Sound Off: Is Military School a Replacement for Service?

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said this to the author of an upcoming biography:

1. That he “always felt that I was in the military" when he attended the New York Military Academy prep school


2. And that, while at prep school, he got “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

Trump, who seems to have emerged unscathed from the firestorm unleashed by his attacks on Vietnam war hero Senator John McCain, sat out that war because of deferments and then a lottery draft number of 356 out of 366. Trump still says he understands military life.

Despite sitting out Vietnam because of deferments followed by a high draft lottery number of 356 out of 366, Mr. Trump said that he endured the rigors of real military life: “My number was so incredible and it was a very high draft number. Anyway so I never had to do that, but I felt that I was in the military in the true sense because I dealt with those people.”

Can spending your teenage years at boarding school really give someone a sense of what it's like to serve their country? Are the retired military men who run the training at military school required to dumb down the experience for their students or do the 14-year-0ld kids get the full boot camp experience and responsibility of actual service? Sound off!