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Lieutenant General Benjamin C. Freakley is the commanding general of the United States Army Accessions Command (USAAC) and oversees recruiting for the U.S. Army's officer, warrant officer and enlisted forces. USAAC has joined forces with the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) to support young people and boost graduation rates. (We wrote about this partnership in a blog posting several months ago. NASBE is a member of LFA.)

LTG Freakley recently spoke with us about the promise of greater collaboration between the military and schools.

Education: A National Security Issue

Public School Insights: Why do you think the military is getting involved in K-12 education?

LTG Freakley: I believe that the preparedness of our youth through education, health and conduct is a national security issue. Right now our young people, regardless of the tact they take for postsecondary, are limiting themselves. They are limiting themselves because they are not getting a good foundational education in K-12. They are not as healthy as they should be, with childhood obesity becoming an epidemic. And they get off track in their conduct, limiting what might be brilliant careers because they chose to get involved with gang violence, drugs, teenage pregnancy, etc.

It is disheartening to see all of this potential being limited. We believe that we have got to help our youth to achieve success through supporting our educators who, I believe, are undervalued in America—not recognized like they should be or supported like they should be. We ought to be as close to education as we can so we can sustain our all volunteer force and also so we can have an economically strong, values-based nation.

A Focus on Values

Public School Insights: What kind of lessons do you think the military can bring in the area of value-based education?

LTG Freakley: When young people join the military, we transform them. The transformation begins with our focus on the seven core values of the military. The first is loyalty—to constitution, country, fellow soldiers. The second is duty. Duty is to fulfill your moral obligations and do what it is you are supposed to do. The third is selfless service, putting others before self. The fourth is honor, which is living the Army values. The fifth is integrity, which is telling the truth. The sixth is respect, of each other and all peoples. You have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to be who you are in the United States of America, and respect includes respecting other cultures and others' rights to achieve their own potential. And lastly, personal courage, which has two components: physical courage and moral courage. Moral courage is to say and do what's right.

Often when we talk with educators about our values, it resonates with them. They talk about how Army values could be embraced by school systems, because our youth are not always getting these values from parents and grandparents. Families are somewhat fractured. Both parents are working, in this economy in particular. Organizations that teach values are underrepresented now—we do not find youth in these kinds of organizations.

Public School Insights: Is there a way in which the military can work with K-12 schools to help educators not only embrace these values but make them real for the children in their schools?

LTG Freakley: Certainly. One way is the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC)program, which is a civics program. It is not a recruitment program. It is not a nefarious way to try to trick young people to come into the military. It is a program inside of a school to give young people a sense of belonging. It’s all inclusive. I've seen young men with cystic fibrosis on Junior ROTC drill teams. We are in 1645 high schools, grades nine through 12. We have almost 300,000 young people, and less than 20% of those go into the military. But certainly, having Junior ROTC instructors who are retired military is one way we try to set an example and show how our values are used by soldiers.

We are also trying to use social media so more soldiers can tell their own stories. Blogs are very effective. We have http://www.armystrongstories.com/. It serves as a voice for our soldiers, our retirees, parents who are interested—whoever—to blog about their military experience with the Army. So certainly through social media we can try to be more viral with the understanding of and access to the Army values.

We also bring educators to forums with the military, and we go out to education forums. And we have a program called Planning for Life. It is about strong mind, strong body, strong soul. Strong soul relates to the seven values. Strong body is about being physically fit. And of course strong mind speaks to being mentally acute to be able to compete in the 21st-century flat world that we have.

And of course one of the best ways to connect is to have a veteran, someone who has served in the Army, learned and embraced the values, and then come out, become an educator—Troops to Teachers—or serve in the community as a leader and demonstrate those values. So we have multiple ways to connect.

Education, Training and Experience

Public School Insights: How does the military handle talent development?

LTG Freakley: In the military, we believe talent development has three components: education, training and experience. I was talking to Brenda Welburn [Executive Director of the National Association of State Boards of Education] about that, and she found it interesting, because educators are educated and put into experiential situations, but they are not necessarily trained.

The Army has a remarkable approach in my view—and I have been in for 35 years, so it is a long view—of how we educate someone who is entering. We give them a general understanding, taking almost a liberal arts approach to history, English, math, etc. But then we train them in skills—150 different skills. For the officers, we teach them about their core branch—there are 16 branches and the medical branch, which has a whole other system, as you can imagine, for orthopedic doctors, neurologists, psychologists to oral surgeons. Then we put them into their initial assignments, where they get experience.

We have continuing education. When a young soldier is going to become a sergeant, he or she is sent back to school for education on how to be a young leader. Then he or she is sent back to the unit to be trained in that position and then get experience in that position. Even as a three-star general, I went with other generals to the University of North Carolina business school to do a weeklong course on understanding how businesses run and enterprises work together. It is a lifelong learning commitment as a professional to read on your own, to have this experience and this training, and to go back and forth between education, training and experience.

That is one side of the military. The other is that everyone is encouraged to continue basic education. Every soldier has $4500 a year to use or lose to continue their education. A year ago, the Army spent $161 million on 279,000 soldiers who were continuing education. The majority of officers have a master's degree. Sometime between being a middle grade captain and a major, they will go to a major university and get one. There is a group that has their PhD as well. General Petraeus has his PhD.

Personally, I believe that the competitive edge of the United States Army is not in our technology. It is not in our field training. Our competitive edge comes from, first, those we select into the military through a fairly rigorous screening process, and second, the noncommissioned officer education system and the officer education system. I was the commanding officer in 2006-2007 of the Joint Task Force in Afghanistan and responsible for security operations, reconstruction and governance development on the eastern half of Afghanistan. 26 other nations, NATO and other countries joined us, and I would constantly get asked by their senior leadership, “What makes your army so good?” It is the people who are in our army and the education they receive. Our people can figure out complex problems. They can very rapidly adapt to a changing situation. They can fight the Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan and they can help build a school in the afternoon in those same mountains. So it is adaptability. And I do think applies to education.

There is another piece that I would mention. And that is that when you are in the experiential work—when you are a sergeant leading a squad, when you are a captain commanding 150 soldiers—we also do what we call “Coach, Teach and Mentor.” All three are very defined. When a captain is leading his or her company, there are near-peers—majors and lieutenant colonels—coaching them in their position so they can do the best job that they can. And while you are in a position we have teaching that goes on called Officer Professional Development. Or if you are in a maintenance organization and the brakes on the trucks do not seem to be working correctly, they will hold a developmental period on how to properly align brakes, fix bakes, etc. So coaching is trying to get the best out of the team and the individual. Teaching is making sure they fully understand a task and revisiting training on complex tasks.

Mentoring is the relationship that a major has with a captain or that a sergeant has with a private, where they are invested in the individuals themselves and try to help them fulfill their potential. This applies to the relationship of a teacher with a teacher or an administrator with a teacher, but it also applies to the relationship of a teacher with a child. We coach the child to achieve their potential. We teach them. Then we do really mentor them. I know many teachers who do. Teachers are phenomenally passionate, engaged leaders in America who are trying to make a difference with our youth. But I think systemically working on coach, teach, and mentor would be very beneficial. It can take many forms. Look at a program like City Year, which is all about mentoring and coaching. The teacher teaches, and the City Year helpmate is mentoring and coaching a child to achieve his or her potential.

Public School Insights: Can the military model be applied to schools?

LTG Freakley: We have a military education component and a continuing education component. And I think teachers ought to ebb and flow in and out in this way. As we are preparing teachers to lead a department, be vice-principal of a school or mentor other teachers, they probably need some additional leadership training and education before going into an experiential position.

Relating this to students, I think that the 3R's of reading, writing and arithmetic may be changing a bit. Our youngsters want to know about relevancy. Why take algebra II? I will never use it. How is the training I am getting relevant to the work that I'm going to be doing?

Right now I think it can be just mind numbing. Why show students 50 PowerPoint slides in English class? Why not have them read Henry V and ask them, “What did Shakespeare mean? How was he relating to the people at the time?” I think it is more important now than ever to get young people to understand how to think, not what to think. Not rote learning. Getting them to be creative and critical. Our nation is moving away from being an industrial nation to being an information-based nation.

An Innovative Partnership between Education and the Military

Public School Insights: How does the military’s unique perspective on the whole education enterprise inform the work you are doing with the National Association of State Boards of Education, Project PASS?

LTG Freakley: Someone, probably John Myers on our staff, but some brilliant soul told me a couple years ago we ought to get involved with the National Association of State Boards of Education. I was dropped into the lap of one Brenda Lilienthal Welburn. It is been a great epiphany for me to meet such a passionate educator.

With PASS—Partners for All Student Success—is a program that we are trying to get into failing high schools. You have heard Secretary Duncan talk, I'm sure, about how 50% of our high school dropouts come from 2000 high schools. He has said passionately that if we can just take on these 2000 high schools, we can really start to make a difference for the young people who are dropping out. So we thought about how we could help put a structure together that helps them.

If you look at the metrics, youth engaged in Junior ROTC graduate in higher numbers. Their GPAs are higher. Their indiscipline is lower. Their attendance in the classroom is higher. You see all these strong metrics rolling out of this program—a program that is inclusive, holds the youth accountable and gives them structure, discipline, values, role models.

But the other side of it is, where do the issues begin? We worked with some researchers at John Hopkins, including Bob Balfanz, on this. And in talking to him about what puts kids on the off-ramp, the ABC's—absenteeism, behavior in the classroom, and core competency in English and math by the time you hit the ninth grade—we realized that really the sixth through eighth grades have to be addressed. We cannot wait for the ninth grade, we will have lost too many kids. So Project PASS takes a sixth through twelfth grade approach. The middle schools that feed to a high school and that high school are all in a program that brings in other partners.

