So EVERYONE has heard the threat about being sent to military schools (at least if you occasionally in trouble:), but I was wondering if anyone actually did? What was your experience like? Or were you a parent that sent your kid to a military school?

37 comments

  1. For a bit more context:

    I have known a couple of people went to military schools, one went to a place called Culver which was actually the opposite “being sent to military school threat” because he actually had to work hard to get in, stay in, and he wound up getting a scholarship to a great college. A co-worker went to a place called Marine Military Academy, I haven’t gotten the details but it also sounds like kind of a high dollar place like Culver.

    SO… with my limited knowledge, did what we think of as “military schools” kind of all go out of fashion? And all that is left is sort of these high dollar college prep schools? Or… did “military schools” in the way that my parents would threaten me with never actually really exist.

  2. I think the more common term is boarding school.

    I know they exist but have never known anyone who attended one

  4. Military style high schools are out there, but exceedingly rare and usually boarding schools. More common are JROTC programs in regular public schools that include some military related classes, marching, and the like in addition to the regular classes. One of the high schools I attended had a Navy JROTC program.

  5. I don’t know anyone that went to “military school”. I think it’s a trope used by writers to illustrate a character was struggling getting along with teachers/parents/life.

    They’re not “common” at all. Private schools are common, there’s at least one in every town. Boarding schools less so. Military style academies even less so.

  6. One of my friends got sent to one in high school, he didn’t like it and was estranged from his mom (dad was not in the picture at all) for a long time over it. They’ve made up now but it was like close to ten years that he wouldn’t speak to her.

  7. They exist but aren’t super common.

    I know one person who went to Valley Forge Military Academy. It’s an expensive private school and not necessarily something people would be threatened with for disciplinary reasons.

  8. Yeah there was one in the county I grew up in and I encountered another in the Bay Area

  9. So there’s a couple things at work here.

    1. “Military Schools” used to be something that existed more commonly for high school. They don’t much/at all now. The threat remains, but it usually these days just means a strict boarding school.

    2. Culver is a boarding school with “Military” in the name. It may have an impressive and strict regimen, but it isn’t focused on the military aspect I suspect.

    3. When you say “military school” these days, people think universities. Annapolis, VMI, West Point, etc. These are some of the finest schools in the country. I don’t know anybody who went to a military school other than university. I have several friends who went to the Air Force Academy and Annapolis though.

  10. I only knew of one that was in my town. It was basically a reform school for kids that got kicked out of school/legal troubles and etc. It was basically styled after military basic training and was even located on the local Army post. I only met a few kids from there briefly during a volunteer event. They all seemed nice, just had a shitty start in life I guess.

  11. Not as common as they used to be, and the ones that are still around are far from the model of tight control and discipline that they used to adhere to.

    Case in point, [Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, GA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_Military_Academy). It used to be the place threatened to wayward/troublesome boys, and I actually knew two or three who got sent there. So, when my son was being quite a problem in the mid-’00s, I took him to a tour/meeting for prospective students. It turned out that their graduates had been so disproportionately successful and had continually donated so much to their alma mater that despite being nearly 100 years old, the school had no buildings older than a decade, and they were all top-notch and many were richly appointed (the auditorium had high-end cloth seats and a foyer with inlaid marble). The school had changed to a high-end prep school and since my son had a juvenile court case pending, they said that if he got a record from that, he would not be eligible to attend — quite the difference from how it was as late as the ’80s. Despite the high-end nature of the school, the tuition/room/board was actually fairly reasonable and would have been significantly less expensive than the place I ultimately sent him.

  12. I went to a military college (not an academy) and know a bunch that went to military HS from that but outside of that none

  13. I know a few kids who were sent to boarding school, but they weren’t “military” – just really good schools for ridiculously rich kids. They did both get “sent” there though for pissing off their parents (two different families)

  14. Military schools aren’t common.

    JROTC is more common. ROTC is even more common.

    But even being “common” it is still a vast minority of overall students.

  15. They exists, but I have no idea where I can find one

    My dad got sent to an all boys military school type place and he didn’t benefit from it: it turned him gay for the mean time and his behavior got worse.

  17. There is one in my area. It is a boarding school, and typically kids are sent there because of behavior issues. I do have a friend whose brother was sent there.

  18. I went to a Maritime Academy that fulfils a USCG licensing requirement of “3 or more years in a regimented lifestyle” and those are often viewed as military schools but few graduates are actually I’m programs that require USCG or Navy service.

    Generally it’s just a bunch of shaving and wearing a uniform and freshman year we have to march a lot. From veterans that I went to school with, they found it annoying/comical. In the end, the hardest part of going to a Maritime Academy is always the course load and the intense licensing exams.

  19. In recent immigrant families, the equivalent is threatening to send kids back to the ‘village’

  20. There are only around 65-70 in the country.

    In comparison, there are over 130,000 public schools and ~36k private schools…

    So… ~0.04% (four one-hundredths of one percent) of schools are military schools.

