A little touch of Harry in the night—Henry V.
Quality is a term which has not yet found its way into conferences on naval limitations. One hears of reductions in tonnage, in numbers and dispositions of warships and carriers, and there is much talk about limitation in the quantity of personnel, but as yet there has been nothing said as to how well trained shall be the men who man the ships, fire the guns, and operate the naval bases. Nevertheless, the keen edge of competition among the nations’ navies has not yet grown dull.
The United States Navy has quickly realized the necessity of attaining for itself the greatest possible efficiency, and has accordingly bent every effort to improve the quality of its ships, their speed, cruising radius, water-tight integrity, durability, fire control, communications, etc. In this respect the Navy has been awake to the changes in methods of warfare which have followed in the wake of scientific discovery. On the other hand, has the Navy-applied itself wisely in improving the training of its personnel? Are members of the crew amply prepared for a life of steam and steel and sufficiently instructed in their special branches of arts and crafts? Are the officers molded from the best available youths of this country and thoroughly equipped to engage in the new and ever changing science of naval warfare?
This article is designed to deal with this latter question only, and it is founded upon the thesis that at present the training of the naval officer is not such as to attract our best young men into the naval profession nor is the Naval Academy curriculum best suited to the purpose for which it is maintained.
A statement of the mission of the U. S. Naval Academy is published annually in the Naval Academy Register. It reads, in part, as follows:
... To mold the material received into educated gentlemen, . . . with practical rather than academic minds, . . . with a groundwork of educational fundamentals upon which experience afloat may build the finished naval officer.
To one seriously interested in the educational policy of the Naval Academy, the phrase “practical rather than academic minds” is worthy of unbiased thought and deliberation. If the point at issue be whether the naval officer’s mind should be practical or academic, the answer might be given by a mere stroke of the pen; but like all difficult questions of life, this one resolves itself into a matter of degree; or, more specifically, “to what extent should the naval officer’s mind be purely practical, yet be possessed of academic insight and inquisitiveness?”
In the discussion of this question, which concerns a rather specialized profession, I propose to outline briefly some facts pertinent to the naval officer’s training and education; then to examine the views of men who have written with authority on the topic of general educational policy; and finally to arrive at conclusions as to how the instruction, particularly at the Naval Academy, may be modified so as best to provide a groundwork for a “finished naval officer.” It will be seen that, in my opinion, this may be attained most readily by limiting the academy course of instruction almost entirely to educational fundamentals and cultural subjects, leaving the professional training to be obtained at sea and at postgraduate schools.
Let us first review briefly the naval officer’s entire educational curriculum which, as in a few other professions, is coterminous with his professional career. According to the Knox-King-Pye Board Report (U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August, 1929) adopted by the Navy in 1919, there are four definite training periods in the life of the naval officer, which in turn prepare him particularly for junior officer, senior officer, commanding officer, and flag officer duties. These periods are designated as follows:
- Naval Academy (4 years); between ages 16-24.
- Postgraduate school (2 years); after five years, commissioned service.
- Junior War College (1 year); between tenth and twentieth year commissioned service.
- Senior War College (1 year); after twenty years’ commissioned service.
Now it is the expressed opinion of the Knox-King-Pye Board that the purpose of the officer’s instruction is, in part, to develop “judgment, which is of hardly inferior importance to the ability to reason to a logical conclusion.” To instill the ability to reason to a logical conclusion is considered one of the chief aims of an ordinary college education, and might well be considered the acme of an academic mind.
