High schools across the U.S. have been quietly mandating students take a Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) without them ever signing up for it, even though it is supposed to be an elective and would conflict with the Pentagon’s guidelines.
However investigative journalists with The New York Times discovered that this is happening at roughly 3,500 or so high schools in the country.
Hillsborough County, Fla., for example, has made a major commitment to JROTC, with a program at every one of its high schools. But without enrollment mandates, the district averaged about 8% of freshmen enrolled last year.
On the other hand, the Times’ review found a number of high schools where at least three-quarters of a grade’s students were enrolled in JROTC, including in Baton Rouge, La.; Cape Coral, Fla.; Charlotte, N.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Port Gibson, Miss.; San Diego; Spring, Texas; and Vincent, Ala.
In analyzing data released by the Army, the Times found that among schools where at least three-quarters of freshmen were enrolled in JROTC, more than 80% of them had a student body composed primarily of Black or Hispanic students. That was a higher rate than other JROTC schools (more than 50%of them had such a makeup) and U.S. high schools without JROTC programs (about 30%).
The Times reported
JROTC programs are funded by the U.S. military, and teach and train enrollees with a lightweight and lukewarm military-style of training and discipline. Students that choose to take this class or club, (or in this case are apparently being forced to take it), do not automatically have to enlist in the actual military, but doing so almost acts as a form of “extra credit” for students who wish to pursue a career in the armed forces or reserves.
Andreya Thomas from Pershing High School in Detroit, Michigan, told the Times that she never signed-up for the course. Thomas was made to a wear military uniform and the instructor yelled at the students. Thomas tried to drop the class but the school’s administrators refused.
They told us it was mandatory.
Thomas said
‘A review of JROTC enrollment data collected from more than 200 public records requests showed dozens of schools have made the program mandatory or steered more than 75% of students in a single grade into the classes,’ The Times wrote. They also found that these schools were often lower-income and had higher proportions of non-white students.
The Times discovered that over 90% of the freshmen at Pershing were enrolled in a JROTC course during the 2021-22 school year. Other schools in the Chicago area were found to have automatically enrolled nearly 100% of their freshmen into one of these classes.
[Freshman enrollment in JROTC] often operated like a prechecked box: students were automatically placed in JROTC and they had to get themselves removed from it if they did not want it. Sometimes this was possible; sometimes it was not.
Chalkbeat reported, that indicated that four high schools in Chicago automatically enrolled nearly all the freshmen into taking a JROTC class.
The Times further stated that even though the JROTC has always been a point of contention since the days of the Vietnam War, now that ‘new conflicts are emerging, as parents in some cities say their children are being forced to put on military uniforms, obey a chain of command and recite patriotic declarations in classes they never wanted to take.’
In Chicago, some JROTC programs were rolled back after protests and activists called for the end of automatic enrollment, but others are refusing to backdown, The NY Times reports. These schools also have higher amounts of lower-income children attending.
The Army purportedly has admitted that 44% of their enrollees in recent years came from these JROTC classes, though officials deny that it is a recruiting tool.
SEE: US Army Decides To Do Less Screaming During Training To Appeal To Gen-Z
However, a separate article by The Army Times in 2019 indicates that the Army was planning to increase the JROTC classes to get more children to enlist.
Major General John R. Evans, Jr., who ran the Army Cadet Command, said this at the time:
And you don’t have to even participate in the program. The mere presence of the program at your high school has at least a corollary effect on your desire or your willingness or your propensity to serve your nation. So, pretty powerful data point there for us.
Army senior leaders are currently looking very hard at what we’re doing with Junior ROTC and trying to decide if we’ve got it right or if perhaps we need some more of this.
It is, first and foremost, a citizenship program. Junior ROTC kids are typically going to have higher GPAs, they’re going to have higher graduation rates, they’re going to have lower teen pregnancy, they’re going to have lower gang violence [and] lower drop out rates.
Everybody where we’ve got programs loves them, from teachers to guidance counselors to superintendents to governors to members of Congress.
We found that somewhere between 20-25 percent of kids in Junior ROTC will go on to serve in the military somewhere. They’ll either go to a service academy, they’ll matriculate into the senior ROTC program or they will enlist into one of the services.
One of our biggest strategic challenges moving forward is being able to man the all-volunteer force. So what we do by introducing young men and women to the Army culture in Junior ROTC … is we demonstrate to them that this is a culture of purpose and meaning.
