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As someone who read history in university and still studies it intently, I recall, with some fondness, the best history courses I ever took: the first was during officer training, I recall that:
a. Stonewall Jackson was the subject;
b. The main, but not only reference text, was one of a series of yellow covered Canadian Army texts that were written to guide officers studying for promotion exams. I read several of them - they were uniformly excellent: crisp, clear and eminently fair, but never fawning, to their subjects;
c. The instructor was (actually just appeared to us) a very old captain (he was about 40, I think
) - one of those fellows Old Sweat mentioned who, despite having passed the exams, had not been selected for the Staff College and would, eventually, retire as a major - a damned goo major. He was a first rate teacher who had studied military history extensively, despite never having set foot in a university. He was well read, well spoken and a wonderful teacher of history and tactics.
The second and third were also military history courses: Napoleon and Marlborough, as I recall, and the "courses" were called "study concentrations" which were, in fact, courses run by brigade for officers studying for Lt to Capt and then Capt to Maj promotion exams. I don't recall the qualifications of the officers teaching the course - one was a serving major the other a retired colonel; given their age and cap badges I would be surprised if either had even an undergraduate degree; both would have been very much at home in a good university's senior common room.
Education and learning are not closely related to degrees earned.
By the way, I echo Loachman's comments; the ability to explain a technically complex subject to the DM and CDS does indeed require good analytical skills and junior officer, fresh out of graduate schools with MSc degrees, are almost never, ever up to the task; university seems, to me, to be a poor place to learn to think clearly and express ideas clearly, concisely and accurately. Army staff courses, on the other hand, do an excellent job of teaching those skills - the old Canadian Army Staff College in Kingston, its UK counterparts in Camberly and Shrivenham did teach both thinking and explaining, RMC did not and, I'm guessing still does not; the few officers who came out of RMC (in my experience) and could think without a lot of further training were the exceptions that prove the rule.
a. Stonewall Jackson was the subject;
b. The main, but not only reference text, was one of a series of yellow covered Canadian Army texts that were written to guide officers studying for promotion exams. I read several of them - they were uniformly excellent: crisp, clear and eminently fair, but never fawning, to their subjects;
c. The instructor was (actually just appeared to us) a very old captain (he was about 40, I think
) - one of those fellows Old Sweat mentioned who, despite having passed the exams, had not been selected for the Staff College and would, eventually, retire as a major - a damned goo major. He was a first rate teacher who had studied military history extensively, despite never having set foot in a university. He was well read, well spoken and a wonderful teacher of history and tactics.The second and third were also military history courses: Napoleon and Marlborough, as I recall, and the "courses" were called "study concentrations" which were, in fact, courses run by brigade for officers studying for Lt to Capt and then Capt to Maj promotion exams. I don't recall the qualifications of the officers teaching the course - one was a serving major the other a retired colonel; given their age and cap badges I would be surprised if either had even an undergraduate degree; both would have been very much at home in a good university's senior common room.
Education and learning are not closely related to degrees earned.
By the way, I echo Loachman's comments; the ability to explain a technically complex subject to the DM and CDS does indeed require good analytical skills and junior officer, fresh out of graduate schools with MSc degrees, are almost never, ever up to the task; university seems, to me, to be a poor place to learn to think clearly and express ideas clearly, concisely and accurately. Army staff courses, on the other hand, do an excellent job of teaching those skills - the old Canadian Army Staff College in Kingston, its UK counterparts in Camberly and Shrivenham did teach both thinking and explaining, RMC did not and, I'm guessing still does not; the few officers who came out of RMC (in my experience) and could think without a lot of further training were the exceptions that prove the rule.
) Unless you make the argument that a university degree is actually a bad thing, then we must conclude that our personnel are (or could be) better for having (or if they had) them.
