Point/Counterpoint: Are the Service Academies in Trouble?
This week, two instructors at the US Naval Academy discussed some of the challenges, strengths, and shortcomings of America’s service academies. The first is Dr. Bruce Fleming, a professor of English who is set to release his book Bridging the Military-Civilian Divide in August. Dr. Fleming penned an op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times entitled, The Academies’ March Toward Mediocrity.
Instead of better officers, the academies produce burned-out midshipmen and cadets. They come to us thinking they’ve entered a military Camelot, and find a maze of petty rules with no visible future application. These rules are applied inconsistently by the administration, and tend to change when a new superintendent is appointed every few years. The students quickly see through assurances that “people die if you do X” (like, “leave mold on your shower curtain,” a favorite claim of one recent administrator). We’re a military Disneyland, beloved by tourists but disillusioning to the young people who came hoping to make a difference.
In my experience, the students who find this most demoralizing are those who have already served as Marines and sailors (usually more than 5 percent of each incoming class), who know how the fleet works and realize that what we do on the military-training side of things is largely make-work. Academics, too, are compromised by the huge time commitment these exercises require. Yes, we still produce some Rhodes, Marshall and Truman Scholars. But mediocrity is the norm.
Meanwhile, the academy’s former pursuit of excellence seems to have been pushed aside by the all-consuming desire to beat Notre Dame at football (as Navy did last year). To keep our teams in the top divisions of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, we fill officer-candidate slots with students who have been recruited primarily for their skills at big-time sports. That means we reject candidates with much higher predictors of military success (and, yes, athletic skills that are more pertinent to military service) in favor of players who, according to many midshipmen who speak candidly to me, often have little commitment to the military itself.
Dr. Shaun Baker, a professor of philosophy, provides an excellent counterpoint to Dr. Fleming in an entry on his blog at Themistocles’ Shade. Dr. Baker received his PhD from Wayne State University, and is the Assistant Director of the James B. Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the US Naval Academy. He teaches philosophy, coaches the Academy’s Ethics Bowl team, and is the Stockdale Center’s webmaster.
In the Naval Academy, there is a very strong tradition of exhortation to moral excellence, honesty, integrity, ideals taken very seriously, and as more than one mid on more than one occasion has put it, “pounded” into their heads from day one Plebe Summer. Yes, this exhortation may heighten the sort of sensitivity to inconsistency that gives rise to cynicism, but I believe it also has a pronounced effect on the day-to-day thinking of a majority of the mids.
They do take these values seriously, even as they recognize their own shortcomings, those of other midshipmen and the faculty and staff. In general, I would say that this does not diminish the fact that they do take these values seriously, and think about them, have them in the forefront of their minds much more so than would people that did not go through four years of such rigorous exhortation to ethical thinking and exemplary character.
Not only do all midshipmen go through a rigorous 4 year cycle of classes intended to drive home the importance of ethical thought, and ethical leadership, classes that explicitly take up and rationally discuss cynicism, among other germane topics (just war theory, international law, military justice, principles of servant leadership, followership, constitutional principles, and etc..) but the very nature of the institution they live in for four years puts them in a good position to understand the position of the enlisted people they will eventually work with. In many ways the academy does two things at the same time. It prepares for leadership at various ranks, in various ways intellectual, moral and emotional, but it also drives home how it is to be a lower level “cog” in a big quite hierarchical command-structured institution, and teaches one how to deal with that reality, and the cynicism that naturally results.
Discuss the articles further at the Small Wars Council…