In 1993, I was conducting recruiting activities at a local high school in rural central New Brunswick. Our reserve unit had a push on for more members and we were visiting schools across our area of responsibility.
At one school, we set up a lunch hour display in the hallway and the interest shown by the students was marginal. A female student approached our display. She was roughly 17, dressed in black from head to toe. She wore a string around her neck and attached to the end of it was a wire cage with a rock inside. Her form fitting uniform-like outfit revealed that she was very obviously pregnant.
She came up to us and before we could give her any type of greeting, she immediate spouted out that we were baby killers. All she said for the first 10 seconds was "baby killers" in a whinny voice ensuring that she drew out every syllable in "kil-lers". I greeted her professionally and asked how she knew we were baby killers and pointed out that I had never killed anything in the line of duty. As I tried to give her the safety answer with the condom on top, my recruiting officer stepped in and agreed with her that we were in fact baby killers. This, of course, got her attention. He explained that he was just living up to the macho, killing machine stereotype that most ill informed civilians had of the military. As the discussion turned into an argument, he politely explained to her that our job as soldiers was to protect her right of freedom of expression that permitted her to call us baby killers, even if it was untrue. She paused and replied: "uh...uh...baby killers".
At another school, we were pelted with snow balls at a spring outdoor equipment display. Rather than complain, the officer in charge decided to just leave.
There is definitely a dire need to advertise in the public school system. Unfortunately, recruiters have not always been able to foster a good working relationship with school staff in order to gain access to those students who would like to join the military. Out of the five high schools in our region, I had two who cooperated fully with us and taught the virtues of military service to their students. Most of the guidance counselors I dealt with were very obviously anti-war, anti-military pro green peace and very much living in a peace-nik dream world. It is unfortunate but the schools are not teaching to be open minded. Instead, they are dictating opinion and lean entirely too much to the left. When green peace posters have more precedence on the wall than CF recruiting posters, then there is a problem.
Unfortunately, the CO of regiments or recruiting stations don't care to get involved in political debates with schools and would just rather not deal with them instead of fixing the situation. They are all too interested in protecting their careers.
My Marine recruiting buddies tell me they have some of the same problems with smaller schools. The difference, however, lies in the fact that the CO of the recruiting station has no problems in visiting a difficult school to try and set them straight and show the administration that it is in their interest to support our recruiting activities. By law, US public school have to give up a copy of the graduating class roster to the recruiting office or they could loose federal funding for their school. It's a case of "you rub my back, and I won't file a complaint with the government and cut off your funding so you can keep your job".
PJ D-Dog