Military Culture
During Operation Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn (OIF/OND), over 2.1 million American military troops have been deployed, 44% of whom have children (DOD 2010a), resulting in nearly 2 million children experiencing stressors of parental deployment (DOD 2010b) to a war zone, whereby a parent may be either wounded or killed (Link, Palinkas, 2013). Children are moved between 6 to 9 times during their school careers, following their parent as they are re-stationed from base to base. When a child is repeatedly transferred, from place-to-place, school-to-school, community-to-community, it is difficult to establish roots. Although the ability to adapt is a corresponding strength, the death of a parent to combat not only leaves a child with a traumatic loss
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I believe that by educating our civilian population, they will understand better the full extent of the protections they enjoy because of the sacrifices made by so few, and the exacerbated stressors the entire military family experiences for certain of said civilian privilege, as well as our Gold Stars who immediately lose that broader military family, with specific focus upon children who experience PDC, children of Wounded Warriors injured either physically/psychologically, and children with Special Needs. I recommend that Ball State University (as a University with a military history dating back as far as 1918), consider facilitating education in military culture in our large population of civilian students, especially as a University which espouses the principles of Beneficence. In this regard, I believe it need to be a blend, not only of history, political science, psychology, and education, but in the distance education setting. Of course, by teaching about the inclusion of military culture, I would also suggest weaving in disability culture and the caregiving aspects of these life experiences. An interesting spin is that not only will we be educating civilian communities of adults to develop socially supportive communities, but we will be educating educators who facilitate communities within our K-12 systems, as well as community colleges and higher education. Teachers as mentors and guides can help en"courage" a child's life to develop tangible skills of RES through an enlightened school community that can
I believe that by educating our civilian population, they will understand better the full extent of the protections they enjoy because of the sacrifices made by so few, and the exacerbated stressors the entire military family experiences for certain of said civilian privilege, as well as our Gold Stars who immediately lose that broader military family, with specific focus upon children who experience PDC, children of Wounded Warriors injured either physically/psychologically, and children with Special Needs. I recommend that Ball State University (as a University with a military history dating back as far as 1918), consider facilitating education in military culture in our large population of civilian students, especially as a University which espouses the principles of Beneficence. In this regard, I believe it need to be a blend, not only of history, political science, psychology, and education, but in the distance education setting. Of course, by teaching about the inclusion of military culture, I would also suggest weaving in disability culture and the caregiving aspects of these life experiences. An interesting spin is that not only will we be educating civilian communities of adults to develop socially supportive communities, but we will be educating educators who facilitate communities within our K-12 systems, as well as community colleges and higher education. Teachers as mentors and guides can help en"courage" a child's life to develop tangible skills of RES through an enlightened school community that can