The Col. Gentile collection and debate

[Surferbeetle]

Most of what I have seen the Army do is training not education. Training is task oriented while education is concept oriented. There is often a misunderstanding in expectations between the two paradigms. The result is also often the criticism heaped upon academia that what is taught isn't immediately relevant. That is because the educational model creates flexibility to changing environments and adaptability. You educate a student on operating systems not Windows XP. They can then figure out any operating system.

There are a lot more things that could be said but in general the arguments will be around; 1) There isn't enough time in the training cycle (applying the wrong model from the onset); 2) Soldiers aren't that smart (even though they are getting older and more educated, wrong again); 3) We have to train for the fight we have today (again same wrong model as evidence against being prepared); 4) There is no way to integrate that kind of training with the current staff (presupposing the failure based on the inadequacy to develop staff will always fail, but how did we get armor?); 5) Various other similar rebuttals following the same pattern.

The fact is it would be a success, it would work, it has worked in previous conflicts, and as the national education system abandoned liberal arts and social sciences, so did the military drive towards a vocational model that now is seen as a restriction on mission capability.

Put succinctly the abject failure to reform military training to an educational model from a vocational model is a direct and substantial impact on national security capability.

Sam,

Do you have any case studies which discuss costs in terms of time and money for the two models that you would be willing to provide links for?

The NYT has an interesting opinion piece by Dr. Stanley Fish who ruminates about some of your points.

In previous columns and in a recent book I have argued that higher education, properly understood, is distinguished by the absence of a direct and designed relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world.

This is a very old idea that has received periodic re-formulations. Here is a statement by the philosopher Michael Oakeshott that may stand as a representative example: “There is an important difference between learning which is concerned with the degree of understanding necessary to practice a skill, and learning which is expressly focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining.”

So, how do I build a training or education system to keep my charges alive, make as many of the opposition as needed die for their system, and separate/protect/stabilize and perhaps improve the lives of the innocents caught in the middle of the conflicts that we are in? Do you have any case studies of successful systems to share?

Best,

Steve