    No, they aren’t common. They’re a statistical anomaly.

  21. I knew a guy in college who went to some kind of military school. He’s the only one. I don’t think they’re as common as TV and movies make it seem. I don’t even know where any are, never seen any in my area or while traveling.

  22. We played against a military academy in sports when I was in high school, and I developed a few friendships with people who went there. From what I heard from them, it’s not anything like the threats that parents in movies use. The most notable difference was their uniforms and the fact that they had a much greater chance of acceptance into one of the US Military Academies. Most of the students were either children of veterans (mostly officers) or knew they wanted to go to a Military Academy from a young age and wanted that advantage.

    There are reform schools that exist, which are much more brutal and in line with what parents mean in movies when they make that threat.

  23. They’re less common than they used to be.

    There used to be a military school in my state, when I was a kid it was used for that threat of sending someone off to military school.

    Millersburg Military Institute. MMI. Or, as the nickname was “Mother’s Marching Idiots”.

    It closed in 2006, years and years of dwindling attendance had pushed it into bankruptcy. It got bought by new owners, who couldn’t keep it open either.

    “We’ll send you off to military school!” now sounds like something from an old TV show or movie. I haven’t seen or known of that threat used even halfway seriously since the 1980’s.

  24. There’s one here in Southern California. I worked in a group home for teens and sometimes we would send kids there. They had to want to go, and it wasn’t easy to be accepted.

  25. I’ve never been threatened with military school.

    That said, I’ve worked with a few people that went to a local ROTC high school where they wore uniforms and I guess did ROTC stuff. I don’t really feel like any of them got a good education there. And I used to know a guy who got sent to a military boarding school for like a month until both his ex girlfriends turned up pregnant.

  26. I had a buddy who got kicked out of several schools for drugs and a bad attitude so his parents sent him to New Mexico Military Institute to straighten him out. He learned more about drugs there, and how to function at a high level while doing/hiding them, than anybody else I knew in my crowd of stoner losers. He came back for one break with what must have been a quarter pound of weed to sell, like a gallon ziplock halfway full.

  27. I wasn’t exactly “sent” to military school. It was more that it was the least bad option at the time. It was ultimately my choice to go and I easily could have washed out if I’d actually wanted to.

    I attended the [New Jersey Youth ChalleNGe Academy](https://njyca.org/) which is a 22 week “quasi-military” residental program operated by the NJ National Guard at Fort Dix.

    As for the experience itself, it was the stereotypical bootcamp experience. Horrible first day, heads shaved, shit tossed, hulking pissed off cadres, group punishment, CAPE, cold Chef Boyardee, hospital corners, green wool blankets older than my dad, marching everywhere, inspections, communal everything, and so much gay shit.

  28. Are you talking more about high school military schools or college military schools? I don’t know anything about the high school versions, but I went to a military college. When it comes to colleges, there’s the upper tier military academies that include West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy and the Coast Guard Academy. Then there are second tier “senior military colleges” that include VMI, the Citadel and Norwich (where I went). Texas A&M and Virginia Tech both have Corps of Cadets similar to VMI, Citadel and NU but they are primarily civilian schools.

    Everyone I knew at Norwich choose to go there and almost everyone planned on going into the military when they arrived as freshmen. I never knew a single person who was forced to go there because they were problem children. That being said, by the time we were seniors a lot of wished we’d gone just about anywhere else. Spending your college years in a military environment grows old pretty quickly. I’d guess that about 50% of us decided at some point that the military wasn’t for us and we were under no obligation to join after graduation, so we didn’t.

  30. My husband was in a program like that. I guess you’d call it a military school? They ran it just like boot camp but they had classes and took tests as well. They didn’t get a high school diploma just a GED, but they also had their college exams and military exams done there.

    It was for kids that got kicked out of all the other schools and/or had records, but they had to WANT to be there. If they caused too much trouble they would be kicked out. They lived on an actual military base and all their instructors were military men. Only got to see family something like every other week.

    Anyways, husband says it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. Straightened him out and showed him that he actually is smart. The school is still in operation, too.

  31. I think for most of America getting sent to juvie is way more common than military schools (I never heard of anybody being sent to military school).

  32. Well most high schools (at least I’m my area) have a JROTC unit. But not a lot of purely military schools

  33. My dad threatened to send me to Oates Military Academy but thankfully I passed history. Good thing too because Oates is in Alaska.

  34. Not super common, but my younger step brother was sent to one his senior year. Was doing a lot of drugs and drinking and they were hoping it’d straighten him up. Apparently that and joining the navy right after didn’t help at all because he died last year of what we found out was his 4th OD that month.

  35. My uncle got sent to military school in late 60’s… was typical long haired rock & roll musician who smoked weed, etc. After graduation, went to college and got a degree in music engineering and got to hang with weed smoking musicians for a living

  36. I went to boot camp, oh yayy I enlisted in the Army, that’s why..lol Silly me

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