The author of the following article must disclaim at once any pretense of competence to sit in judgment on the aims of naval training or the general form that such training should take. Just as the aim and character of a law or medical school should be determined by experienced lawyers or physicians, and not by a group of pedagogues or other laymen with no practical knowledge of the profession to be taught, so it is obvious that the ends to be sought in naval training and the methods of attaining them should be under the control of naval officers.. This the writer readily grants, even though he depreciates thereby the importance of the science of pedagogy and his own particular "art and mystery" of teaching school.
To illustrate the writer's point of view, it might be likened to that of a naval officer who should be detailed, by some happy future arrangement beneficial to both the colleges and the navy, to give instruction in naval strategy or to supervise military training in one of our large universities such as Princeton or Yale, and who should record his impressions of the quality of education offered in our colleges. Modesty would probably not restrain him from such friendly comment. And the colleges ought to welcome his criticism, making due allowance for his prejudices, and acknowledging the advantage of his point of view as one trained in quite another and in many respects more efficient school. Such criticism need not be hostile; but it would not be, nor would it have any value if it were, a mere warm bath of perfunctory and half-hearted praise.
Civilian educators have, in many instances, been quick to recognize the high quality of military (including naval) education, and to speculate as to the possibility of adapting military Methods to civil schools. One may recall in particular the reference of Professor Phelps, of Yale, to the naval and military academies as unquestionably the most successful educational institutions in this country. The writer has also a vivid recollection of Professor Brander Matthews' high praise of the "make-or-break" training at West Point (given in connection with the brief sojourn there of Edgar Allan Poe). It is perhaps less widely known that President Butler, in his latest annual report, raised the question of physical requirements for all students seeking admission to Columbia, and enforced his argument by pointing out the benefits of such requirements at Annapolis and West Point.
The obvious objections to President Butler's proposal bring out the handicaps of our colleges as compared with military schools. The colleges, as a rule, must grind whatever grist comes to their mill. They set up few barriers, racial, moral, social, or physical, against the applicant for their privileges. The young men who enter Annapolis and West Point, on the other hand, are a picked body—selected first by men who it may be presumed pay some attention to the all-around qualifications of the boys to whom they thus offer the prospect of an honorable and life-long career; and selected secondly by means of thorough physical, and less searching but perhaps sufficient mental examinations. Nor does the admission of enlisted men make it necessary to qualify this statement. They are also selected—in part by naval officers, who are best fitted to judge the kind of material needed; and the evidence of the past year would indicate that the type of youth thus admitted is likely to raise rather than lower the standard of the Naval Academy product, and to put on their mettle those boys fresh from the not always beneficial influences of preparatory school and home town. This, then, the difference in the quality of the raw material, is one distinction to be drawn between military and civil colleges—and it is offered frankly by way of apology for the shortcomings of the latter.
A second distinction is to be found at the other end of the course, in the prospects held out to the man who succeeds in getting through. The college has in the past taken no great pains to size up its students, guide them to the work for which they are suited, and after graduation help them to get it. It considers its work done when it has spread its mental bill-of-fare before them, leaving them to choose and partake as they will, and turning them out on graduation to make their own way and sink or rise to their natural level. This is a weakness of the college of liberal arts, that it does not, and perhaps cannot, make its students feel forcibly that conduct and character as shown in college will really affect their later careers. The Naval Academy, on the contrary, is able to make the most of this powerful leverage. Every midshipman is given the prospect of a life work as an incentive for completing the course; and he is made to feel—too keenly, if anything—that grades in conduct, practical efficiency, and scholarship will determine, in no small measure, his relative position, pay, and promotion later on.
Turning to the course itself, one is struck by other fundamental differences. College training is primarily intellectual. At least it leaves social, moral and, even to some extent, physical training to influences which, though a part of "college life," are not under direct faculty guidance and are very unequally shared by the students. But when a boy enters the Naval Academy he finds all these matters under the strict supervision of authority. His life night and day for at least eleven months in the year is under surveillance. He is decidedly in, the school of discipline and not the school of freedom.
And furthermore, in carrying out this rigid system of discipline, the Naval Academy knows pretty well what it is seeking to obtain—the capable naval officer, with the fairly well-defined qualities of character, personality, and, mental equipment desirable for this profession. To develop this product it brings many powerful influences to bear, notably the esprit de corps of the midshipmen, based on the fine traditions of the navy, and stronger in its pressure on the individual than the corresponding "college spirit"; the combination of theoretical studies with practical experience during the summer cruise; and finally the influence of direct contact with officers, whom midshipmen naturally look to as examples in their chosen profession.
