Regarding that quote… you USMC guys sure do seem like the Navy’s rubbing off on ya’! “Officer cadre”? What are we, Commies or something? lol.

Assuming we’re really just discussing “liberal arts”, rather than the esoteric volumes of the philosophic and strategic aspects of this or that doctrine (the two categories are quite different)…

It should be pretty clear that the old Dewey “Liberal Education” hasn’t worked very well (read: Progressive Education). Perhaps what we should discuss is the foundational education for junior officers that’s important to impart prior to cramming a bunch of gobblygook wonkery into academy punks heads? How about starting with some good old Aristotle style First Principles?

E.g. teaching cadets and/or junior officers Romantic poetry from Victorian England, or Napoleonic era Continental poesy, isn’t likely to impress their enlisted men very much. (“yeah, I know you men want to play Grand Theft Auto IV! But we’re going to bond as a unit by reciting poetry by PERCY SHELLY and LORD BYRON instead! Then maybe some W.E.B. Dubois or Rimbo! No, Private Joker, Lymricks about hookers are NOT acceptable substitutes! I don’t care WHAT the Sergeant said!”)

So… fellow posters; what would you all suggest should be our First Principles?

Before I comment, I thought I’d post the links for the Joint Chiefs various reading lists:

CJCS (as of 2001):

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/jcs/reading-list.htm

CSAF:

http://www.af.mil/library/csafreading/

USACS:

http://www.history.army.mil/reference/CSAList/CSAList.htm

(Here’s the link to the AU link farm for a lot of these CE sorts of lists:)

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-prof.htm#reading

I’ll post again on the subject directly

Best,

A. Scott Crawford

I’m a current Marine Officer. Good to know there are a few of us poking around here.

We have discussed intellectualism in the Armed forces over the last several weeks. You may want to take a gander. The posts are here, here, here, and here

As it currently stands, the reading program goes far beyond strategy and tactics on the battlefield , it also addresses politics and statecraft. The author of the article might be pleasantly surprised to read through the list (located here).

Jester

While the intellectual formation of warriors is necessary, and probably needs to be done better than we are doing now, this piece does not give proposals that are sufficiently concrete.