Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
In other words "shoot a rifle" becomes how many discrete learning objectives? ... By the way I know that is a HUGE list but that is what you need to build the curriculum.
There are actually three separate sets of pretty well researched documents. The post-WW II Army Subject Schedules have extensive lists of training objectives and even times required to teach an average class (generally far too long but can be worked); Army Training Plans from the same era which do that same for some subjects.

More current are today's Soldiers Manuals (LINK) which you'll notice cover ever MOS and skill level. Unfortunately, you'd need to log on to AKO to read any specific manual. However, that will show you how many there are.

Here's one that allows let you look at the way each task is structured, LINK. There are literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of these task and that first link shows they are available effectively as a curriculum and list of learning objectives for each skill and rank, PVT through SGM

That last one is to the common tasks that everyone in the Army is supposed to be able to perform to standard. If you scroll though them, you'll note that the quality is variable, I've seen some that were very well done, others that left much to be desired. Generally the more technical, the better because many of the generic military, non technical tasks are subjective in performance evaluation and thus leave some gaps.

Using your example, one never just shoots a rifle (and I know that was just a hypothetical and that you know what follows) -- it is always done for a reason and that reason can affect the way you shoot. Thus what has to be done is to link the necessary sub task together to produce and combination of task (learning objective) that achieve the desired result, the Outcome.

Thus what's needed is indeed a series of learning objectives that consolidate numerous tasks (Shooting, moving, communicating) into a working practical outcome. The flaw in the discrete Task method is it enables people to do the basics very well indeed -- but they have trouble combining skills to move to the journeyman level. What's required is not a curriculum but a program of instruction that is flexible, allows for rapid adjustment and modification, movement between class levels and melds skills starting at a very elementary level and progressively adds new skills and increased level of difficulty. It is training, not education. The old Army Subject Schedule approach produced the learning objectives (and a pretty good soldier) who was not particularly great at any task but could them all to an extent and didn't need a tremendous amount of training in the unit.

The new approach creates a kid who is really very, very good at performing those tasks in which he is trained(for most MOS, only about 40% in the Institution) but he cannot combine them well and those tasks left (about 60%)to the unit to train get done with a very wide variance in success. Many of those tabbed out to the unit are combat critical. We still get pretty good soldiers but it is very much first line leader in his first unit dependent. Combine the two systems and your concerns are more than met.

In the old days (Pre Viet Nam), it took about two to three years of peacetime service to produce a decently competent Infantryman. With the new system, my son and others tell me it takes about two to three years in peacetime to produce a decently competent Infantryman. In both cases, that can be significantly decreased by combat commitment, then it drops down to his initial training plus about three to six weeks of combat. However, in both war and peace that's too long. An additional three months of training in the basics can cut the combat time down to a few days and the peace time down to a few weeks (units are different than the training environment as you know).