Thus it will be seen that academy training, while in a way narrower and more definite in purpose than college training, is at the same, time more comprehensive, since it looks to the student's all-around development and takes a firmer hold on all sides of his life. Evidently it is for the college to take to heart the lessons of this contrast, rather than the Naval Academy; yet it is important that the academy should realize clearly wherein lies its strength, and should guard against the surrender of any genuine advantage, either inherent in circumstances or the result of sound policy.
While the academy is less pre-occupied than are the colleges with purely intellectual training, this is, after all, a matter of by no means secondary importance. And it is in this respect that the academy is more strictly on the same footing as other schools. Among the many differences in educational theory and practice which appear in this particular field, two may be singled out as of chief interest in their nature and consequences: (1) the text-book and recitation method of instruction, and (2) the competitive system based on exact grades in all subjects.
(1) Recitations.—At the academy, the so-called lecture system, more or less discredited but still widely used in colleges, is almost never employed. Small classes are made possible by a sufficient number of instructors; and the ordinary practice is to supply the midshipman with a text-book, require him to study it, and call upon him to reproduce its contents with considerable fidelity. One of the notable merits of this system is thought to lie in the fact that it throws the midshipman on his own resources, and forces him to clear up difficulties for himself. But there can surely be no great virtue in substituting a text-book for personal instruction, or in reducing a good teacher to a mere recorder of marks. This, in short, must be regarded as a weakness of the system. Its best justification is to be found in its requirement of daily preparation of definitely assigned tasks, thus mitigating the traditional college scheme of "loafing" through the term and "cramming for exams."
In truth this method of teaching is sound in principle; and one could merely wish to combine with it certain advantages of the college method arising from more extensive use of libraries and laboratories, those two main workshops in modern education. Mastery of a technical subject nowadays often requires considerable reading, weighing of authorities, and sifting of the grain of truth from the chaff of verbiage. It would be a good thing, therefore, if in certain historical and professional branches midshipmen could become more familiar with the use of books and the writings of leading authorities. A library ought not to exist solely for the accumulation of dust and for recreation on rainy days. It is even more important that in technical and scientific branches text-book instruction should not supersede practical research in laboratory and shop. Reading in such matters is a poor substitute for firsthand investigation. It is true that long hours in either library or laboratory are not easily provided for out of the crowded routine of the Academy day, a large part of which must necessarily be given to drills and similar exercises; but once a need is clearly realized, remedies may sometimes be found.
It may be urged that the midshipman gets plenty of practical work during his summer cruise, and that his entire later career is given over to practical study. It is often said, indeed, that what he learns at the academy counts for very little in the light of later experience. This is no doubt an over-statement. But even if it were true, it would cut both ways, and serve as an additional reason for making the academy course as useful as possible. What is needed, after all, is not that the work should have an immediate tangible value, but that it should get as far away as possible from cramming-school methods of "covering the subject," and filling a boy's head with undigested information out of books. He ought to learn also how to get hold of information for himself, and how to make good use of it. As educators from Cardinal Newman down have wisely insisted, the sheer accumulation of knowledge is less important than the development of mental powers.
(2) Marks.—Recitations and marks go together; it seems to be a matter of opinion, indeed, whether recitations are held for the sake of getting marks, or whether marks are merely a device for adding weight to recitations. In colleges, on account of the smaller teaching staff and the impatience of instructors over mathematical details, the complex system of exact grades, merit rolls, etc., carried to the second or third decimal place, long ago went by the board, in favor of a simpler scheme of four or five degrees of merit, or the still simpler classification of pass and fail. This saves a good deal of time and trouble, but it is a question whether the loss is not greater than the gain. As evidence on the point, there can be little doubt that the average midshipman works much harder at his books than the average college student (leaving out of consideration the students of scientific and professional schools). While his greater industry is due in part to well-regulated study periods and the greater significance attached to success or failure, it is due also to the constant pressure of recitations and daily marks. The time which instructors give to collecting, combining, and recording these marks is thus justified by their value as a stimulus to study, rather than by their importance as evidence of the midshipman's real intellectual caliber.
