For a decade or more during which educational institutions throughout the country have been floundering in an effort to decide upon the objectives of education, the Naval Academy has had a formal well-defined statement of its aims set forth in a written mission. The steady general progress that the Naval Academy has made during this time, the better balance that has recently been effected among the cultural and professional subjects in the curriculum, and the approach to what the writer believes to be a more nearly correct conception of the proper relation between the scholastic and the practical during the last two or three years justify an examination of the present mission with a view to bringing it into keeping with what should be the correct aim of the Naval Academy.
The controversial and contradictory nature of the present mission of the Naval Academy will be apparent if the mission is read through thoughtfully. The wording of the present mission is:
To mold the material received into educated gentlemen, thoroughly indoctrinated with honor, uprightness, and truth, with practical rather than academic minds, with thorough loyalty to country, with a groundwork of educational fundamentals upon which experience afloat may build the finished naval officer, capable of upholding, whenever and wherever may be necessary, the honor of the United States; and withal giving due consideration that healthy minds in healthy bodies are necessities for the fulfillment of the individual missions of the graduates; and that fullest efficiency under this mission can only be attained if, through just and humane yet firm discipline, the graduates carry into the service respect and admiration for this academy.
The inconsistency of the proposition of becoming educated in four years with the proposition of absorbing a groundwork of educational fundamentals will be instantly noted. The matter of becoming educated is the achievement of a life time. The matter of absorbing the groundwork of educational fundamentals is, as indicated, a proper and possible achievement in four years.
The controversial proposition of “practical rather than academic” was no doubt conceived in a worthy mood, and if any experienced naval officer were given the choice of an officer wholly practical or wholly theoretical he would very likely and very properly choose the former. The harm in committing an organization to the practical to the exclusion of the theoretical lies in the possibility of stifling research, killing intellectual initiative, and bringing about a habitual situation in which one cannot see the woods for the trees. The happy combination of the practical and the academic espoused by John Paul Jones appeals as much the preferable situation.
The recognition that experience afloat is necessary to make a naval officer is a point well made and is a pertinent answer to the careless and frequent assertion that the purpose of the Naval Academy is to make naval officers. The most that the Naval Academy can be expected to do is to give the midshipmen sufficient training to make them immediately useful—to meet the minimum requirements of a junior officer—on board ship after graduation.
Healthy minds in healthy bodies are, of course, like many other conditions, necessary for effective work; just and firm discipline is fundamental in a successful military organization; and respect and admiration for the Academy are desirable ends. As for the latter, most graduates are so tired of the strict and rigorous regime at the end of four years that many upon leaving are hopeful of never returning again. As time goes on, respect for the ideas and ideals of the Academy outweighs the memory of the discipline of the molding process and eventually even admiration may appear.
Whatever may happen to be the feeling of the graduate toward the Academy upon leaving it—and a feeling of fondness is desirable—it is essential for the good of the service that he carry with him a vigorous intellectual curiosity and a large measure of professional pride and ambition. Coupled with these characteristics should be the even more important element of a well-trained character capable of immediate correct response to the many situations in service that will test it.
The essential elements of the mission of the Naval Academy are the development of military character and provision for a flee balance between schooling in liberal subjects and training in professional naval subjects. Through continual examination and through adjustment of subjects in the curriculum by the Academic Board it is possible in the present four-year course to lay a foundation sufficiently well balanced in liberal and professional subjects to meet the needs of the naval service. It is only necessary that the liberal and cultural features of the curriculum be such that a tendency to growth is natural and the knowledge and attitude of the instructors is such as to inspire incentive and to develop capacity for growth in the midshipmen.
A mission that will more nearly fit present conditions and that should suffice for the future is suggested as follows:
Mission of the Naval Academy
To mold the material received to the needs of the naval service by instilling the qualities of virtue, honor, patriotism, and subordination, by inculcating the elements of leadership and the ideals of sportsmanship, by implanting the thorough groundwork of a liberal and professional education, by assuring enough practical training to make the graduate immediately useful on board ship on being commissioned, and by developing incentives to further professional and cultural growth in order to enable the individual, through experience and study after graduation, to attain the standard of excellence that will fit him as a finished naval officer to fill the place of the educated gentleman and to uphold the interests and honor of the United States of America.