Thus on the one hand we find it an accepted view that the naval officer should quite as able to exercise analytical reason as to act merely by rule-of-thumb; and yet, on the other hand, it is the stated mission of the Naval Academy to rather exalt the latter with respect to the former, i.e., “to mold the practical rather than the academic mind.” Therefore, to meet the specifications of the Knox-King-Pye Board, it is found necessary to give the naval officer more or less purely academic training in his formal postgraduate instruction. Just here, it seems, the cart is before the horse. Should not the academic training come first—the training that promotes the ability to reason to a logical conclusion—leaving the professional specialization to be acquired in the postgraduate school? The former I consider as essential to the intelligent attainment of the latter just as truly as “ . . . the only effective approach to the practical in engineering is via the theoretical.”1
A detailed prospectus of the curriculum of the Naval Academy is to be found in current numbers of the annual Register, but the nature of the courses of instruction at this institution have been carefully analyzed and compared with those of various colleges and technical schools in a most excellent manner by Commander Rossell.2 He points out the growing tendency of technical schools to recognize the value of cultural training and the need for more of it, and he proposes a definite plan by which the enlargement of this phase of the midshipman’s schooling may be realized. It involves the omission of certain courses in mechanical and electrical engineering, physics, and mathematics; and the introduction of certain phases of history, literature, economics, and biology. This plan would rob the curriculum but little of its present professional courses, which lie chiefly in the departments of seamanship, navigation, and ordnance and gunnery.
In this “Rossell plan” I see two particularly worthy features; first, it is a step in the direction in which other technical schools have found it advisable to head; and secondly, it contains no radical departure from well-worn precedents. The general trend of this plan has been favorably received by some of the younger naval officers,3 but Captain Van Auken4 reflects rather the “sea dog” attitude of the old school in his claim that the “discussion of the Academy course is too inclined to be theoretical, idealistic, and lacking in perspective of seagoing training” and is “. . not fair to the spirit and sea traditions of the Naval Academy.”
1 Rossell, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 56 (Feb., 1930), 123.
2Loc. cit.
3 Frost, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 56 (March, 1930), 225. Sanders, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 56 (March, 1930), 439. Nelson, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 57 (Oct., 1931), 1364.
4 Van Auken, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 56 (May, 1930), 435.
It is my opinion that the Naval Academy curriculum can profitably undergo modification further than that proposed by Commander Rossell. Before entering upon a discussion of this point, however, let us first digress to a review of the opinions of certain individuals who have exercised their thoughts upon matters of general education. It is with only the broadest background of experience and mature opinion that the best policies of the past are adapted to the special conditions and exigencies of the future.
With the Greeks the matter of education was a comparatively simple one, and one which was unencumbered by the complexities of our modern social and economic life. Free men, who had leisure to congregate in the market place while the women and slaves provided for the necessities of life, were the scholars of early Greece. These scholars (literally and etymologically “gentlemen of leisure”) exercised their thoughts upon the problems of life; especially with regard to the relations of individuals one to another and to the community; and, only to a slight extent, upon the intricacies of nature. The mind of the Greeks was very purely an academic one, untrammeled by economic pressure and without the necessity of applying itself to practical problems; thus their speculative fancies, which resulted from clear and inductive thinking, were seldom, if ever, subjected to experimental tests.
This period of Greek and Roman culture, the age of Plato, Euclid, and Archimedes, was also characterized by the tremendous advance in the accumulation of knowledge. Only two other periods in the history of man are compared with it in the richness of scientific discovery; the brilliant half-century which began with the works of Descartes (1637) and culminated in the Principia of Newton (1687), and the last three or four decades of the present era. The prominent men in each of these periods had leisure and the will to search for knowledge, the impetus being the end itself. As for the intervening eras marked by absence of scientific pioneering, Professor Manley5 has said of the Middle Ages: The difference between the Middle Ages and modern times is not a difference in intellectual power; human brains were as good in the days of Charlemagne as they are now. The difference lies chiefly in the fact that the Middle Ages were thoroughly dominated by practical motives.
As for the period between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, though not strictly dominated by practical motives, it suffered from economic privations of many wars, which largely diverted the attention of learned men from the search of knowledge to its military applications.
Our present era employs neither the exclusively academic training of the Greeks nor the middle-age domination of practical motives, but practices rather a fairly distributed interplay between the two. Thus one learns from history that civilization and power have flourished under the cultivation of the academic mind alone, and under a fair balance of academic and practical supervision, but not under the “domination of practical motives.” The wisdom of combining the practical and academic mind in the modern technical world is found heartily supported in the address of the late Dr. S. W. Stratton,6 in which he has said of the founders of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “They realized that progress in the field of applied science goes hand in hand with discovery of fundamental principles.” And again, Dr. K. T. Compton7 has said, in speaking of the great technical industries: “They absolutely require, however, men who come with a sound basis of training in fundamental principles.”
