A Counter Terrorism reading list

[William F. Owen]

Hi Marct

One of the key observations coming out of that discussion was that reading lists were originally used to define the "core" of a discipline; the "must reads" as it were to understand past and current debates. One analogy that was used referred back to the Bible and noted that you really can't talk in any meaningful way about Christianity until you had read it. And, since we're talking PhD level discussions now, you couldn't have a "meaningful" discussion about the New testament unless you could read it in the Greek; you just wouldn't understand the debates.

Concur. I have no issue with a recommendation as to 3-4 books that should be read to gain a common understanding of a specific subject. That being said, the vast majority/all of reading lists I have ever seen fail this test.

I also believe that such recommendations should contain explicit guidance as to books not to read - eg:
If you want to study CvC do no read the Rapoport Penguin Edition.
If you want to study Strategy do not read Liddell-Hart's "Strategy"

....the point being, as you said, time is short and the aim is to teach, not entertain or provide amusing academic debate!

Strangely enough, the possibly soon to cease "British Army Review" served the purpose of recommending what books Officers should read and what they should not!

[marct]

Hi Wilf,

....the point being, as you said, time is short and the aim is to teach, not entertain or provide amusing academic debate!

Unless you are an amusing academic !

On a more serious note, I think it's critical to distinguish between at least three purposes:

1. teaching for practitioners in a well established and highly predictable area of knowledge where the vast majority of applications are well understood and highly predictable; civil engieering comes to mind.
2. teaching for practitioners in poorly predictive areas of knowledge, such as the social sciences, COIN, etc.
3. teaching to inform in either of these types of areas

The teaching styles and outcomes are, or rather should, be different. For example, in a well understood knowledge area with high predictability, you can readily establish a cannon of core knowledge and do a lot of your testing by rote (i.e. there actual are "correct" answers). In an area of knowledge with low predictive results, you often don't have "correct" answers, although you frequently have incorrect ones. In this case, you want to teach people how to ask the right questions. That might sound odd, but it's how it operates .

If your aim is to "inform", however, then that is a totally different matter, and what you are really doing is trying to teach them the language of the area of knowledge, along with a rough map of how it is constructed. In both cases, there are "correct" answers, not so much because the area of knowledge may be well understood, it may not be, but because the questions are about how it is constructed rather than its actual validity.

Strangely enough, the possibly soon to cease "British Army Review" served the purpose of recommending what books Officers should read and what they should not!

Not a bad idea, and it should have led to some interesting debates. On a side note, I've heard rumours that one of the reasons why it may cease is because it isn't available online. Maybe we (the SWJ Empire) can buy it cheap !