these virtual soldiers are abundantlyequipped, reports abound of actual want to return to-to improve our score, to draw a "Hooah!" from the virtual soldiers sent to Iraq and Afghanistanwithout body and vehicle armor. When drill instructor,feeling each time a gain rather than loss in control and an it comes to describingthe game's "realism," on the other hand, students don't intensity of rather than a reduction in sensation.How to reconcile the training's point to the visual or technical but instead to the training's tactile and aural juxtaposed moments oflet's-just-get-through-thistedium and let's-beat-the­ sensations:We not only see as but are repeatedly addressed as "Soldier"; wefeel clock excitement? it personallywhen our soldier draws criticism from the virtual drill instructor Good Students and Dutiful Soldiers and even more so when the soldier is praised; we experiencethe rush of Stephen provides us with an avenue for consideringhow the two, duty and adrenalineor confusedpanic in the midst of the Obstacle Course test. excitement,may, in fact, go hand in hand. Explainingthat he "did not expect The desire to do well, the pressure of the test, the pleasure of praise: If students to be surprised in the least" by Americas Army, having "logged a considerable (and I) experiencethese sensations as real, it may be because the identity the amount of hours playing military-themedfirst-person-shooter games such as game asks us to try out overlaps with the identity of the "good student." More, Medal of Honor and Call of Duty," he later writes: as the distance between the identities of successful student and successful Americas Army Game, on the other hand, appears to march to the beat of soldier shrinks, so too does a space for reflecting on ''what I value and what I do a different drum ... [It] is more of a "Combat Simulator"where players not" (Gee 56). Hence Stephen's conclusionthat, much more than and different are prompted to assume the hypotheticalidentity of a soldier ... The game from other first-person-shooterwar games he's played, this training also seems seems to be portraying itself as a realistic simulationof enlisting and dangerouslyeffective in shrinking the space between simulated and actual becoming active in the armed forces ... The most stunning aspect of the combat or, maybe more precisely,between simulated and actual enlistmentto game is the raw realism present in multiple dimensionsof the game play. combat practices and attitudes. Consider: If in class we had completedthe final From the immense visual detail on the screen, to the realism in the voices of basic training mission, Shoot House, we would have experiencedthe "skills" of the characters and sounds of the weapons (and birds), to the clear absence the first three trainings now being put together.Clock ticking, the soldier must of any sort of interface ... the emphasis here is clearly that, this is what you navigate each room quickly.A mechanicalhorn blasts as the next door swings see; you are the soldier. opens. At the end the virtual drill instructor,standing by a chalkboardwith the He concludes that it is "this pairing of desensitizationto violence with this tallies, waits to deliver the score. This time, however, the score includes how identity cultivation"that makes this particular video game "very dangerous- many rounds our soldier fired, how many human targets he hit.

Reflections• 176 Reflections • 177 ,ili: . ' . CulturalModels and Counter-Recrmtment not even recognize those terms-not unless somethingenters to disrupt and For students in this class, it's easy to call forth and discussAmericas Army's reveal them. work to recruit our identificationwith the successful soldier praised with "Good But how and from where does this something enter? While on this question job!" Class time and journals are filled with more observations, interpretations, Gee is largely silent, implying that it is a matter of self-sponsorshipor the and connections to class readings and partnerships than I have sketched here. outgrowth of good game design, Paul Barrett, in an excellent (and too-rare) One student, for instance, returns to the youth center particularly mindful of the critique of Grand TheftAuto: San Andreas, suggests that a concept of active power ofrebukes and of praise; she listens for where and how such language is sponsorshipis vital. "[T]here must be sense of how to challenge or disrupt the used between staff and teens, between volunteers and teens, and also among the ideologicalwork" of these games," he argues. "Alternative representations teens themselves. Much harder for students to identify and discuss, however, have to be generated that can historicize and politicize [their] narratives ... " are the cultural models and ideological scripts beyond "good student" and (115, my emphasis).Needed here is a pedagogy ofmultiliteracies committed to "dutiful soldier" on which Americas Army Game's basic training depends: sponsoring disruption through the introduction of alternatives-through