Dumbed Down Army

As a many of you may have guessed I am a military servicemember. As such I can speak as a subject matter expert on the content of this post, which I will outline shortly. My experience and knowledge of this subject is based on 14 years of active service, and having served in the position of Instructor several times.

 The subject as the title suggests is a " Dumbed Down Army." Let me explain. There is a standard operating procedure within the ranks that precludes leaders and instructors from permitting soldiers to fail when testing in a given area. Let me clarify... The standing orders are "No one will fail."

The Army even goes so far as to conduct most testing as open book and open note tests. Test are only given after a period of instruction, and after a review is done in which the testable material is completely covered and reviewed.

In many cases practice tests are conducted prior to the actual test occurring. As a professional leader and instructor I must say this is a completely flawed methodology. In fact I would even go so far as to say it is dangerous and produces soldiers of a substandard caliber.

It is critically important for leaders and instructors to adopt the attitude that no one should fail, to ensure the highest quality instruction. However, by  making it a standing order, and eliminating attrition, two results are achieved.

The first result is producing far lower quality soldiers, since they WILL pass regardless of their abilities or understanding of the subject. The second result is the loss of competitiveness... No spirit of competition. That bleeds into both the students AND instructors alike.

The students are not prompted to compete and excel, since they will pass regardless of their abilities, and further, those who are normally good at taking test and research will be held back by those who require all the extra effort to "Pass."

The instructors are not prompted to excel and go the extra mile, because invariably they well be saddled with doing whatever is necessary to ensure all the students pass. (Read spending extra time and effort GIVING the answers to non motivated and undisciplined soldiers to ensure they pass.)

Currently the only schools that still "Fail" students are those that are life and limb schools... I.E. Ranger School, Airborne School, Special Forces School - In other words schools that can not produce substandard graduates, because graduating less than fully qualified and capable students can result in their deaths, or the deaths of those around them.

It would seem to me that the U.S. Army as a whole by the very nature of its mission should conduct ALL schools as life or limb. This will foster competition and truly excellent and professional soldiers. This will ensure that only deserving soldiers will get promoted, and incapable and poorly performing soldiers can be culled out. This would be ultimately for the greater good, and produce far more highly effective force.

This environment of "no one fails" has bled over into nearly every aspect of military life. It is widely prevalent in all military schools, and especially so in the leadership schools for Non Commissioned Officers. The very place where it has NO place. If soldiers, and more specifically NCOs can not perform simple training and tasks to standard, then they need to go. People who are not technically and mentally capable of completing courses written and tested at a 10th grade level are not capable of training others to do those very same things.

Bring the standards back! Fail the non performers, praise and reward those that excel, and give those young soldiers something to strive for. The Army, the instructors, and the soldiers themselves will be better for it.