Infanteer: I certainly believe in encouraging our WOs/NCOs to write, but just to play devil's advocate here, I wonder about "forcing" them to do it. I also wonder about the side-effects of a career system that might demand more written work than field work from our NCOs and could begin to skew the priorities of WOs/NCOs away from practical experience. We must take vrey great care not to turn off nor disadvantage the excellent field leader NCO who has no wish to write.
True, that is why it is essential to keep the classroom environment to a minimum as we aren't training Staff Officers here. However, I think we must promote the idea that one of the parts of being a professional is thinking about and advancing ideas on ones profession. All that they've experienced may go to waste if they cannot pass it on to others. That is why I advocated utilizing the personal experiences of an NCO as a good place to encourage writing for professional development; making them go to books and check reference material will just turn it into a task.
I like your ideas, they act as a form of peer promotion (good job, you know your shit) vice superior officer coercion (write me a paper, Sgt).
Perhaps the best way to encourage NCO's to contribute to the professional dialogue; implement their ideas to some degree. That will show them that others are listening to their unique point of view and that we value what the NCO Corps has to contribute. Perhaps, the next time the military has a decision to make, issue a call for proposals from the NCO Corps on what they feel is the best way to provide things. A panel of SME's will evaluate all entries and provide face to face feedback on their ideas; even better, perhaps all who submitted could be included on the judging, allowing them to hold their ideas up to the proposals of their peers. The winner will be included to some degree in the final decision making progress of whatever is being done. Who knows, maybe if such a thing is done you'll have a couple dozen NCO's screaming to do something that wasn't clearly evident from the vantage point of the decision maker; now we're networking here.
Here is, in my opinion, a good example of what a soldier from the Ranks can contribute in terms of professional writing; and it happens to be from our very own KevinB.
http://nightoperations.com/Doc/Infantry-Rifle-Carbine1.pdf
Anyways, just some thoughts from the wayside....