an effort the War on Terror settings that require no explanation or justification; the idea to enlarge the ideological space in which ideas and questions can be formed that in a world divided between "friend and foe," we face "hostile enemies" and entertained.As I have thought about such sponsorshipwith and against the especially in ''urban areas" hidden among "civilians and other noncombatants"; recruitmentwork of Americas Army, I've come to think of this pedagogical the notion too that, in the end, the enemy is easy to identify by his dark skin and commitmentas counter-recruitment. sinister mask (As one game fan explains on a YouTubetutorial demonstrating how to complete the Shoot House mission: "You need to understand enemies For example, in U.S. Literacy Politics, we first try to press farther with the look like terrorists.") question of whetherAmericas Army allows in its design for a player to become, in Gee's terms, a "producer." Here I introduce the performance and protest At first it surprisedme how much of the video and its ideologicalconstructions art of Joseph DeLappe, a University of Nevada, Reno, art professor who has passed by unnoticed in our initial discussionsand writings. I was surprised deployed a soldier in Americas Army Gameunder the name "Dead in Iraq." As especiallybecause I think it's likely that, even more than aiming to desensitize soon as "Dead in Iraq" enters an online game, DeLappe enters the command kids to machine-gunfire, Americas Army recruits from players of all ages for him to drop his weapon. As the game continues and as, invariably,his consentfor the War on Terror,acceptance of a annual military budget now soldier is killed, DeLappe types names, ranks, and dates for actual U.S. soldiers approaching$1 trillion (Bellamy et al., "U.S. Military Spending"),faithin the killed in Iraq (Clarren, "VirtuallyDead in Iraq"). DeLappe describes his aim rightness that U.S. troops should be deployed worldwide.Yet, Gee suggests, as both disrupting this game space and reconnecting virtual war with actual we shouldn't be surprised if a game's ideologicalterrain remains invisibleto its consequences:"[ A ]s an artist, I think it's my responsibilityto do ... things that target audience;multimodal recruitment is most effectivewhen it conforms to our question, critique and cause contemplationin terms of these [online] arenas cultural models, those cultural models not apparent to us as models at all unless that are becoming familiar to so many in our societies" (Hutcheon, "Game somethingenters to threaten or disrupt (144). Both the virtual Fort Benning and Activist Becomes Cannon Fodder"). Students are intrigued to see how one the actual War on Terror appear as "already pre-existingand self-sufficient,"our person intervenes in the game, but about DeLappe's work they also raise two soldier taking up his "mechanicalpart incorporatedinto a mechanical system" questions: What of the responsibilitiesof those who are not artists? And besides (Lukacs,History and Class Consciousness89). If, as Stephenwrites, we "are contemplationand momentary disturbance, is there anything that can be done the soldier,"we too must "conform to its laws whether [we] likes it or not" (89). that would be a lasting disruption of the game? of the war? With these questions, Add the "hands-on" thrills of"Humvee rollovers" and the interestingprospect of we tum to excerpts from the documentarySir! No Sir!, with its survey of the testing Newton's laws of motion in a "virtual helicopter drop," and the chances domains and modalities, from GI coffeehousesto mimeographed 'zines, that go up that not only will we like conformingto the video game's terms, we will

Reflections • 178 Reflections • 179 *· composedthe VietnamWar-era soldiers' revolt, and we visit contemporary with the question of how to sponsor in this extracurricularrealm critical antiwar blogs such as "Fight to Survive" (ftssoldier.blogspot.com),created by reflectionon the identities,practices, and attitudes to which we are recruited. three U.S. soldiers during their deploymentin Iraq, as examples of a soldiers' For instance,noting that Americas Army Game rewards "pattern-thinking" resistance movement updated through new media tools. and "automatization,"Emily begins to attend to the patterns and habits of language and action promoted in the commercialgames, music, and magazines Before I end with two last examples of"counter-recruitment"that also provide that aren't a part of the youth center's officialprogramming but populate and my students and me with critical avenues back intoAmericas Army, I'd like define the teen space nevertheless.Of particular concern to her is how the teen to flag some considerationsregarding the sponsorshipof antiwar perspectives activity rooms provide a stage for gendered performance:"The boys put _ona and voices in classrooms.First, what makes it most possible for me to sponsor very homophobicand masculine heterosexualattitude, and the girls also display these materials in