If I were king for a day the intermediate level education for field grade officers would consist of history, theory, and operational art (and include planning exercises at the operational vice tactical level). Class time would be limited to 4 hours per day. There would be a heavy reading and writing requirement and the 4 hours class time per day would be focused on student interaction and sharing (and debating) of experiences and ideas (our field grade officers are not a lot more experienced than many of the more senior instructors). Sounds a lot like SAMS I know (at least in the old days). The problem I see with our military education system is that we maintain a training mentality and if there are 8 hours in the training day we will use all 8 hours (and cram 12 hours worth of work into it). But at the field grade officer level we need officers who can think, write, plan (operationally), and solve problems creatively. The other problem is that we have so many things we think we need to teach our officers that we cram in so much we cannot focus on the fundamentals of problem solving and understanding the current and future operational environments.