Neurotic Student-Citizen-Soldiers (or, A Mediation on War, Homeland Security, and Education)

• In Event: Poster Session 4
  In Poster Session: Poster Sessions for Social Contexts of Research on Schools and Communities

Abstract

The September 11 attacks intensified U.S. issues of security, defense, and protection through practices like increased militarization, indefinite detention, and zero tolerance policing in its domestic and foreign engagements. This amplified focus on national in/security has also informed U.S. public school reform projects like Milton High School’s homeland security studies program, which began in 2008. This program trained students for the security industry and recruited them for war. Based on seven months of qualitative research at Milton, I examine how Milton’s homeland security program contributed to the production of the psychological, sociological, and geographic organization of civil society for the production of violence where the training and interpellation of young people as citizen-soldiers served the war machine.

Author

• Nicole Nguyen, Syracuse University