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Old 04-22-2012, 07:22   #1
Richard
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Teach Tough, Think Tough: Why Military Education Must Change

An OpEd piece worth reading and considering.

Joan Johnson-Freese is a professor at the Naval War College, lecturer at Harvard and an expert on U.S. military space, Chinese space and the PLA.

And so it goes...

Richard


Teach Tough, Think Tough: Why Military Education Must Change
AOLDefense, 15 Jun 2011
Part 1 of 2

The National War College at Fort McNair. The Army War College at Carlisle. The Naval War College at Newport. The Air War College at Maxwell Field. These are the launching pads for America's senior military leaders. The Pentagon spends substantial monies on these august institutions but are their graduates getting the education they need and which the nation deserves?

In April 2010, the House Armed Services Committee issued a report titled "Another Crossroads" examining professional military education (PME) two decades after the landmark Goldwater Nichols Act, which mandated comprehensive reform of the PME system aimed at broadening the intellectual foundations of U.S. military officers. They concluded that, while improvements had been made, America could do better.

The report began with a quote from Thucydides: "The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools." Despite this ancient wisdom, however, the valuable mission served by PME is still hindered by a clash of cultures.

Military officers and professors have good reasons to be the way they are, but they are not the same. The two cultures are rewarded for doing exact opposite things: academics who do not raise questions are considered poor academics, just as military officers who can't provide answers to their bosses problems don't get promoted. In the war colleges this plays out as conflict that pits encouraging intellectual curiosity and challenging received wisdom -- the very essence of academic inquiry, against the need to prepare graduates for their next assignment. In trying to accomplish both, differing attitudes, work habits, and cultures get in the way, which leads to conflicting goals as well.

The most extreme solution to this cultural clash was suggested last April, when defense journalist Tom Ricks blogged: "Need Budget Cuts? We Can Probably Start By Shutting the Air War College." Ricks was reacting to a piece written by retired Air War College (AWC) Professor Dan Hughes, which painted an unflattering picture of that institution and questioned its value.

Professors were depicted as unqualified, students coddled, and the entire enterprise largely a waste of time. Ricks' blog sparked a brief exchange among Professional Military Education (PME) professionals, generally refuting Hughes' assertions and defending the PME system.

Ricks is wrong about closing institutions. Hughes' assertions, however, reflects this underlying clash of military and academic cultures that needs a real discussion. I also taught at the Air War College, and my five-year tenure in the 1990's overlapped with Dr. Hughes'. While personal experiences vary, mine was similar to his.

Three instructions in the required "teacher training," for example, explained the AWC pedagogy. First, never use red ink grading student papers: direct criticism of military professionals would be insulting. Second, never cold call a student: not knowing the answer would be demeaning. Third, faculty were classroom "moderators," not teachers. The classroom was for sharing student views, so faculty should speak minimally. This last instruction often resulted in 90-minute sessions where students mostly reinforced each other's views and exchanged dead-wrong information, but this was equated to "education." Though never encouraged to publish at the AWC, I was encouraged to play golf in the afternoon student-faculty team-building tournaments. And while there were dedicated and productive faculty and exceptional students, they excelled mostly through personal initiative rather than institutional support.

Perhaps things changed at the AWC after it was accredited to grant a Master's degree in 2004. And each PME institution, of course, has its own character. But having now taught at three PME institutions over the past two decades, including chairing two departments, it is clear to me that endemic issues persist.

In a recent article, Gen. David Petraeus recalled his time at Princeton, where he once received a D on an exam. He considered Princeton both a humbling and useful experience, which prepared him to be not just a top military thinker, but competitive with the best and brightest anywhere. Conversely, retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters responded to this argument by asserting that civilian education is a waste of time; he referred to academics as "theory poisoned and indecisive," and viewed the primary value of PME as student networking.

How was this situation created? In 1986, Goldwater-Nichols (and the "Skelton Panel" a few years after it) specifically mandated guidelines for military education toward to open the military culture and encourage intellectual integration with civilians and among the services themselves. Over a decade earlier, Admiral Stansfield Turner similarly reformed the Naval War College (NWC), warning that if military officers could not hold their own with the best civilian strategists, the military would end up "abdicating control over its profession."

But the culture clash in military education begins early. Academics attend graduate school to become experts in specific fields. They learn specific languages or methods, conduct field work, regularly publish in their area of expertise and are recognized as experts primarily by their peers. They invest years in establishing their professional reputations. By contrast, military officers, while also specialists in various fields, are also taught that almost anyone with the right leadership skills can do almost any job with enough training. In PME, that means pilots, ship drivers, and logisticians find themselves going from an operational deployment one week to a classroom the next. (Teaching preparation sessions for faculty are informally called "bootstraps," which says a lot in itself.)

The upshot is that expertise in PME institutions is sometimes attained simply by declaring oneself an expert. As a NWC department chair, I once provided the faculty a matrix of dozens of regional and issue-related areas of expertise and asked they indicate their primary and second fields. One retired military officer indicated a primary expertise in every category. Some military faculty attend doctoral programs, but many see attaining a doctorate as a capstone professional rank, rather than the start of a new career. This is not unreasonable; it is natural to invest more in a first career than a second. But for the academics, this is their first career and their primary identity as professionals, and because of differences in how each culture works, differences arise over how they view education.

Military operations generally focus on accomplishing near-term goals, involving check-lists and constant self-assessments. Missions are team efforts, so teamwork and unquestioned loyalty to the chain of command are essential. Academics, however, spend their careers investigating open-ended questions with no clear answers, in sometimes narrow fields. They work on odd schedules, taking advantage of insights or opportunities whenever and wherever they arise. They tend to build their reputations and complete their works through individual efforts. While too many academics are not effective teachers, almost all of them believe that the best teachers have broad intellectual curiosity and should have the breadth to teach beyond that day's PowerPoint slides.

Although the military is focused on accomplishing the mission, they believe that close adherence to process and routine is important to their goals. Lone-wolf academics, by contrast, consider expanding knowledge in their fields – a new lecture, a publication, a conference presentation -- as indicators of productivity, and how they were achieved is irrelevant. Within PME these differences often play out as differing work habits. For the military, being in the office to hold or attend meetings, review for and communally prepare for class, or be always available for student consultations equates with daily productivity, while academics consider the totality of their results a year or more at a time.

Military faculty play an important roles calibrating the delicate balance between theory and practical material by bringing operational relevance to the curriculum and maintaining links to operational commands. Few, however, have an interest in developing a substantive expertise --they see themselves as just too busy, and often see their academic colleagues as self-absorbed, egotistical, elitist and lazy – and some are. Academics read the resumes of other academics with an eye toward "what have you done lately," and all schools, including the War Colleges, have their dead-wood "has-beens," and "never-weres." As in civilian universities, longevity for weaker PME faculty is based on popularity with students, mimicking team-player congeniality, or administration, rather than production or teaching rigor.

(Cont'd)
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