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Before some people get all bent out of shape by the length of reserve courses etc, let’s remember that the guys that take the courses do not set course length and content. Let’s keep the flames down and let’s hear some well thought out ideas.
Are we doing right by our junior leaders?
Now that the whole of the Armoured Corp has gone RECCE, maybe we should look at how we train our master-corporals. From a reserve standpoint, we send our corporals for the PLQ course and if successful, they get promoted and more times then not, they become crew commanders. They learn through trail and error and by the guidance of their troop warrant and patrol commanders. After some time passes, they are sent on the 6A course. The first two weeks teach them how to be a crew commander, then, the next Monday they start to learn how to be a patrol commander. What we get is a bunch of master-corporals who have crew commander experience but are not all taught to the same standard. They must “unlearn” crew commanding and relearn it to the accepted standard.
Now most will argue that their regiment only teaches the “right way”. To be honest, that really is impossible as the units of the Corp are spread all across our great nation. Having the course content centred at the Armour School makes sense and ensures standardization. That and having one common set of SOPs across the Corp would make interoperability between units so much easier but that’s for another time. To get back to our master-corporals, wouldn’t it make more sense to require the corporals to take the two-week crew commander course before promotion to master-corporal? Now I can hear all the corporals telling me to shut up. After the 11 week PLQ, I don’t blame them. I also think that the PLQ course should NOT be prerequisite for the crew commander course. No sense shooting ourselves in the foot by stopping senior corporals who may not be able to get 11 weeks off work for the PLQ and loosing a chance for more crew commanders. The advantage to having them take the crew commander course will be soldiers trained in the job that we will have them perform. They will have a chance to get good at crew commanding before we send them out for their 6A (patrol commanding) course, which will only need to be four weeks long instead of six. By having standards personnel from the school go to the area training centres to oversee the courses instead of sending all the corporals to Gagetown, we could run the course in the areas and save a little money.
Any thoughts?
Are we doing right by our junior leaders?
Now that the whole of the Armoured Corp has gone RECCE, maybe we should look at how we train our master-corporals. From a reserve standpoint, we send our corporals for the PLQ course and if successful, they get promoted and more times then not, they become crew commanders. They learn through trail and error and by the guidance of their troop warrant and patrol commanders. After some time passes, they are sent on the 6A course. The first two weeks teach them how to be a crew commander, then, the next Monday they start to learn how to be a patrol commander. What we get is a bunch of master-corporals who have crew commander experience but are not all taught to the same standard. They must “unlearn” crew commanding and relearn it to the accepted standard.
Now most will argue that their regiment only teaches the “right way”. To be honest, that really is impossible as the units of the Corp are spread all across our great nation. Having the course content centred at the Armour School makes sense and ensures standardization. That and having one common set of SOPs across the Corp would make interoperability between units so much easier but that’s for another time. To get back to our master-corporals, wouldn’t it make more sense to require the corporals to take the two-week crew commander course before promotion to master-corporal? Now I can hear all the corporals telling me to shut up. After the 11 week PLQ, I don’t blame them. I also think that the PLQ course should NOT be prerequisite for the crew commander course. No sense shooting ourselves in the foot by stopping senior corporals who may not be able to get 11 weeks off work for the PLQ and loosing a chance for more crew commanders. The advantage to having them take the crew commander course will be soldiers trained in the job that we will have them perform. They will have a chance to get good at crew commanding before we send them out for their 6A (patrol commanding) course, which will only need to be four weeks long instead of six. By having standards personnel from the school go to the area training centres to oversee the courses instead of sending all the corporals to Gagetown, we could run the course in the areas and save a little money.
Any thoughts?