my classes--even more, I would argue, than my tenured status signs of homophobiaand cliquey 'social queen' attitudes." Emily writes that she and the inclusion of AAUP's principles on academic freedom in my faculty would "love to do an activity that made them aware of gender .... that would union contract-is the presence on my campus and in the communityof visible make them think about it." But how, Emily wonders, can she and her partners antiwar forces. Students arrive in class discussinga pamphlet distributedby the sponsor awareness,reflection, and intervention-disrupt the patterns-without CampusAntiwar Network about the university's substantialinvestments in "war seeming "preachy and schooly?" profiteers" such as Raytheon and General Dynamics. They have seen posters advertisingIraq VeteransAgainst the War's "Winter Soldier" hearings and know In part, it is the visible role of music, visual art, and coffeehouse open mies that among IVAW's members are young men and women who are now students in the Vietnam soldiers' revolt that provides an answer, persuading the teen at this university and other area colleges. Some of those IVAWmembers have program partners to reconsider (as simply reading about multiliteracies could also visited the youth center to talk with teens about rhetoric and reality in not) their exclusion of these domains as "not counting as literacy."With a military recruitment.In a class concernedwith multimodalcommunity literacy four-track recorder, Stephen and three teen boys create a freestyling cipher, practices, it makes sense that we would pay attention to a video game receiving an alternative to "roughhousing" for relating to one another. Through button­ wide promotion by military recruiters, and it also makes sense that we would making, with an emphasis on messages of empowerment,Emily facilitates pay attention to the production of texts, films, and forums by antiwar groups. discussion and action about the sexism she's worried the teen boys and girls have learned to take for granted. Print literacy-penning slogans for Second, by foregroundingthe concept of sponsorship as deliveringthe the buttons, jotting down words and phrases to feed the cipher-is a part of ideologicalas well as the material resources for literacy and learning,we can virtually every activity.But print literacy is accompaniedby, and often takes a not only justify but argue for the pedagogicalimperative of these materials in a supporting role to, sound and rhythm, image and design, voice and gesture­ great many classroomsacross a great many disciplines.Far from shutting down, everything else that is necessary, Emily writes at the semester's end, for teens discussionand investigationare, with the introductionof against-the-graintexts, to "get involved, question, explore ... and work out where they see themselves opened back up. It's at this point in the class, and not when we were trying out fitting in this world." and discussingAmericas Army, for example, that students bring up the varied experiencesand views of friends and family members in the military,perhaps The students also see afresh how new media tools at the youth center can because now the identity of "Soldier" has been pluralized as we hear from many work to facilitate explorationand questioning.Contrasting the Americas Army differentsoldiers. training missions' lack of reflective space with the youth center's blog, for which the elementary-agechildren create audio and written commentaryabout their Above all, in this community-basedclass what matters, too, is that these activities,Emily writes: discussionsreturn students to the youth center with concrete guides and What seems to be a great part of this blogging of their activities is the fact provocations.Throughout the semester Emily and her classmateshad struggled

Reflections • 180 Reflections • 181 * *" that they get a chance to not only partake in activities or create things, but "search-and-avoid"(Jamail, '11.S. Soldiers Shy from Battle") and the testimony then they also are encouragedto talk about and explain what they have of War on Terrorveterans at the March 2008 "Winter Soldier"hearings (videos done. This seems to allow for more reflectionand "identity work" than of which are on YouTubeand the Iraq Veterans'Against the War website and simply doing the projects. Through puppets, artwork, interviewingetc. the transcriptsof which have been recently publishedin Iraq VeteransAgainst the kids are able to explore their identities,real and virtual, and get a better War, WinterSoldier Iraq and Afghanistan),my studentsand I can return to "The grasp on what they do and do not value, what they criticize and what they Soldier's Creed" that appears between training missions inAmericas Army. In accept, and their own growing relation to the world around them. the undisturbedcontext of the game, this creed-"! will alwaysplace the mission first. I I will never accept defeat. / I will never quit"--does indeed appear as Importantly,Emily does not see this