Evans told a crowd at an Association of the U.S. Army forum
SEE: US Army Will Now Expand Weight Limits For Recruits As Number Of Enrollees Continue To Shrink
The Times says that some critics believe that these courses teach obedience over ‘independence and critical thinking. The Times says they got access to some of these textbooks which never speak of the government shortcomings, though the outlet did not provide quotations as to what that exactly means.
But schools are financially incentivized to bring these programs on board, as the military ‘subsidizes instructors’ salaries while requiring schools to maintain a certain level of enrollment in order to keep the program.’ Some schools also use it as an alterative graduation credit as some schools have been able to privily use JROTC instructors to lead gym and health classes.
Commander Nicole Schwegman, a spokesperson for the Pentagon and a former JROTC student, told the Times that the program is to only emphasize “service” and “teaching them about teamwork.” However she did show a bit of concern that these courses are being mandated.
Just like we are an all-volunteer military, this should be a volunteer program.
She said
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
When I attended Penn High School in Mishawaka, Indiana, JROTC was treated like a club instead of a class. However, the Army and Navy were constantly allowed to beat us over the head about joining. They were at every football game, a lot of basketball events, at least once or twice or month in the cafeteria, and sometimes would take over an entire class period to give us their sales pitch.
But what is happening in these schools is identical to what the Nazis were doing. They would just takeover the classroom and youth events, and make the kids do all sorts of physical activities; and as they got older it shifted into more pronounced military training. Training wheels before the real thing.
As far as I am concerned this is just another way to train the youth to be bullet soakers for the next war America gets itself involved with, which Russia and China seems to be the most likely culprits moving forward. Moreover they can act as the future enforcers to kick people’s doors in and haul their families off to a FEMA camp if and when martial law is implemented, say the next “pandemic” perhaps, or whatever else you can think of; such as being the woke green police, to turn you into the authorities for emitting too much carbon.
But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.
Jeremiah 22:17
King James Video Ministries has a really good documentary on how so many Vacation Bible Schools and youth church groups are grooming children to be soldiers and brutalizers as well, identical to the Nazis. It’s worth the watch.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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I did four years of the Navy version of the program from 2007 to 2011. I cannot say if this is true of all versions of the program, all schools, or all years, but back when I was in school, it was quite the pitiful program. Fights in the PT room, cadets not receiving awards/promotions they rightfully earned according to the requirements needed to earn them, a number of the students were involved in thievery, no coordination between the senor and junior instructor.
We were supposed to receive CPR training once every two years but it only happened once during that year. The academic team mostly got twenties or thirties on their competition scores. Many didn’t even bother with the Pt sessions, a few of us had disabilities that made some forms of excessive hard, but most where healthy and had little excuse.
And to top it all off, on the last day of school, I caught one of the cadet CO’s spitting out chewing tobacco in the bathroom sink.
Quite frankly, whenever I look back to those years it all feels like I wasted my time chasing participation trophies.
Sounds like grade school in general LOL.
Thanks for the video link that shows Bryan teaching about this.
I hadn’t heard about this one. Guess they’re burying it, & so easy when it’s ‘low income’ & working class poor w/ a tendency to conservative values, too much unquestioning trust of authority & utter ignorance of the scriptures. Dumbed down & demoralized Brownshirt and Red Brigade ‘knights’ & ‘heroes’, & they want the women this time, too. ‘Less gang activity’ & ‘less out of wedlock pregnancy’ in the biggest organized gang of all, & mandating the shot maybe, too? All that ‘human capital’ to experiment their new CRISPR ‘tweaking’ and those 500 or so ‘vaccines’ in the pipeline on. Test material for the new dietary promotions, too.
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God help today’s young people….and the next generation? Did y’all see the first artificial womb facility news release that Musk’s Twitter floated out?
I didn’t realize they offer ROTC in the high schools. Used to be only available on college campuses, and they did not automatically sign anyone up. This only confirms my suspicions they will be bringing the draft back.
I’m too old for JROTC, however I’m not joining to become a glorified SS officer or trooper, that’s unjust, illegal, imperial war.
China and Russia is going to grill America like a sirloin steak.
Goodbye, America.
We had CAT in high school and ROTC in the university I went to (back in the Philippines. I know, I’m out of my bounds being here in frigid, icy Canada, went against God’s word in my ignorance as a lost youth), both of those were mandatory in those schools I attended.