This report summarizes a two-year study of the military's experience with "cast-off" youth of our society. It takes as a point of departure the highly controversial social experiment that occurred in the midst of the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty called Project 100,000. This publicly announced foray of the military into social action provides a jumping-off place for a historical view of just how the military has gone about testing, training, and employing the "one-third of our nation" generally considered untrainable and unemployable because of low aptitude scores on military selection tests.
In addition to detailed statistics on the performance of lower-aptitude youth in the military for the last half-century, this report analyzes experiments conducted by the armed services to develop effective training for youth from the low end of the mental quality spectrum. It goes beyond analysis, however, to describe principles for a functional context approach to training that combines literacy and technical skills improvement. A prototype functional electronics technician's course is described to illustrate how the functional context principles can be applied in practice. Thus, this report includes information with policy implications and a training method based on the military's experience and research.
U02/2016