reflective space as inherent in and an uncontestablearticle of faith, demonstratingtoo that (in Bakhtinianterms) available only through blog design but instead as cultivated through authoritative,Word-of-the-Father discourse is as possible in multimodaldomains encouraging relationships that promote talk among children about the meaning as it is in the text-and rule-boundworld of technocraticliteracy. As Jeff points of their activities and even spark children's interest in interviewing one another out in class discussion,this text is potentiallyall the more powerful because about their projects. With this insight, she turns back to the teen program­ amidst so many other attention-grabbingfeatures of the game, we don't really currently in a section of the building that lacks Internet access, discouraging attend to it even as it makes an impression.But with the words of soldierswho the integration ofblogs into the program's daily rhythms-and considers dissent from and even refuse their missions,we can bring this text into conscious how art projects in particular "seem to allow the teens to distance themselves awarenessand put it into dialogueand dispute,raising for the first time such enough from their insecurities and self-consciousnessto talk .... The floor plan questionsas "Who is the author of this 'creed'?" and "What is its history?" drawing [an invitation to recreate one's memory of an early home] allowed the kids to remember past homes and begin to negotiate ... who they were, are, In fact, we discover,the history of the text that appears inAmerica s Army Game and hope to be." Her partner in the teen program, Stephen, concurs: Whether is a very recent one: In Spring 2004, as the U.S. occupation in Iraq unraveled, the teens are gathered around the four-track, video-taping a mini-movie, or the Army launched a new advertising campaignto emphasize "Warrior Ethos" talking over drawings and writings, what develops is "the creation of collective over college benefits or job training (Hoffman,"Army Refocuses on 'Warrior creative space." Ethos"'). Along with the campaign came the rewriting of the "Soldier's Creed" to assert "I am a warrior" who "will always place the mission first .... ," From "WarriorEthos" to WarriorWriters promoted through fast-movingvideos of heavily armed infantrymen,each Still, we have the question of critical learning that had been nagging at Emily, appearing as the hero in a brief, tense combat scenario.10 With stirring music, her classmates,and me all semester and that Gee leaves too much to game iconic mise-en-scene,and wrenching close-ups,the multimedia "Warrior Ethos" design, self-sponsorship,and chance: What about when the design of an campaign, along with the new slogan "Army Strong," seems very effectively activity,the space that is created by a blog or a pencil-and-paperinvitation, designedto appeal and recruit throughpathos alone. And so-to complete our does not in itself and by itself provoke considerationof who one hopes to be or explorationof multi-modalrecruitment and the question of critical learning, and provide a challenge to what one values and believes? What about those features also to check the dismay some students begin to express that new media tools and assumptionsof Americas Army Game that our own class had taken so are powerfullywielded by coercive military and corporate forces alone-I ask for granted, they could not be questioned?Here I've needed to step up with the class to take up one more text that is also emotionallycompelling: Warrior active sponsorshipof alternativeways to return to and reflect onAmercias Writers,part of the counter-recruitmentcampaign sponsoredby Iraq Veterans Army design, wrestling myself with how to enlarge political space so that new Against the War. questions and insights can be entertained.For instance: WarriorWriters is simultaneouslya traveling exhibit of photographs,paintings, With accountsof soldiersjust returned from Iraq about the widespreadpractice of

Reflections • 182 Reflections• 183 :.::1::.., :.l:1::.·

performances,and installationsby veterans oflraq and Afghanistan;a than the provocativeappearance of a gap or contradiction.The writers in this traveling writing workshop (inspiredby Maxine Hong Kingston's workshops collection also foregroundideas, traditions, and figures who point to, urge, with VietnamWar veterans) whose results have now been published in two and recruit new generationsto antiwar perspectives-to help individualsplace collectionstitled Move, Shoot, and Communicateand Re-makingSense (Iraq startlingmoments of recognition,such as that Viges recounts, in a tradition and VeteransAgainst the War 2007 and 2008); and a recruitmenttool in its own politics ofresistance. In the poem "Among Our Machines" (from which I take right to organize more veterans and active-dutysoldiers into visibly opposing the title of this essay) Jose Vasquezbegins with the inspiration of Vietnam-War the War on Terror and to broadcast anti-war soldier views to a larger public.11 