Mike:

Like you, I have been immersed elsewhere for a few weeks.

We start with the basic MIB problem: A person is smart; people are stupid.

So the first issue is whether we are discussing trying to educate an organization, or a person, or, more likely in the TRADOC application, persons who can contribute to the organizational knowledge & wisdom.

Reading the TRADOC pub gives a good picture of some conceptual frameworks far afield from my days as a TC---takes this tank, blow stuff up or hold this ground.

Problem is that if we use what we see today as a template for tomorrow, what we seem to be profoundly lacking in as a basic framework and understanding of societies, and societal systems, and the effective roles that military organizations can play in shaping and influencing them.

Tomorrow, in DC, is a conference on Post Conflict stuff (CSIS). Mark Weber from UNAMA is going to be there with others. UNAMA is drawing a very big distinction between the role of government and population servicing and reinforcement, and the role of the military. It does so at a time when the military is being forced (as a last resort tool) to try to effect and resolve substantial civilian deficiencies as part of its ever-broadening Mission.

If education is a structured process for conveying knowledge, wisdom, skills or capabilities, and the purpose is to fill some open gaps needed for the future, where do we find and how do we define those gaps in order to create a structured process to fill them?

With a baseline understanding that there is a big gap in US foreign engagements between what political leadership wants to accomplish, and what can be accomplished, the military is increasingly the service of choice, but is it the right service, and are these the right choices?

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least five courses I would love to give to the right folks just to explain the civilian frameworks and systems that underpin their supposed, and sometimes ill-defined mission objectives, but I couldn't begin to guess who, how, where (or why).

There is a general assumption that the volunteer military (and especially the reserves and guard units) come with a built-in civilian know-how, and to a great extent, that is true. But what I continually experienced is that many of those civilian cross-over experiences were like me as a Tank Commander trying to cross-over my ground-level tactical skills to a strategic theatre level (a bad fit)---lots of little decisions and actions that, in sum, amount to nothing productive.

What I believe (for my humble little slice of this pie) is that the right folks in the right places would do well to have, is the right higher order understanding of what and how to synthesize the many small decisions around strategic framework that has a greater opportunity for 1+1 equalling something at or greater than two.

But, in a military that has enough trouble finding time for on-going career and professional training (due to deployments), where and how does that pie-in-the-sky happen?

My version of educating to the gaps is, perhaps, a lot more self-learning, go and see, absorb and know, rather than teach/learn.

But, before I fall back into two more weeks of re-immersion into the primordial ooze, that's my two cents.

Steve