43. Robert Land Academy

In Canada some kind of man with a rather unknown career as s soldier decided to found a military bording school which could take care of both odinary boys but also at risk teenagers. The school was opened in 1978.

Students state:

This school is not what they say in their website. This school is not for troubled teen. We registered our challenging son there. After couple of weeks he found out how he could dismissed himself from the place. They will send kids home for suspension!!! If they do some fight which normally happened in high school let alone for challenging boys, they will send you email to come and get your son home. So, this is the solution for that challenging kids to choose not to stay there. You will experience a lot of stress and it will end up to loose your money. They suspend our kids for 2 times and they didnt accept him back to school with no refund!! Please take this serious and know that this school is not designed for challenging kids that suffer from ADHD, ADD, ODD or other disorder.

Osanak M. on Yelp

I know a lot of people can be written off as people trashing the school out of spite, but I want to try and write an objective review without all that. It’s been many years since I attended, so this is coloured with time and not just something I typed out as soon as leaving.

I don’t agree with the school or its methods. I think it usually attempts to reform bad behavior by simply producing an environment that forces compliance via fear and pain instead of attacking any roots of the problem. Most changes that are a result of the school specifically are short lived, and I believe most of the lasting changes are made by the passage of time and the students’ own will to change, which could be gotten anywhere. Simply intimidating someone into obedience does not help that person carry it over into later life, or really produce any positive changes at all for that matter.

Then there’s the issue of the school’s treatment of students which I think is harsh and often verges into the territory of mental or physical abuse. Whether you believe that the punishments of the school constitute abuse or not, there are certainly staff members who have been overtly abusive and faced no consequences where in most other schools it would be hugely scandalous.

All that said, it has been years since I’ve been. I’ve heard that it’s gotten a lot less “extreme” but I can only review from what I knew, and even from that I think the school has too much of a negative past to even condone its continued operation.

Max S. on Yelp

Needless to say: 3 boys have decided that their lives were not worth living after they had been sent there. Two was hit by a train in an incident looking very much like a suicide pact. One jumped out of his parents car returning to the military school into oncoming traffic.

It doesn’t sound like a fun place for teenagers.

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Sources:

News articles:

• Teen killed by train had `troubled’ life – `Bright young man’ had `brushes with law’ (Originally Toronto Star)
• Former students criticize military-style school after two deaths (Prince George Citizen Online)
• Halifax teen killed in Ontario (CBC)

Student testimonies and message boards:

• Jason Ladas at Robert Land Academy – part 1 (Tales from the black school – testimonial blog)
• Robert Land Academy in Canada? (Reddit r/troubledteens)
• Robert Land Academy related deaths (Enormous loss memorial blog)
• Review of Robert Land Academy (Reddit r/troubledteens)
• Robert Land Academy (Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora)