“Sir, this place shows you what not to do.”
I've bitched a bit in recent times about falling (and appalling) standards and enforcement at my alma mater, the U. S. Naval Academy. While I like to think I'm a reasonably decent writer, I was having trouble articulating what I think the underlying issues are ... fortunately, Bruce Fleming, a 23 year English prof at Navy, has written an op-ed for The New York Times that seems to have it spot on ...
The picture I have drawn of the academy is not what most Americans imagine when they come to a parade and see all those clean-cut young men and women standing in nice rows with their chests out (as they will at next week’s graduation ceremony). Some may argue that our abandonment of merit as a criterion for officer status is simply the direction the military overall has taken — the stress of fighting two wars has lowered the bar for enlistment, and R.O.T.C. standards have also declined. But I’d like to think we could do better
...
Change won’t happen from within. The short-term academy administrations want to keep the hype flowing, and tend to lack the big-picture thinking necessary to seeing the institution objectively. Rather, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other civilians need to mount a full re-conception of the academies: deciding what do we do that’s wrong, what’s irrelevant and what deserves to be saved. Otherwise, my most promising students will continue to tell me, “Sir, this place shows you what not to do.”
If you care about such things, and you should, pop on over and read the entire post here (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21fleming.html)