5 Manley, “Education that Educates,” The University Record (Chicago), 14 (1929), 1.
6 Stratton, Science, 71 (1930), 591.
7 Compton, Science, 71 (1930), 595.
If now, an individual is thought of not merely as a technician, but also as a human being, then one desires in him something more than just basic fundamentals, one desires qualities that tend toward conviviality, a sense of perspective, and an appreciation of value; in general, one wishes him liberally educated. Just what constitutes a liberal education is a very large question indeed; but for the sake of concreteness, we may well consider the definition of Sir Michael Sadler8, Master of University College at Oxford:
A liberal education should be given under conditions favorable to health. . . . The pupil should learn to express himself accurately and simply in his mother tongue. Through mathematics he should learn the relations of forms and of numbers. Through history and literature he should learn something of the records of the past; what the human race (and not least his fellow countrymen) have achieved and how the great poets and sages have interpreted the experience of life. His education should further demand from him some study of nature and should set him in the way of realizing both the amount and quality of evidence which a valid induction requires. ... It [a liberal education] should give experience in bearing responsibility, in organization, and in working with others for public ends, whether in leadership or in submission to the common will.
Let us think for a moment of the naval officer as an individual; he is but a single being with but one life on earth, and he desires to make the most of it—to really live. Though his profession is his main responsibility, and his life is but an integral part of that great organization, the Navy; still, there are times when he realizes his individuality and desires the feeling of ever increasing personal power. This comes to one who can read good books; work out the difficult problems in life and ethics; who can appreciate art; who can meet a new situation and master it by clear and inductive thinking; in general, to one who can “reason to a logical conclusion.”
8 See editorial “Citadels of Culture” in New York Times, March 30, 1930.
For the realization of this sense of power, a liberal education is of as much importance to the naval officer as to the civil technician. I once heard a prominent officer of the Army remark:
Oh, if only I had had a smattering of philosophy in my cadet days at West Point that I might now more thoroughly enjoy the best thoughts of great writers! Would that I had had an introduction to the marvels of nature in the realms of geology and botany, that I might have enriched my understanding of her wonders during my service in the camp and field!
One is reminded here of a picture by Edith Hamilton in her book, The Greek Way, in which one finds Pericles as the commander in chief of the Athenian fleet talking at supper with his second in command in the evening before an engagement:
... so the conversation went on, each capping the other’s quotation with one as apt. The entire talk of the supper table turned on delicate and fanciful points in literary criticism. But none the less, when the battle began next morning, these same men, fighting fiercely and directing wisely, carried the attack on the island.
In this connection it is rather extraordinary to find the following in James Anthony Froude’s essay England's Forgotten Worthies, in which he speaks of the British sailor of about a century ago:
With us, the sailor is scarcely beyond his quarterdeck. If he is distinguished in his profession, he is professional merely; or if he is more than that, he owes it not to his work as a sailor, but to independent domestic culture.
With regard to a liberal education in the Navy it is true that much is gained by travel at home and abroad, and also that many an officer “of his own initiative secures additional training of considerable extent after leaving the academy.”9 This latter fact reflects great credit upon the officers of the Navy, and accounts in no small way for the breadth of interest and talent one finds in a wardroom mess; but at the same time it seems to imply not an inconsiderable indictment against the institution which assumes the responsibility of giving a formal education to young men whose previous academic training but seldom extends beyond that of the high school.
9 Board of Visitors Report of 1923, p. 1.
A distinct advantage of having an early introduction to a few so-called cultural subjects is that it provides one with a background for thinking “interesting and noble thoughts.” That such is a criterion for happy living is admirably maintained by William Lyon Phelps in a delightful little essay, Happiness, in which he quotes former President Timothy Dwight of Yale: “The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.” Equally appropriate to the point in hand are the words attributed to Sir Philip Sidney: “They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts.” It is a background for thinking interesting thoughts which I feel should not be denied the naval officer during his training as midshipman.
