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Ronny F's avatar

I’ve never served in our armed forces but do have experience with what happens to staff as they move up organizational ranks. As a teacher, I’ve watched countless competent classroom educators move up and out to high status positions in central office only to lose their edge. The unique and precious skills they showed in daily “combat”, i.e. instruction, quickly atrophies making them useless as teachers but also as leaders. We often joke that all downtown administrators should be required to spend two uninterrupted weeks in the classroom every year to maintain contact and focus on our central mission of educating kids who too often don’t want to be educated. Given that all organizations are at heart prone to the same dysfunctional temptation of self-aggrandizement at the expense of their mission, I think your idea is very sound. And you don’t have to be a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine to get that. So make them fight and make them teach!

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Justin Mc's avatar

Take the box check out of things like JRTC, MCT, and NTC. Those should not be evaluations but experimentation. If a commander can’t tell which subordinates are taking prudent risks and which are slow kids, then maybe they are the issue.

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