In 2022 writers Mike Baker, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Ilana Marcus produced a series of articles taking a critical look at the Junior Reserve Officers Training Program (JROTC) for the New York Times that explored the reality of the program in U.S. public schools nationally. Their articles were based on extensive research across many months and were comprised of interviews with JROTC member student cadets, their instructors, parents of the students, school officials, and community activists that have taken issue with the veracity of this program as a legitimate program inside civilian public schools. Below are the articles that came out of that research and series that appeared from the summer through the winter of 2022.
Instructors in military-sponsored J.R.O.T.C. classes have offered to promote the N.R.A. in high schools in exchange for money for their marksmanship programs. The Junior R.O.T.C Florida State Marksmanship Championship in Cape Coral, Fla. this April. At a time when many schools are going to great lengths to keep guns out of schools, the J.R.O.T.C. program has become one of the few places on ...
In high schools across the country, students are being placed in military classes without electing them on their own. “The only word I can think of is ‘indoctrination,’” one parent said. Dec. 11, ...
Descriptions of civic life and some key historical events differ from the way they are taught in typical public school textbooks. Credit...Zack Wittman for The New York Times Dec. 11, 2022 / Mike ...
Lawmakers criticized oversight by the military, which reported dozens of additional cases of abuse of high school students by J.R.O.T.C. instructors. Nov. 16, 2022 / Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and ...
Sept. 21, 2022 / Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Mike Baker / New York Times - Pentagon officials acknowledged Wednesday that they had inadequately supervised the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training ...
The House oversight committee wants the Pentagon to report on sexual misconduct in the high school programs and how it holds instructors accountable. Credit...Mary F. Calvert for The New York Times ...
Former students say military veterans who led J.R.O.T.C. classes in U.S. high schools fashioned themselves as mentors, then used their power to manipulate and abuse. July 9, 2022 / Mike Baker, ...