dissenter,poet, and memoiristW. D. Ehrhart. In her introductionto Move, Shoot, The project particularly connects with this class in U.S. Literacy Politics as an and Communicate,IVA W field director Lovella Calica points to the Veterans example of multiliteraciesand new media in the hands of a group of people Writing Group led by Maxine Hong Kingston as the genesis of WarriorWriters' who are very consciouslyworking to enlarge political space (they are promoting work to organize and support dissenting soldiers and veterans in speaking contemplationabout the War on Terror)and win a political argument (they seek out. And in a reflectiontitled "DefiningMoments in Your Relationshipto the to bring it to an end). Military/War,"former Army medic Margaret Stephensrecreates the moment when, at the risk of her "good soldier" identity, she drew on her past anti-racism The poems and essays I assign from the collection WarriorWriters: Move, training to interrupt a basic training lecture that dismissed the seriousnessof Shoot, and Communicatealso address the semester's key question about the sexual harassmentand racism in the military: activity,relationships, and reflective spaces that can make critical learning Well, this [her past education and commitment]was enough for me to get and creative interventionpossible. In "Cobra never had a Mother" Hart Viges the courage to stand up-literally-in the auditoriumand explain why I describesthe socializationin "warrior ethos" that begins long before direct thought their policies on both sexual harassment and equal opportunity military recruitment: were a joke ... I know my voice had to be quivering.I mean it's one thing I was four years old when I held my first machine gun / I pictured Human to stand before your classmates and give a speech during a rally about beings killed by other Human beings / I was five years old when I drove my racist education systems-which I'd done a few years before. But it's first tank/ I pictured Human Beings being crushed by the tank treads .... / I another when it's the US ARMY.But then, I also knew it wasn't really was twenty six when I made killing Human Beings a living .... (Viges 8) that different. So I did it: I spoke ... (7) He then recounts a turning-pointmoment disrupting smooth socialization: What Stephens and others in WarriorWriters suggest is that, thirty years of Confrontedwith an enemy who "was supposedto be an Easy Kill," Viges conservativereign notwithstanding,the examples of 60s-era social movements realizes this particular man standing before him-unlike Marvel Comic's "the plus the individualsand groups who've worked to carry them on continue to Cobra" and also unlike the "opfors" of Americas Army Game-had nothing to sponsor and recruit potentially powerful voices today. mark him as "evil / He did not have a Cobra Mask on" (8). That suggestionis significantfor my students who have too few examples of In her journals, Emily draws on Viges and others in WarriorWriters to argue how to look back at anti-war, civil rights, and women's liberation movements that it's the constantly surfacing "gap" between the socializedor "virtual and see there a useable history, guides from the past for present challenges. identity" of soldier and the disruptions and variety of actual civilian and When, for instance, Emily reflects on the disturbinglymisogynist and soldiering experiencethat "allows these writers to step back and reflect, to homophobic"gender performances"that the teen activity rooms sometimes challenge and critique what they are asked to do." Indeed, we can think of that provide the stage for, she also notes a crucial contradiction:The program itself gap Emily notes as marking the failure of military recruitment,the failure of the appears, in Emily's words, ''ungendered .... Boys and girls aren't usually subordinationof soldier to mission. But the poems and reflectionsin Warrior segregated,and they are usually working on a lot of the same projects. It is Writerstell us, too, that there's more to counter-recruitmentand critical learning

Reflections • 184 Reflections • 185 not unusual to see girls playing ping pong or fooseball,as it is not unusual to Endnotes see boys engaged in crafts." Here is a crucial moment of recognition:as much 1 Thanks to Adrienne Kinne, New England Regional Coordinatorfor Iraq as teens may be schooled in the wider culture to "do" gender in oppressive VeteransAgainst the War, for alerting me to the "Building Strong Futures ways, the youth center staff at least tacitly promotes alternatives.But it's more Together"conference. The conferencepress release, schedule, and Welbum's particularlywhen Emily reflects on this realizationthrough her background and letter to members were posted in Septemberon the National Association sponsors in women's studies and women's movements (this reflectionitself of State Boards of Educationwebsite (www.nasbe.org)under "Upcoming encouragedby our class considerationof multimodal literacy and sponsorshipin Events." No