The United States Military Academy at West Point is one of America’s oldest and most revered institutions. Founded in 1802, its first and only mission is to prepare young men—and, since 1976, young ...women—to be leaders of character for service as commissioned officers in the United States Army. West Point’s success in accomplishing that mission has secured its reputation as the foremost leadership-development institution in the world. An Academy promotional poster says it this way: “At West Point, much of the history we teach was made by people we taught.”
Carved from Granite is the story of how West Point goes about producing military leaders of character. An opening chapter on the Academy’s nineteenth-century history provides context for the topic of each subsequent chapter. As scholar and Academy graduate Lance Betros shows, West Point’s early history is interesting and colorful, but its history since then is far more relevant to the issues—and problems—that face the Academy today.
Drawing from oral histories, archival sources, and his own experiences as a cadet and, later, a faculty member, Betros describes and assesses how well West Point has accomplished its mission. And, while West Point is an impressive institution in many ways, Betros does not hesitate to expose problems and challenge long-held assumptions. In a concluding chapter that is both subjective and interpretive, the author offers his prescriptions for improving the institution, focusing particularly on the areas of governance, admissions, and intercollegiate athletics. Photographs, tables, charts, and other graphics aid the clarity of the discussion and lend visual and historical interest.
Carved from Granite: West Point since 1902 is the most authoritative history of the modern United States Military Academy written to date. There will be lively debate over some of the observations made in this book, but if they are followed, the author asserts that the Academy will emerge stronger and better able to accomplish its vital mission in the new century and beyond.
Modern societies are characterized by unprecedently broad and fast diffusion of various forms of false and harmful information. Military personnel’s motivation to defend their country may be harmed ...by their exposure to disinformation. Therefore, specific education and training programs should be devised for the military to systematically improve (social) media literacy and build resilience against information influence activities. In this article, we put forward a useful methodological approach to designing such programs based on a case study: the process of developing a media literacy learning platform tailored to the needs of the Estonian defense forces in 2021. The approach is grounded in data on (a) the current needs and skills of the learners, (b) the kinds of influence activities that the learners may encounter, and (c) the learning design principles that would enhance their learning experience, such as learning through play and dialogue through feedback.
Leading change in adult educational organizations is not frequently described in the leadership literature. The education sector in the Norwegian Armed Forces (NAF) is in the middle of an educational ...reform that requires major changes. More students, fewer teachers and new organization of the studies as well as requirements for an increasingly updated technological expertise may mean that it will be necessary to increase the use of digital teaching aids. However, this is not systematically communicated as part of the reform in the same way as new topics of study. From a teacher’s perspective, the most important thing is to safeguard the quality of the education and ensure that important topics do not disappear in a reform. Therefore, one can well imagine that the focus on the purpose of change and the need for active participation is overlooked or not prioritized. Our focus in the process was largely the study content and some concern about the increase in the number of cadets. After completing the first courses in the new education, we were therefore quite surprised that the cadets were asked in the course evaluation whether digital aids had been used in the teaching, As a result, we were inspired to look more closely at what requirements were set and whether more exact plans had been prepared for the introduction of digitization of education as part of the reform process. Since the education reform in the NAF results in such a fundamental change, our perspectives may possibly benefit staffs at other colleges who are going to carry out major change processes. The main goal of this study was to investigate if or how the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research’s intention of digitization and its specific primary goals of learning and teaching trickle down through the hierarchies and into the study programs at the Norwegian Military Academy (NMA). To see if the Ministry’s intentions were actually understood and realized, as our second aim we investigated whether we found the concepts of digitization or digital tools mentioned in any of the Norwegian Defence University College’s (NDUC) study programs and subject plans for teaching. These intentions cannot be implemented unless they are enshrined in the study programs. As a third aim we also tried to find out whether digitization and digital tools actually had been used in the teaching in the new NAF Basic Officer Education, as this would reflect how the Ministry’s intention of digitization and specific primary goals of learning and teaching had been realized. We used a mixed methods approach in the study as we first investigated documents compiled from the government issued for the university and college sector in Norway, the NAF and the NDUC to see if the overall plan for digitization from the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research could be traced. In addition, we investigated the answers that officer cadets had given to questions in three course evaluations related to the use of digital tools in their education. Our three hypotheses were the following: Hypothesis 1: Several of the requirements for digitization have disappeared in the dissemination of the documents from the Ministry to the NAF Basic Officer Education. Hypothesis 2: No plan has been prepared as part of the educational change process for the introduction and implementation of new digital tools in the NAF Basic Officer Education. Hypothesis 3: It is up to the individuals to introduce and implement the use of new digital tools in the NAF Basic Officer Education. We found support for the two first out of our three hypotheses. The latter proved difficult to investigate with the means available, but we will nevertheless discuss some assumptions we have formed, based on the findings that the survey revealed. Hypothesis 3 only received partial support. Finally, the article discusses some leadership challenges that arise from the results we found. The study thus shows how long it can take from the Ministry issues its intention until it is actually implemented in practice at the NDUC. The final comments may also give an indication of how this process may be better focused and thus become likely to increase the implementation rate of digitization.
