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Old 04-22-2012, 07:23   #2
Richard
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Teach Tough, Think Tough: Why Military Education Must Change
AOLDefense, 15 Jun 2011
Part 2 of 2


There is also a natural political clash of cultures that is rarely spoken of, but exists nonetheless. Academics are almost invariably the product of liberal institutions and therefore tend to be liberal, while military officers tend to be conservatives -- the empirical evidence on that is indisputable. Both cultures tend to be insular and spend considerable time talking to people much like themselves.

At the Air War College, for example, a retired officer gave a too-liberal lecture, evident because at the end, the then-Deputy Commandant stood outside the auditorium yelling "get that f***ing liberal out of my building!" to the speaker's hapless escort, in full view of the students and faculty. Everybody got the message. Likewise, when curricular materials are questioned due to "inappropriate" language or deprecating remarks about the military that the students might find offensive, there is a chilling effect on education.

Many will likely deny any contention of civil-military strife within PME, including for reasons of self-protection. Academic PME faculty are often on two- to four-year contracts; their pay is not in addition to a military pension. They fear losing their jobs if they are not regarded as not team players" -- a deadly accusation in the military world -- or if the students don't "like" them. As a department chair I had many closed door discussions on these and similar issues (gender-related problems, for example), but few military academics are willing to speak openly. Dan Hughes did, but he is retired, and I have one of a very few effectively tenured positions at the Naval War College. But the careers of many others rest in the hands of administrators, themselves often retired military officers tasked to maintain harmony.

Without question, academia is burdened with cultural and procedural issues. Most issues, however, are addressed by tenured faculty and the administration, often in no-holds-barred verbal knife fights that can leave a lot of bruised feelings and animosity. Military commands, however, are traditionally valued for having a happy "command climate," and so the administrators have vested interests in perpetuating the image that all is well. Problems, from sexual harassment to questionable hiring and ethical conflicts get buried, lest they reflect poorly on the command. (Retired admiral and former congressman Joe Sestak reportedly lost his last job in the Navy over "command climate.") This attitude, however, both solves nothing and is a disservice to the students, and the Nation -- which, after all, pays their tuition and expects results.

So what can done about these kinds of problems Hughes and Ricks identify? First and foremost, the military needs to decide what it really wants from education.

PME institutions, for example, like other academic institutions, are plagued by caring too much what the students like and want. Though brave leaders and professionals in their operational jobs, when officers come to PME, they become like most graduate students – tetchy. Individuals who work 60+ hour weeks at the Pentagon, or even have come under fire in the field, suddenly find it unbearable to take two exams in a week or to write an eight-page paper. Time becomes precious, and expectations rise: I have had PME students request that their readings be put on a CD to listen to in their cars. Grades, as at the best civilian universities, inflate while the tolerance for work shrinks.

Military students are comfortable with material that has clear-cut answers and they think is tactically relevant to their next assignment. They abhor ambiguity, and largely see the world in black and white terms. But as educators, our job is to get them over that, not play to it. Identification with the students can lead the military faculty to be sympathetic, perhaps overly so, wanting to mentor these younger versions of themselves. (Academic faculty who try to maintain what they consider a more appropriate student-faculty professional distance are often scored for it by their students and military colleagues as a sign of aloofness.) Students should come The point should be reinforced at all to the War Colleges expecting that this is a year of hard and necessary study -- and not an exercise in building self-esteem.

Finally, education needs to be supported by higher command. Many PME students expect the War College to be a year off to relax and reconnect with family after long operational assignments – and that is what they are told so by detailers and senior officers who often did not attend, or want to attend, a War College themselves.

Princeton will never teach some of the required and highly specialized material available only in a War College, and in any case, there is not nearly enough room at the nation's elite universities -- which currently take only a handful of military students and cannot take many more-- for the thousands of officers who pass through the PME system each year. Military education is not only necessary, it is a Congressional requirement and indispensible -- but it could be more like Princeton and less like training.

Overall, only time can acclimate military professionals and academic experts to working with each other. But acknowledging the problem today would be helpful -- and more productive than simply torching academics as pointy-heads, or issuing cavalier calls for shuttering the War Colleges. An open and cooperative discussion about better bridging the two cultures, facilitated by a senior military leadership that truly values graduate education, could go a long way toward improving the professional development and effectiveness of America's senior military officers.

A 2010 blog post by Admiral James Stavridis, Commander US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, succinctly stated: "The enormous irony of the military profession is that we are huge risk takers in what we do operationally -- flying airplanes on and off a carrier, driving a ship through a sea state five typhoon, walking point with your platoon in southern Afghanistan -- but publishing an article, posting a blog, or speaking to the media can scare us badly. We are happy to take personal risk or operational risk, but too many of us won't take career risk."

No one outshines the US military in operations, as Osama Bin Laden just learned the hard way in Abbottabad. Our men and women in uniform have no fear of the enemy. It's time, then, to get them over the fear of the red pen, and to make sure military education squarely where it belongs: a tough milestone just as important as every other an officer of the US armed forces must meet in his or her career.

http://defense.aol.com/2011/06/15/te...h-think-tough/
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