Delivering Cultural Competence

[marct]

What I have heard (a *lot*) is that the opposite happens- the instructor is hired according the a strict interpretation of the rules. If they have to hire the person with the most time in the field, you get the guy 15 yr old PhD research experience because he has 5 years in the field, and not the guy with two recent tours, because he has less than 5 years. You get someone with a Masters in anthro, with work in behavioral modeling but no military experience, *not* the guy with an undergrad in criminology who worked in intelligence in Iraq.

Yup - and it is both stupid and insulting to all involved !

The key to the most effective training is shortening the feedback loop that gets lessons learned from the field into the training system.

Exactly, which brings us back to the hiring decisions and the simple fact that people are hired for the wrong reasons. Honestly, if a lot of the small unit internal training material could be uploaded on an ongoing basis (and geo and time coded), that material; should be immediate relevance to people deploying to that area. The same goes for Sergeant X with no degree but a lot of real world experience - they should be able to put up their lessons learned.

For most of the actual work of instruction, you don't want someone with an MA or a PhD - you want someone who knows the material, has relevant experience and who can teach. Where the grad degrees get useful as a hiring criteria are when you need someone who has access to a larger knowledge base and (hopefully) can think in multiple dimensions (okay, I'll admit, that lets out a lot of people with PhD's ).

A lot of this is getting back to the difference between training and education. You need training in the immediately relevant and education to both a) triage what will be relevant and b) put it into a larger perspective.

Cheers,

Marc