Child Left Behind critic Susan Ohanian, winner ofNCTE's George soldiers' resistance movements)that she develops activities like button-making OrwellAward for DistinguishedContribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public that promote direct discussionof beliefs, slogans, affiliations,and commitments Language,has also published these documentsplus Bryant's letter at www. and sponsor the crafting of a public voice. susanohanian.org/outrage_ fetch.php?id=510. What I'm describing, of course, isn't at all a pedagogy with the power to stop a 2 Although No Child Left Behind was signed into law in January 2002, it war or rid our society of sexist and homophobicideas. Even the WarriorWriters was passed by the House and the Senate months before the September 11, project and the growth of Iraq VeteransAgainst the War will not have the power 2001, attacks and the launching of the War on Terror.Well before a War on to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and halt expansioninto Pakistan or Terrorwas declared, however, the rhetoric of antiterrorismwas shaping major the Hom of Africa-or not without the backing of a mass antiwar movement legislation-for instance, the Clinton-eraAnti-Terrorism and Effective Death to amplify their voices and argumentsthat are still too easily suppressed PenaltyAct which used the warrant of deterring terrorism to expand the federal by mainstreammedia channels. But in conditionsof minimal educational death penalty. sponsorshipfor progressive ideas, Emily, Stephen, Jeff, and their classmates consideredwhat their own active contributionto the available ideas at the youth 3 Although girls and young women are among its players, all "soldiers" in center could be. And in conditions of minimal sponsorshipfor a national anti­ Americas Army appear as male-because, as one lieutenant colonel explained war movementbetween 2004 and 2008, IVAWhas created organizationfor when the game was first released, "females are not allowed in the infantry" and a continuingtradition of soldiers' resistance.As literacy educators,we also (Kirby, "The AdvertisingGame"). The U.S. military's propensity for using the have a contributionto make-and in many of our classroomsappreciably more word "females" rather than the word "women" also strikes me as among the political space, created by a U.S. public that in the most recent election listed linguisticmoves necessary to objectivityand dehumanizewomen, both those in withdrawalfrom Iraq, repeal of the Bush tax cuts on wealth, and the creation the armed services and those trying to survive under U.S. military "protection." affordablehealth care as their top three expectationsfor the new presidential 4 We should not make the mistake, argue The Monthly Review's John Bellamy administration(Democracy Corps, "Post-ElectionSurvey"). The more such Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert McChesney,of attributingthe United texts as those gathered in WarriorWriters and the more such voices as those States' bellicosity abroad and its assaults on domestic programs, including raised in Winter Soldier hearings circulate-and the more we can do to promote education,to "a new irrationalismintroduced by George W. Bush and a cabal and work with these voices and views in and beyond the classroom-the more ofneoconservative 'political crazies"' ("U.S. Military Spending" 2). Democrats resources,material and ideological,we'll have for an educationthat is sponsored as well as Republicansfrom the Carter administrationforward have trumpeted by progressive movements and not by the U.S. Army. personal responsibility(and its educationalcounterpart, teacher accountability); it was on the foundationof the Carter Doctrine-the proclaimedright of the United States to use military force in any place, includingAfghanistan, where energy resources and energy pipeline routes are threatened-that the Bush

Reflections • 186 Reflections • 187 ·lk ,&,

Doctrine was built. In the case of Americas Army Game, its rapid rebranding with permission. I have fictionalized the names of the youth center's children. A from recruiters' tool hawked in high school gyms and convention center special shout-out to Jeff for encouraging me to write this article. tournaments to "compelling academic program" (America's Army Team, "New 9 Marx and Engels made their arguments regarding human nature-a detailed Army Game") seems less attributable to the excesses of the Bush White House explication of which I can't provide here-to refute the claims about the and much more attributable to the now crisis-level demands for more boots "naturalness" and "inevitability" of greed, competition, war, exploitation, and on the ground in Afghanistan-a War on Terror front that an Obama White oppression that grew up with class society generally and legitimated capitalist House will also support. As Rich Gibson and E. Wayne Ross stress, the military development more particularly. Among the key writings are The Communist invasion of U.S. public schools is