We are trying to create a plug and play organization where organizations—boys clubs, girls clubs, afterschool programs—can come to us, and say, “We want to be a part of PASS.” A coordinator will work with them so that instead of tripping over each other we deliver what it is we say we will deliver, whether it is an afterschool girls’ club program, an afterschool Junior ROTC, etc. Part of this is just keeping kids in a good, strong environment longer than the school day. And we want to encourage some of the principles of Junior ROTC in the middle schools: good diet, good study habits, mentorship, a sense of belonging. Plus, we want to ensure middle school students can look up to their high school and say, “This is a strong high school.” And there will be a Junior ROTC if they want to participate.

One thing we have to work with the Department of Education on is, how does this become whole school? Some kids are in Junior ROTC and some are not. Now, I'm not saying all kids need to be in Junior ROTC. I'm saying all kids need to be in a strong, supportive sixth through twelfth grade environment that is values-based, mentors kids and gives them the opportunity to be successful in postsecondary.

We are continuing to work through curriculum issues. We certainly do not want to militarize sixth through eighth grade, or give the appearance of that. We are trying to reach out to other partners who can come in and work on dietary, physical fitness and conduct awareness. There is an organization called the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation we are talking to and they have some very successful programs in the Kansas City area we want to try to take to scale. And if PASS can take off, then other folks like America's Promise, City Year, AmeriCorps, all those programs…There are so many organizations in America trying to help. We all have our hands on the rope, but are we all pulling in the right direction?

Our only agenda is the youth. I'm serious about that. Sometimes we get into these friction-filled meetings, and we have to try to get re-centered on the youth. Forget about ego and not worry who gets across the finish line first, organizationally. Focus on the kids. Because of America's youth are successful, America will be successful.

A Common Focus on Youth

Public School Insights: Are there any other questions that I should have asked you but did not?

LTG Freakley: One thing that I often ask myself is, with so many people trying so hard, why aren't we doing better?

I think of a few things. One is, have we really taken stock of what the information age is and what it has done? We, in our command, are thinking through what it means to be digitally literate, in a competitive sense. It is one thing if you can text. Good for you if you can use the technology. But what is the content of your texting? Are you grammatically correct? Can you communicate?

We have met with Tony Wagner from Harvard. You've probably seen his book The Global Achievement Gap. It outlines the skills he says 21st-century competitors should have, individually and organizationally. We think he has it right, so we are trying to come to grips with, what does that mean, for the Army and for society? I think we have to figure out what the information age really means to us.

Another is that, in my mind, the triangle of trust and support used to be parent, teacher and child. The teacher was there to teach the child, have the child part of the day and have the best interest of the child in mind. Parents sent the child to school, supported the child in homework or additional studies and made a pact with the teacher to work for the betterment of the child. The child was invested in education and wanted to learn. Most of them, at least—I was probably one of the ones who said to my mother, why do I have to take algebra II?

But now, with the dynamics of the family and the information age taking away some of the innocence of American youth, does teacher-parent-child still hold? I hear so many teachers say that they try to hold parent teacher conferences and no parents come. I hear teachers say that they go home at night with a list and call Sally or Johnny’s mother or father and say, “I'm a little bit worried. Here are some things that we need to work on.” And they are not received, or they get “Hey, we're busy. We have three children. I'm looking for work.” So how has the dynamic changed?

We work hard in the Army—very hard—on assessing and acquiring talent for the Army. I'm not sure America knows just how hard we work with the civilian population to find the right person to come in to the military. Then once we get that person, we try to nurture him or her. Are we trying to get the best into education? And do we have the systems, the policies and the support to nurture them and keep them in education?

Brenda and I have talked before about how the military takes people who were pretty tough sergeants and puts them through a pretty tough screening and certification process to become a drill sergeant. Then we have them working with all of these 18 to 24-year-olds for two years. Sometimes, by exception, we extend it to three years, but we know it is terribly hard work. Then they go back to something else. But we take young teachers and put them right in the middle of the inner-city with no thinking about how to rotate them through a training, education, experiential and mentoring program. And we burn them out. We lose bright, dedicated, passionate people who care a lot about the youth but get burned out because of the environment they're in. So these are some of the things we are pondering.

I see the Army's role as an integrator. Perhaps we could help businesses, educators, the military and all youth organizations come together, focused on the youth. It is interesting to me that when we were in the middle of the Depression and President Roosevelt was trying to turn it around, with literally hundreds of thousands of unemployed men in the cities, he said, “I want 300,000 unemployed men working in some fashion in the woods, not in the cities, this summer.” And they got a Colonel named George Catlett Marshall, who had 500,000 men in the Civilian Conservation Corps by that summer. George Catlett Marshall went on to be the architect of victory in the Second World War as our Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State and chairman of the Red Cross. A life of service to the country. My point here is that sometimes the Army does have some solutions.