Concur about boring articles
Schmedlap,
I agree about your point about the dearth of decent articles in military journals; certainly my mandatory writing program did little to alleviate that. Most of my guys opted to post something on company command dot net, and most of what they wrote did not necc revolutionize military affairs, either.
The main reason I made them submit articles was to enhance their skills at written communication and I believe that a public venue is one of the best ways to do this. As an XO, I was tired of reading the tripe they were sending through my office (I am an editor maybe, but not a damned ghost writer!), so the article thing let them know I was serious. I also kept the local economy going strong by buying red pens by the caseload, too.
I did not review their articles before submissionor assign subjects, either, I just wanted them to write something, and not have it seem totally like a homework assignment (even though it was). Probably a good idea for the future, though, since some of them got by with a 300-400 word p ost.
I laughed at some of the repsonses to my school experiences B.S.; the Ranger School one is classic. Hey, I did lose my patrol cap in Dahlonega in the mountains, and the RIs made me wear a sandbag on my head for about five days; I even had to sew cateyes on it. It was hotter than sh*t, I eventually cut it down and made it more hat-like, so I didn't look like some mutated giant gnome walking through the woods. . .
That bar on 3rd street in Leavenworth rocks, too, I like the middleclassyness of it. I used to chew tobacco back then (in ought four-ought five) and they actually had a spitoon for me. I felt like Bill Doolin or something in that place, and for a guy originally from CT, that is pretty damn good.
Not qualified to enter the debate on SAMS but can enter
a comment on general military education and training. Regardless of the target audience, the process of instruction is in my observation geared to a notch below the lowest common denominator in the course or class and that is geared to keeping the course alive by not having too high a reject rate and not making the staff or faculty look bad. That is not to say said staff and faculty are themselves the cause of this, most are hard working and try to do right -- it is a systemic and design failure
Based on my own experience and in talking to a lot of folks of all ranks who've more recently than I attended everything from initial entry training in several services to the War Colleges -- plural -- and to include a couple of SAMs graduates, the armed forces continue to cram one hour of instruction into two to four hours or more.
There should be a challenge involved and, for most, there is none. One should be able to not pass a course without fear of an execution or the next thing to it. The object of the course should be to impart knowledge or capability, all too often it's a career step and not much more. Sort of bothers me that the former Officer Advanced Course is now called the Career Course. Honesty in advertising? Dunno but I have my suspicions.
I have to suspect that Bob W. is correct on this one...