During the Franco era, summer camps were conceived as the flagships of an ideological mass movement of children and adolescents. The object of this study is to inquire about the link between the II ...National Demonstration and the first summer camps of the Youth Organization (1937-1939) of FET and JONS. Based on the review of original documentary sources and other research material, a hermeneutical discourse is approached on the underlying message of the Youth Organization in the channelling and domination of childhood and youth. The summer camps are shown to have been used to train up the young generation by grouping inmates in militias and indoctrinating them in discipline, obedience and the sublimation of violence. They went through a system of open-air living to instil them with ideals before moving on into a process to select and indoctrinating fighters for the internal defence of an imagined community: a Spanish nation.
The influx of populism in Europe revived the values of illiberal, authoritarian government. This affects the democratic character of Civil–Military Relations (CMR) in the post-communist countries in ...particular. We analyzed the development of CMR in Czechia (1992–2022) under the influence of populism (2010–2022). Applying the CMR concept of the shared-democratic-values-perspective, our study provides empirical evidence that persistent shortcomings in formal institutional and informal socialization of Czech officers by values of democracy open a dangerous back door for spreading the values of military populism in the Czech Armed Forces. We argue that such development in the last 10 years has resulted into a formation of illiberal alliances between populist leaders and the military elite and poses a risk of the army being misused to politically support the authoritarian populist government.
The cost of recruiting and training a military trainee is substantial. In 1999, Rudzki and Cunningham estimated the cost of recruiting and training a new Australian Defence Force (ADF) member to be ...$A9000, with a net cost of $A14 245 if they were discharged after 10 weeks. This cost will be significantly higher in 2020 with inflation.
There are few institutions that talk about virtues as much as military organizations. These military virtues are not, however, possessed by individuals in isolation, they are inculcated and ...influenced by the countless ways in which values are shared, both among military members and between individuals and the military itself. Unfortunately, a normative framework that is extremely wellsuited to capture this significant link between individual virtue and shared valuing, namely Confucian virtue theory, is too often underappreciated in militaries in general and in military moral education in particular. Focusing on the normative significance of ritual and decorum, I analyze this shortcoming and consider how more explicitly incorporating Confucian virtue theory into military education could provide a sturdier foundation for the essential link between individual virtue and collective valuing.
Analyzing the Confucian the virtue of princispled ritual etiquette (li 禮), I demonstrate that while such attention to ritual might seem questionable when considering the classic rituals often used as examples, once the pervasive presence of military rituals becomes apparent such attention to principled ritual etiquette begins to seem far less anachronistic. Analyzing principled ritual etiquette in relationship to righteousness (yi 義) and benevolence (ren 仁), I argue that Confucian virtue theory provides a significant and distinct way to analyze modern military virtues, concluding with an analysis of how that framework can highlight the significance of ritualistic behavior on virtue development without promoting excessive and corrosive subservience.
As the U.S. military moves into an uncertain future dominated by rapid change, traditional modes of thought will no longer suffice. Contributors to this volume focus on some of the major factors that ...will shape the American military in the 1980s: a complex, interdependent international arena, a changing domestic political context, broad societal forces and trends, the imperatives of advanced technology, conflicting bureaucratic and management orientations, and the emergence of new elites.
The articles collected here present the diverse views of civilian scholars, of all services and ranks of the military, and of Department of Defense and congressional civilians; they feature the results of surveys conducted at the three service academies and among other civilian and military populations that number in the tens of thousands. The focus moves from a historical and current assessment of military professionalism to potential influences in the changing international and domestic environments. A major section is devoted to important military manpower issues. Analyses of organizational dynamics and change address the implications of advanced technology, bureaucratization, and centralization of control. The book concludes with contrasting views of the future demands on military professionalism and with a final summary that suggests future research avenues.
The report points the need of studying the gender equality topic as an element of leadership formation of the future officers in the European Armed Forces. The analysis of the approaches to the ...inclusion of the subject in different disciplines will help to increase the sensitivity and the understanding of the military personnel to the questions related to the implementation of the gender equality in a military environment. The equal treatment of the both sexes and the opportunities for successful realization, based on their professionalism, would contribute to the harmonization of the working environment as a part of modern European policies.
PDF
