West Point Faculty Member Worries it is Failing to Prepare Tomorrow's Officers - Major Fernando Lujan via Tom Ricks at Best Defense.
I graduated from West Point in 1998, served several combat tours, then received a master's degree from the Harvard Kennedy School so that I could instruct the cadets in politics, policy, and strategy. I have worked on the West Point faculty for two years, and this summer I'll return to the operational Army in Afghanistan. From my own limited perspective, I can say that the Academy is falling heartbreakingly short of its potential to prepare young officers...
... First, cadets have very little experience adapting to unfamiliar environments. After all, what happens when the regulations don't describe what's going on around you? Second, cadets devote zero attention to activities that "don't count." If it's not on the syllabus, and it's not for a grade, the cadets aren't learning it. Ask a cadet to spend a few minutes writing up a list of the skills, traits, and knowledge that he wishes he'd have when he finally takes over his first platoon in combat. Then compare this to his four-year curriculum and summer training plans. There will be surprisingly little overlap between the two lists, and the cadet has neither the time nor the incentive to learn what's missing. In the end, we graduate far too many cadets that are more bureaucrat than professional, lacking the expert knowledge of their trade and the flexibility to be effective in the complex environments they'll soon encounter.
Unfortunately, wars -- particularly the types of wars we're currently involved in -- are very unforgiving of bureaucrats. In Iraq, I commonly ran across young officers who were convinced that if they answered their reports on time, followed the unit operating procedures to the letter, and strove to make their casualty numbers look ever better, that they would "win" the war. These bureaucrats might keep the proverbial machine running, but it took mentally agile professionals with expert knowledge to realize that the rulebooks needed to be thrown out, that the old routine wasn't working...
Much more at Best Defense.