Finished professional examination in ... at 1600
Finished day’s work at 1600 . . . Thank the Lord!
IF the naval examining board has not had most of its papers finished off with some honest phrase such as that I have just set down here—and reluctantly refrained from doing on my regular examination paper a few hours ago—it is not for want of feeling among the examinees. From the groans of first starting to study for promotion examinations to the agony of the last weary pen scratch, we each and all rid ourselves vocally, if not officially where examining eyes might scan with censure, of far stronger disapprobation. Why is this so, why should we have such antipathy for the series of ten examinations that lift us of the lower regions through a half stripe?
Surely so much labor from both examinee and examiner serves a useful purpose; what is it then? Do we take the examinations merely to prove that by standing up to the grind we are worthy of another half stripe? That might well be a reason, but few of us would believe the Navy has devoted so much time to such a system for no other cause. Again, then, does this series of about sixty questions selected from a tremendous field of information furnish a measurable basis to prove our knowledge of our jobs and fitness for promotion? This does not seem a reason, either, for our value to the Navy has already been far better determined by our daily labors and resulting fitness reports, besides, is it very likely that the Navy will greatly benefit by our carrying in our heads the answers to such problems as these:
What is a crusher guage?
Describe in general terms the U. S. Navy parachute; how is it packed, etc.?
Define presumption, inference, prima-facie case.
What government office or bureau publishes each of the following? (List of various publications).
What is the Air Plan?
What are the characteristics of DM and DA? What is the limiting ellipse?
What is parasite resistance?
They read like an “Ask Me Another” list, as they very frequently are. Many of these questions I cannot answer today, yet I have studied them all within the past two weeks—all, with at least 2,000 more (most, to be honest, of undoubted informational value), which are themselves only a few of the tens of thousands that might be asked from the half hundred books we should absorb in order to prepare properly for the examinations. No matter how useful the greater part of this information is, it is exceedingly indigestible when taken in any form except small, well-chewed doses. That I and most like me hold enough of it all to pass is due largely to the humaneness of the examining board in asking us only a few of the “Guess Again” questions, plus several reasonable technical ones, and in giving us a fighting chance with “What is a ground?” “How find the IC of a sextant?” “What do when the captain enters the motor boat where you are already seated?”
If the purpose of the promotion examinations is not these other reasons we have examined, is it perhaps to prod us into refreshing ourselves in all the complicated fields of our naval service that probably demands a wider and more diversified amount of knowledge than any other profession? This must be the true reason, because it is a very good and necessary one. Although during years of service I may have had some contact with most of the Navy’s many facets, I have no doubt largely occupied myself with the few specific jobs that have come my way, studying very little about anything else and no more than necessary to succeed with any particular job. For long periods I may have had nothing at all to do with electricity, the vacuum tube, the hot and disagreeable side of an oily pump, or the very sad problem of no steam in the captain’s shower. I may have been in gunnery, or navigation, or rattling around in a rolling submarine, or anywhere else but down in the hold where even the curse words are greased with unfamiliar terms. Or I may have been in this same black hole and not have been troubled with the eternal question of why the Miranda escaped, or what do when the horizon of a dark night looks like a forest of lighted Christmas trees, or that other sad problem of a sooty footstep on the captain’s ladder. Also, whether above or below decks, not only have I missed book and practical knowledge for solving many types of problems, but I have likewise probably failed to keep in complete touch with the advancement that is daily changing every branch of naval science with such rapidity that even if we retained very long very much of our learning from the Naval Academy we would quickly find much of it antiquated.
The examinations help save us from complete oblivion concerning other fields than the one of our immediate duty, but, sadly, they are only a passing gleam in the night. For a summer now I have poured into my head the equivalent of at least a 4-year college course, or that sketchy part I have hoped my examinations would be taken from. Though getting off to a slow start, for the past few weeks I have crammed and packed and gorged, studying ten hours or more a day. What value has all this been? Only that hundreds of hours of study are sadly wasted; hundreds of hours of study expended to little purpose, for the examinations fail in their intent. I have already forgotten almost as much as I learned this summer. If I had to take any examination over again, I would have to prepare carefully in order to be certain of passing. Nor am I different from the average. The laws of learning and forgetting show that most of what we are subjected to academically for a limited period of time is forgotten within a half hour, and that only a small fragment remains after a week or so. Something repeated or observed more closely may stick longer; but few things linger that enter by the eyes and ears alone, unless subjected to considerable stress at the time. So, hundreds of hours wasted, and again I say, sadly, for during this studious summer I have been genuinely amazed to discover how much really fascinating and interesting there is in our naval profession, how much seems to rise from new and heretofore never realized horizons. For a space, navigation became a delightful companion as I began to comprehend again the wonder and mystery of the celestial deeps. Radio and electricity, for which I acquired an antipathy when plodding through incomprehensible wildernesses at the Naval Academy, at last became not only almost intelligible, but slightly pleasant. Rules of the road, seamanship, gunnery—throughout nearly every subject I repeatedly found methods, reasons, explanations of things I must never have known, and a constant repetition of the mental question, “Why did I not learn these at the time I was in navigation, gunnery, etc., aboard ship, when the knowledge of them would have made me many times more valuable to my job?”