Yet the inevitable tendency of an elaborate system of recitations, examinations, and competitive marks is to put a premium on the memory rather than the reasoning faculties, and to train students, after the Chinese fashion, to learn by rote rather than to think. A midshipman is likely to feel that he can get more credit for making sure of the names, numbers, tonnage, and weight of metal of the ships that fought at Trafalgar, than for devoting his energies to a study of the interesting lessons in leadership, strategy, and tactics to be derived from that engagement. He can sometimes do better by learning the Constitution by heart than by pondering the significance or studying the application of its provisions. These illustrations are taken from studies with which the writer is more familiar, but they could probably be duplicated from any subject taught at the academy. And this is in no way surprising, for it is infinitely easier to gage how much a man knows than to test his real mastery of a subject, just as it is easier to measure the coal capacity of a vessel than it is to determine the propelling power of the engines and their ability to withstand sudden shocks and continued strains. For that matter, it is easier to fill the bunkers with coal than it is to improve the quality of the engine. Not that memory exercises are not very proper, and necessary in their place, but in the later years of education they ought to make room for more thoughtful research and mastery of principles. It would be unfortunate if the academy should permit students to persist in the questionable methods of study which many of them pick up in preparing for the entrance examinations. Officers may perhaps remember how in candidate days they used to "bone" names and dates in World's History between the courses at lunch—and how little they really profited thereby.
That the danger is not entirely imaginary seems to be confirmed by a criticism—whether justified or not the writer does not know—made by a former instructor in the graduate school, to the effect that younger officers returning for advanced professional study retain an infinite capacity for absorbing information, but are less willing to exert the effort of reflection, critical analysis, and independent judgment which such study requires.
It is quite beside the writer's purpose to make invidious comparisons, or, to assert that the fault mentioned is less conspicuous in other educational systems. In point of fact, it is nowhere absent, and arises partly from the tendency of every specialist to over-emphasize his particular field of knowledge, and partly from the failure to draw the line properly between the modicum of information that can be conveniently stowed away in the ordinary head and the vast remainder that may better be left in books. The writer believes that the difficulties of over-crowded curriculum and "speeding up" methods of study at the Academy could be in some degree obviated if this last-mentioned distinction were kept more clearly in mind. Unless midshipmen are to specialize before they leave the academy, all the courses must needs be of a general and fundamental character. There can be no hope of storing enough in a boy's head to last him the rest of his life. His professional education is only begun here, not ended. And if he is taught how to study, he can be trusted to learn many things for himself when the need arises.
To the by no means novel ideas on education here suggested, the rejoinder may be made that discipline, subordination, and strict obedience to orders are fundamental principles of military service: that these qualities are as essential for leadership as for subordinate station; and that the officer who must first ponder his orders and decide whether he agrees with them or not before he carries them out, will find a better scope for his talents in civil life. If this were really a fair and complete statement of military or naval views on the requisites of leadership, it would be presumptuous to say anything further. One could only meet the objection by pointing out that the reflective and the disputatious types of mind are not often combined. Or one could suggest that the unquestioning acceptance of superior wisdom which is a fundamental of Chinese education, might make that system superior to the one now in use.
But the article by Lieut. Commander Knox on The Role of Doctrine in Naval Warfare, and the no less noteworthy article by Captain Sims showing how these principles may be successfully carried into practice—both articles appearing in the March-April (1915) number of the Institute—make it abundantly clear, even to a lay reader, that naval doctrines and principles do not descend from above—like revealed religion—but are the outcome of thoughtful co-operation on the part of both superior and subordinate officers; and that an intelligent rather than a blind acceptance of these principles and the orders based on them is essential, not merely to their successful execution, but to that "loyalty to the plan "which spells success. The methods advocated by these articles, however imperfectly summarized here, seem to call for other qualities on the part of officers than those mentioned in the preceding paragraph. To begin the development of these qualities at the Academy may be too soon, though it' is said that the surest way to gain support for any doctrine is to teach it in the schools. The Academy ought to do its utmost to contribute, even in a small way, to the spread of sound and accepted principles.
Readers are likely to be impatient at generalizations, with no specific suggestion as to what they mean in actual practice. But one ought to be equally suspicious of schemes for hasty and sweeping changes. Certainly the ideas advanced in the latter part of this paper have to do with a shifting of emphasis and point of view, rather than any radical change. Even if a general principle is accepted, its application may better come naturally and as opportunity arises. It may be well to repeat in conclusion that the midshipman's mental training is far from the sum of his debt to the academy, and that there is probably no civil school that so completely looks out for the all-round development of its students.