Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
In my opinion, ROTC should be trying to correct this (perhaps it is already attempting to do so? I hope so). Instead of simply requiring 4 years of military science, a minimum GPA, and the other trivial requirements, there should be some more rigorous safeguards to ensure that our cadets take a legitimate course of study to obtain the benefits of a liberal education.

Using history courses as an example - if State U allows students to fulfill their history "core requirement" by taking US Women's history, then Cadet Command (or whatever the governing body may be) may want to require cadets to take a comprehensive US history course that includes study of wars, significant political, diplomatic, and economic events, and the impacts of technological change upon society. This would seem to be more beneficial than a semester of learning about why America is bigoted, sexist, and oppressive. If the cadet has a sincere interest in Women's History, then that will remain an option - in addition to the required course - but the requirement for a more relevant study in history should be required to ensure that a course with an extremely narrow scope of questionable legitimacy is not the only course in history taken. Hopefully such measures have already been taken - there were no such standards that I was aware of when I was in ROTC.
ROTC isn't really touching this...at least not here. There is a military history course, but not much in the way of independent thinking or even wargaming. I'm trying to change some of that where I am (Air Force ROTC), and it's been successful on a local level. Still trying to get the Army to play (so we can have free playing ground forces and some joint experience), but have had little luck.

Another thing you run into is the offerings (or lack thereof) of the State U's history department. You'll see the block of generic world/US history, and then the rest really depends on the available faculty. Sometimes you get lucky, but with the trend toward "environmental history", women's studies, deconstructionalism and post-modern obsessions you tend to see some stuff that could best be described as "fluff."

Note for Rob: Still working on the CW/IW adaptability article idea...got a good list of officers (half volunteer, half West Point) and going from there. One of my factors for assessing adaptability is the officer's ability to "grow" skilled subordinates, so that's being taken into account.