But, tragically, this interlude of new horizons is soon lost. These long hours of study and possibilities of permanent improvement are largely wasted. Most of the hodgepodge of at least a score of different fields of knowledge, hastily crammed into my head for the summer, slips back into the limbo; darkness is again supreme with only here and there a stronger light burning a little longer. Within six months, along with most examinees, I shall be back in blissful oblivion about the greater part of these things. Such a procedure is human, natural, and necessary. The mind can contain just so much of unassimilated material. It rids itself of those facts it is not using so that it may handle the necessary ones affecting daily problems.
If all that remains of these hundreds of hours of concentrated application is a little astonishment at past ignorance, and a little knowledge, it does seem that they are wasted. The same results could be obtained with far less inefficiency in expenditure of energy; the same amounts of time and effort could be made to produce far greater benefits both to the individual officer and to the Navy. The brain does not rid itself of all immediately unnecessary information. There is another group of facts, besides those just temporarily hurried into the head that it long clings to. They are the ones forged into the nervous system by constant practical contact and use. True learning is always of this nature. Very nearly nothing is genuinely learned that is not put to use and therefore built by experience into the nervous system. Studying books about our jobs does no good, or very little, if the studying is done today and the actual job is not undertaken until next year. Suppose I were to be required to line up the guns a battleship with the director next July, 1935, and knew nothing about the operation but read up on it in October, 1934. Without later reading, and the assistance a few fire-control men, how well would succeed in July? It is the study at the time of doing the job that is valuable, and vitally so. It concentrates within the space of a few hours the laborious learning of many men acquired through many years. Without such written experience I would have to go through the same long period of trial and error with the director—a time probably too long for my lifetime. Study puts wings on practice when hitched closely to it; may be of little value if much separated. Study helps me to solve my problem with the director in a space so much shorter than a lifetime that I not only quickly finish but may be led to try out new developments on soundly based learning. Study combined with actual physical application has enabled my mind to attack a present problem with reason and insight, has definitely built within me, so that the fundamentals of the learning will remain, why and how directors are lined up—just as day-after-day study and practice build for all of us a gradually broadening and mounting structure of knowledge so firmly fixed into our nervous systems that it becomes a part of our personalities usable in any situation demanding it.
Inherently, as we have considered, promotion examinations have high value. That most of this is wasted at present should lead us to consider how their inherent value can be converted into usable value. There may be several methods, but the simplest and most practicable one would be to discontinue holding the examinations as a group and to have each examination when an officer is actually engaged in carrying out the duties covered by that particular subject. If I am in a deck division, for example, I am daily concerned with seamanship, communications, gunnery, navigation, or the piloting part of it at least; I have occasionally to do with aviation, military and international law. If I am below decks, I get something of the last three with engineering and electricity. Why should I not study these subjects closely and deeply at the time so as to be more valuable to my immediate job, and far more valuable to future ones because of an accumulated store of knowledge built in by actual experience. All of us do study some on a job, but usually we only touch the surface, skimming here and there, picking up only immediately necessary scraps of information. Such a practice, like others we have mentioned, is human and fundamentally proper in that there is so much to learn in this world that we would be submerged if we tried to acquire it all. On the other hand, we as a genius tend to take advantage of this necessity of not learning too much and by natural inertia err somewhat towards the other side. A cup of “Java,” a wardroom argument, the bridge table, are at times selfish wooers who somewhat immoderately overcome our better intentions. A little urging in the other direction is often all that is necessary to make us study, but it is too often absent. It is not present in the average job because we can get through it with average success anyhow. Our relief turns over his files, our leading petty officers quickly aid us in learning the practical essentials of the new job, soon we are in the rut of routine that on the whole works out rather well, based as it is on past experience. But how much that is valuable, how much that might make us improve ourselves as well as the job is lying there gathering dust on our bookshelves! It is this material that surprises us when we meet it on promotion examinations, that makes us inwardly whisper with good intentions, “I’ll certainly read more about my present and next jobs when I’ve finished with these awful exams.” And, the awful exams finished, we sigh immensely, throw up our hats in delight, in general agree with the negro hallelujah,
I really do believe without a doubt
That all good Christians ought to shout—
and forthwith sink back into our previous restful ways of putting off intensive study.
Why should we not help ourselves out by giving ourselves the extra prod necessary to make us study? We certainly pore over books hard enough preparing for our examinations; why not spread this study out, substituting for the wasteful uselessness of cramming the true benefit of study combined with practice? Why not add interest and daily application to what is otherwise a very onerous burden? The l examinations could be taken say one every six months. They could be made every bit as difficult as the present ones, should not be longer but should cover an even wider range and follow even more the present trend toward practical problems. Then, for instance, instead of reading grounding cases mixed with a thousand unrelated questions, an officer of the deck in preparing for the single examination could mull these cases over in his mind as the masts sway silently across the stars of the midwatch, could be making them part of his instinctive processes to serve him well in some future emergency—and to serve the Navy well, too.
To be true, during the intervals separating half stripes it is likely that many of us would not be assigned to some of the branches of our profession. Yet there is always some contact, no matter what our immediate job; with only one subject to prepare for, we would seek practical explanation for at least a few puzzling theories ; any practical knowledge at all would be a gain over the present cramming system. The examinations so distributed could serve the added beneficial and sorely needed purpose of prodding us into keeping up with advancement in all phases of naval science.
The result of such a change in examinations would seem to be the snaring of that will-o’-the-wisp man eternally follows – something for nothing. Examining boards would work no harder, file clerks would do little more, examinees—the fellows we are all concerned about—would settle down to little more studying, would be rid of the harassing strain of the present system, and would retain manifold more things value than the few fragments that now stick when the last examination opens to the winds of blissful forgetting.