japantiger said:
HollywoodBQ said:
japantiger said:
Hazing culture and unqualified Sophomores and upper classmen responsible for training Freshmen.
I agree with you in principle however...
This is real life when you get out in the civilian world. Especially in this modern era of DEIB and diversity hires.
Not the first time I've been in this type of situation but I'm currently reporting to an immigrant who has no clue about American business or how to develop a technical team to perform work in the USA. It's far worse than just complaining about us not putting the new cover sheet on the TPS reports.
His manager is overseas and she has even less of a clue. But yay, women in technology.
I remember two particular sophomores that were just dumber than a box of rocks that I had to deal with as a fish. That type of environment prepared me well for being able to tolerate insane criticism and incorrect guidance from morons who are above me that I have no way to escape from.
To tie it back to the military aspect, when I got to my first National Guard unit, my Company Commander was an absentee leader who I couldn't go around and who was not capable of helping me achieve the goals that my tank platoon needed to achieve (thank God for a great NCO as my Platoon Sergeant, a great Mexican-American 1st Cav Vietnam Veteran who was one of my Tank Commanders and a 1st Cav Desert Storm Veteran who was my other Tank Commander).
My Company Commander was rated very highly though because... we were at 100% strength for our unit which was all that mattered in that era. Numbers outweighed quality in the eyes of the higher ups in the Guard. Similar to the Corps of Cadets where what is rated and valued at the higher level might not be in alignment with what you are working towards in your unit.
Anyway, I found it to be beneficial in the long run to be majoring in Engineering while getting dogged out by an untrained Drill & Ceremonies - Construction Science Major who espoused the virtues of not having to take complex Math courses. Tragically, not long after college, he took his own life.
But that's real life too. When I was in Denver, I worked for a crazy woman who had her own hazing ritual that she put me through. Shortly after I left that company and moved to California, I heard that she had a nervous breakdown. I like to think that her not being able to break me was a contributing factor.
In summary, yeah, we'd like to all have the best leaders with the best training but unfortunately, when you get out in the real world, you won't.
So, because you might have to work for a "dick" or a "Karen", we shouldn't focus on ensuring the people training the new Cadets have a level of competency in both what to train and how to train aspiring Cadets? I struggle to get the logic in that. Yes, it is possible to overcome bad training. Why would you set up an institution that operates on that as an organizing principle?
The Texas A&M Corps of Cadets is a leadership laboratory.
A safe space where it's OK to make mistakes and learn from them.
In the same way that the Armor School isn't at Fort Hood (now Cavazos). You get to learn about tanking in a learning environment. But you're not also trying to major in Engineering, Business, etc. while you're doing it, the Army is your full time job in those scenarios.
Should the cadets have good training on how to be a leader, of course they should.
But, we could also take other aspects of the Corps experience and improve those, physical fitness comes to mind.
I didn't learn how to properly exercise until I was 48 years old and started going to my local F45 gym regularly which of course was killed off by Governor Newsom. Our Corps exercise was basically, we're going for a group run, "Fall-In", and don't fall out, or else. And upper body was - your buddy screwed up, do push ups.
The current Texas A&M Corps of Cadets system is pretty good but certainly could use some improvements. One thing I really liked when my daughter went to VMI was the way that they have every Rat assigned to a First Class Cadet. In the A&M system, by the time the cadets reach their fourth year, most of them have checked out and have little interaction with those new cadets.
Anyway, no perfect answer here but, this whole episode was sparked by a stealth mode solution proposal that was created with no apparent business case need. The kind of proposal that is going to get you laughed out of VC meetings on Sand Hill Road.