not a "sideshow to war and exploitation" but Manifesto and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, for in fact vital to creating a "schools-to-war-pipeline" ("No Child Left Behind and the argument that economic relations, not immutable nature, create social the Imperial Project"). institutions and mores, and The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 5 The Army's move to more directly sponsor curricula also points to a gap 1844, for Marx's extended mediation on the relationship between "species between what researchers, particularly those associated with the New London being" and the activity of labor and introduction to the problem of alienation Oroup, had predicted regarding literacy sponsorship and reward in the 21st in capitalist production and relations. century and the reality. Instead of promoting the education of individuals able 10 Two examples of these videos can be viewed at www.army.mil/warriorethos/ to ''think and act critically, reflectively, and creatively" and draw on multiple and www.army.mil/soldierscreed/flash _ version/index.html. modalities to "design" their "social futures" (Gee et. al., The New WorkOrder 7; New London Group, "A Pedagogy ofMultiliteracies"), public schools 11 For more about Warrior Writerssee www.greendoorstudio.net/remaking.html that must increasingly rely on corporate and military sponsors to make up andhttp://ivaw.org/node/723. funding shortfalls adopt a version of"lean" or "just-in-time production"­ Works Cited lean education, just-in-time literacy-that's been the true hallmark of "fast capitalism" (see Moody, Workersin a Lean Worldand U.S. Labor). America'sArmy Team."New Army Game ApplicationsLook to Boost Tech Interests." Army News Service, 19 September2008. www.army.mil/-news/2008/09/19/12589-new-army­ 6 See Jenkins, "The War Between Effects and Meaning" for a survey of game-applications-look-to-boost-tech-interests/. compelling arguments focusing on player agency and choice within gaming American Civil LibertiesUnion. "MilitaryPractices Violate InternationalStandards." 13 May communities, including Americas Army. See Barrett, "White Thumbs, Black 2008. www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/35258prs20080513.html. Bodies" for both an excellent and comprehensive examination of the neoliberal ASVABCareer ExplorationProgram. "Overview."www.asvabprogram.com/index. and racist ideologies promoted through Grand Theft Auto and a critique of the cfm?fuseaction=overview.main. gaming theories that would simply set a game's ideological content aside. Barrett, Paul. "White Thumbs, Black Bodies: Race, Violence,and Neoliberal Fantasiesin . ' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." The Review of Education,Pedagogy, and Cultural 7 This shift in class emphasis comes just as students are beginning to swing away Studies 28 (2006): 95-119. from seeing literacy, particularly in relation to their community partnerships, Baldor,Lolita C. "US Meets RecruitingGoals for 2008 with Help from Bonuses."Associated as a local matter of self- or family-sponsorship but are grappling too with how Press. 3 October 2008. www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-military­ to name, talk about, and especially act on social forces and sponsoring powers recruiting,0,6503574.story. that are neither so specific as mom, dad, teacher, volunteernor so general and Bellamy,John Foster, and Hannah Hollman and Robert W. McChesney."U.S. Military undifferentiated as Society. Spendingand the Imperial Gamble."Monthly Review 60 (October2008): 1-19. Brandt, Deborah.Literacy in AmericanLives. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001. 8 I use the actual names of students from English 107 and draw on their writing Bryant, Brad. "Friends and Colleagues."Undated letter to members of the National Association of State Boards of Education.www.susanohanian.org/outrage _fetch.php?id=510.

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Clarren,Rebecca. "VirtuallyDead in Iraq."Salon. 16 September2006.www.salon.com/ent/ Kozol, Jonathan.Shame of the Nation: The Restorationof Apartheid Schooling in America feature/2006/09/ 16/ americasarmy /. New York:Crown, 2005. DemocracyCorps. "Post-ElectionSurvey with Campaignfor America's Future." 6 November Lukacs, Georg.History and Class Consciousness.Trans. Rodney Livingstone.Cambridge, 2008. www.democracycorps.com/strategy/2008/ll/post-election-survey-with-campaign­ MA: MIT Press, 1997. for-americas-future/?section=Survey Marshall, S.L.A.Man Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command Nonnan, OK: University Downing,Jim. "Army to PotentialRecruits: Wanna Play?" Seattle Times7 December2004. of OklahomaPress, 2000. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002111412_ wargames07e.html. Marx, Karl. Capital:A Critiqueof PoliticalEconomy. Trans. Ben Fowkes.New York:Penguin Gee, James Paul. "Good Video Games and Good Leaming."Phi Kappa Phi Forum 85 Classics 1976. 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