education

Over the years I have heard time and again the argument made that “the only problem with the operations planning process is that we don’t use it!” Often this argument is made at a staff college by some “greybeard” or other, although I have also heard it made by other less venerable staff and on occasion even by students of such institutions. It is usually offered as a reason why no reform, change, or update is required to whichever operations planning process is under discussion.

What is needed is a Joint Squad Leader’s School that would train Army and Marine Corps newly selected Sergeants to lead infantry squads and weapons platoon sections. Such a course of instruction would be structured similar to the Marine Corps Basic School - which all newly commissioned second lieutenants must attend.

Exploring the expansion of the online learning model, this article examines how this expansion has influenced the military student. Looking at the online and for profit expansion and ensuing lull, the underlying reasoning for declining enrollment, increasing attrition, and non-completion rates among these schools are explored.

The author makes several distinctions on how reading for the purposes of military self-development differs from reading practices in academia.

Shared sacrifice often leads to innovative solutions that make operations more efficient.   This requires openness to bottom-up communication.

What happened to the sports college?

The trajectory of developments holds value as a guide to the challenges of the next decade and the education and training needed to meet them.

When an adversary arrives in a form that was unanticipated, an intellectually curious officer will be able to draw upon years of education tested not in the classroom, but in the real world.

The military would benefit from more officers with hard science backgrounds enabling them to solve the challenging problems the military faces in modern wars.

Re-evaluate exactly what we want from our educational system and to strip away the non-essential.