Let us now consider the scientific fundamentals as distinct from technical details. The necessity for greater stress of the former in the midshipman’s curriculum has been pointed out time and again in annual reports of Boards of Visitors to the United States Naval Academy. This lack of emphasis on the fundamentals was clearly set forth in the Board Report of 1923, and was held as a serious indictment against the Academy in an article written a few years ago by Rear Admiral W. S. Sims.10 The admiral deplored the fact that instruction at the Naval Academy was so deficient in fundamentals that a large part of the Postgraduate School course had to be devoted to remedying this shortcoming; so that the latter institution “is not a graduate school in the ordinary sense of the term,” (from Board of Visitors Report of 1923, p. 6).
10 Sims, “Annapolis, Our Amateur Naval College,” World’s Work (April, 1927).
Contemporaneously with Admiral Sims’s article appeared one by Professor H. J. Fenton11, for many years a teacher of English at the Naval Academy. His article, in addition to being a critique of methods of instruction and faculty control, was also a plea for a broader educational program at that institution.
Thus one finds the policy and the changes recommended for the Naval Academy by the Boards of Visitors, Admiral Sims, Professor Fenton, and recently and more concretely Commander Rossell, are much in keeping with that of modern technical schools as voiced by Dr. Stratton and Professor Compton.
11 Fenton, “Our Naval Academy,” Atlantic Monthly, 139 (April, 1927), 550.
Considering, then, the primary motives of officer-training as outlined by the Knox-King-Pye Board; the past and present trends in education, particularly for technical men; and the earnest plea of others for a more liberal course of instruction for midshipmen; it appears that a vigorous orientation of the Naval Academy curriculum might well be made to bring it into line with present ideas of technical education. To this end I propose an amplification of instruction in cultural subjects and in the fundamental sciences.
The former group might well embrace philosophy and logic, a study of which would tend to promote the art of thinking and the “ability to reason to a logical conclusion.” Through a thorough knowledge of history and biography the midshipman would learn of the past actions and thoughts of people, both collectively and individually, and would thus gain a keener appreciation of contemporary opinion and a broader aspect of international relations. This latter attribute is particularly enhanced through a reading knowledge of modern languages, by which one may obtain directly the best that is thought and said in foreign tongues. It is most satisfying to learn that the inclusion of German and Italian, in addition to French and Spanish already in the curriculum, is now a fait accompli at the Naval Academy.
Among the fundamental sciences, biology is of particular interest to the naval officer, for a knowledge of the human body and its relation to life is a matter of concern both for himself and for the men of his command. The mastery of differential equations should be part of every midshipman’s equipment, making it unnecessary to give this course to technical postgraduate students. The courses in physics and chemistry should be given in such a thorough manner as not to necessitate their repetition at the Postgraduate School. A half-year course in heat and thermodynamics would provide a valuable foundation for future study of steam engines, internal-combustion engines, refrigerating machinery, and the thermal elements of aerology and physical chemistry. Another half-year could well be devoted to an introduction to light and electricity, two subjects which weld so beautifully into one in the realm of the electromagnetic theory, the precursor of wireless telegraphy and other numerous appliances.
To extend the curriculum in the manner above indicated and still confine the instruction to the four-year training period would obviously necessitate the elimination of some of the work in the technical departments. A number of such subjects in the departments of ordnance and gunnery, seamanship, navigation, and engineering might well be allocated to postgraduate study, both aboard ship and at the Postgraduate School.
A curtailment of technical instruction at the Naval Academy will be opposed by the navy man who still expects to turn out a finished officer upon graduation from that institution. That, however, is not the stated mission of the Academy. And furthermore, if he recognizes the fact that a junior officer, like the young doctor, lawyer, or teacher, must be a student of his profession, and that technical subjects should more properly be learned at the Postgraduate School, at sea, or at shore stations, augmented perhaps by correspondence courses, he will then appreciate the wisdom of molding the mind of the young midshipman in the sound forms of the fundamental sciences, tempering it with an academic insight, and also of giving him a little touch of cultural training which may fill his future travels at home and abroad with keen interest, and make his life both fuller and happier.
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If you want to find out what is right and what is good for you, bring your own will to self-consciousness. Your duty is what you yourself will do in so far as you clearly discover who you are, and what your place in the world is. This is, indeed, a first principle of all ethical inquiry. Kant called it the Principle of the Autonomy or self-direction of the rational will of each moral being.—Royce.