Thousands of Youths Are Compelled to Join Military's Junior ROTC

By Mike Baker, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Ilana Marcus

DETROIT — On her first day of high school, Andreya Thomas looked over her schedule and found that she was enrolled in a class with an unfamiliar name: JROTC.

She and other freshmen at Pershing High School in Detroit soon learned they had been placed into the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, a program funded by the U.S. military designed to teach leadership skills, discipline and civic values — and open students’ eyes to the idea of a military career. In the class, students had to wear military uniforms and obey orders from an instructor who was often yelling, Thomas said, but when several of them pleaded to be allowed to drop the class, school administrators refused.

“They told us it was mandatory,” Thomas said.

JROTC programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.

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. A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households, the Times found.

The role of JROTC in U.S. high schools has been a point of debate since the program was founded more than a century ago. During the anti-war battles of the 1970s, protests over what was seen as an attempt to recruit high schoolers to serve in Vietnam prompted some school districts to restrict the program. Most schools gradually phased out any enrollment requirements.

But 50 years later, 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, concerns raised by activists, news coverage and an inspector general’s report led the school district to backtrack this year on automatic JROTC enrollments at several high schools that serve primarily lower-income neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides. In other places, the Times found, the practice continues, with students and parents sometimes rebuffed when they fight compulsory enrollment.

JROTC classes, which offer instruction in a wide range of topics, including leadership, civic values, weapons handling and financial literacy, have provided the military with a valuable way to interact with teenagers at a time when it is facing its most serious recruiting challenge since the end of the Vietnam War.

While Pentagon officials have long insisted JROTC is not a recruiting tool, they have openly discussed expanding the $400-million-a-year program, whose size has already tripled since the 1970s, as a way of drawing more young people into military service. The Army says 44% of all soldiers who entered its ranks in recent years came from a school that offered JROTC.

High school principals who have embraced the program say it motivates students who are struggling, teaches self-discipline to disruptive students and provides those who may feel isolated with a sense of camaraderie. It has found a welcome home in rural areas where the military has deep roots but also in urban centers where educators want to divert students away from drugs or violence and toward what for many can be a promising career or a college scholarship.

And military officials point to research indicating JROTC students have better attendance and graduation rates, and fewer discipline problems at school.

But critics have long contended the program’s militaristic discipline emphasizes obedience over independence and critical thinking. The program’s textbooks, the Times found, at times falsify or downplay the failings of the U.S. government. And the program’s heavy concentration in schools with low-income and nonwhite students, some opponents said, helps propel such students into the military instead of encouraging other routes to college or jobs in the civilian economy.

“It’s hugely problematic,” said Jesús Palafox, who worked with the campaign against automatic enrollment in Chicago. Now 33, he said he had become concerned the program was “brainwashing” students after a JROTC instructor at his high school approached him and urged him to join the classes and enlist in the military.

“A lot of recruitment for these programs are happening in heavy communities of color,” he said.

Schools also have a financial incentive to push students into the program. The military subsidizes instructors’ salaries while requiring schools to maintain a certain level of enrollment in order to keep the program. In states that have allowed JROTC to be used as an alternative graduation credit, some schools appear to have saved money by using the course as an alternative to hiring more teachers in subjects such as physical education or wellness.

Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, a spokesperson for the Pentagon and a former JROTC student herself, said while the program helped the armed forces by introducing teenagers to the prospect of military service, it operated under the educational branch of the military, not the recruiting arm, and aimed to help teenagers become more effective students and more responsible adults.

“It’s really about teaching kids about service, teaching them about teamwork,” Schwegman said.

But she expressed concern about the Times’ findings on enrollment policies, saying the military does not ask high schools to make JROTC mandatory and that schools should not be requiring students to take it.

“Just like we are an all-volunteer military, this should be a volunteer program,” she said.

The program has always been heavily represented in regions like Texas and the Southeast, where the military has deeper roots and military families often proudly span generations. But even there, data released in response to federal, state and local public records requests showed some schools had relatively small enrollments.

Hillsborough County, Florida, 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, Louisiana; Cape Coral, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; Memphis, Tennessee; Port Gibson, Mississippi; San Diego; Spring, Texas; and Vincent, Alabama.

Many other schools have more than half of all students in some grades enrolled in the program, including some in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Miami, St. Louis and Washington.

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%).

In some districts examined by the Times, it was difficult to discern whether a school required JROTC or if some other reason had led a large percentage of its freshmen to enroll in the program.

In Detroit, the district said in a statement that administrators did not require students to take JROTC, although they “do encourage students in ninth grade to take the course to spark their interest.” But two recent students at Pershing, in addition to Thomas, said in interviews that they had been required to take the class. District data showed 90% of freshmen were enrolled in JROTC during the 2021-22 school year.

Three other Detroit high schools also enrolled more than 75% of their freshmen in the class, according to district data.

Schools that have faced questions over mandatory or automatic enrollments have often responded by backing away from the requirements, as Chicago did last year.

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