Hi Shek,

Quote Originally Posted by Shek View Post
I thought the "fashion tips" metaphor used by Dr. Wong was quite clever, although the message itself is disheartening. Once again, as an Army, in order to close a gap, we implemented a "fix" by starting to award masters degrees for the war college to show that we were "educating" our officers; however, the war colleges don't provide the broadening experience that a civilian graduate school will, and so some of the value of a graduate degree is lost (this isn't saying that they don't receive solid instruction at the graduate level, but a lunchroom conversation over a particular conflictwith other uniformed members isn't the same as one with fellow grad students who may have been with NGOs working a completely different side of the same conflict and can provide a potentially alien perspective).
I also thought the fashion metaphor was good - it reminded me of many academics I have worked with .

I think you are right about the war college acting as an internal reinforcer of perceptions. Maybe they would get a better overall "experience" at a civilian graduate school. Honestly, I think it might be better still if they took degrees in civilian graduate schools outside of the US. That way you would get both a civilian "take"on the issue as well as experience in a different culture. It would be interesting to see what the graduate exchange programs are like. By way of example, a couple of my former students have studied in France, while others have studied in England, Australia, the US and New Zealand. The cultural difference alone does seem to make a lot of difference.

Quote Originally Posted by Shek View Post
As far as "critical thinking," I guess that I am also naive as to its true meaning. What I was trying to get at was the ability to look at a problem at from several angles, especially to include those that you disagree with or may not have otherwise ever thought of (e.g. the conservation with a NGO member) so that you can arrive at a solution that has thought through all the possibilities. Thus, as the proverbial saying goes, not all problems look like nails wanting a hammer to fix them
Point taken ! One of the people in my Ph.D. cohort defined "critical thinking" as the ability to rip anyone's argument apart - that way you could get easy publications, still be perceived as "critical", and get a rep as a great theoretician. That particular one never really impressed me, but I did see a lot of it .

Marc