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I agree completely. If we're serious about learning from "best practices," we must learn from the military, as well as Catholic schools, and also from sports and, as Ernest Green of the Little Rock Nine reminds us, the schools that trained civil rights activists, like the Highlander School.

As a liberal Deomcrat, I'm frustrated that that the miltary (and in my experience) businessmen often have a perspective that is more humane and holistic than progressive "reformers" who respect not the whole human beings, families, or communities, or schools as organic bodies, but only value measurable things.

What if schools had the freedom to recruit a bunch of young talent to design gaming programs? What if public schools could use the structure of the military or Catholic schools to allow for building a respectful team culture?

I'd love to see someone try something based on the German general staff system, particularly its feature of rotating officers between serving as staff officers in particular units and working/training in central administration.

Imagine how people's attitudes would change if bureacrats had to cycle back into an individual school and help implement their own grand plans for a couple years.

Reject "drill and kill?" no, just use it appropriately. The armed forces language schools use a lot of drill -- it's necessary in order to achieve mastery of foreign languages. What the military does is use a wide array of instructional methods, each appropriate to its purpose.

John--There are a number of schools out there that use game creation as a way to engage kids. I'd be interested to see how those students are faring. It's probably too early to make binding judgments.

Tom--That is a very interesting model. It would be all the more interesting if federal policy makers, pundits and bloggers (yes, including me) had to cycle through. Impractical, I know, but it may make for a saner discussion.

Anonymous--You make an excellent point. I overstated the case. I used to teach foreign language and ESL, and both required some drilling (though no killing.) Drills were very effective in encouraging mastery of new grammatical structures. The had to be used in moderation, of course. But you offer a useful reminder that our rhetoric can often overpower the reality. I'll add an addendum to the blog posting.

Well, you're being modest now. There's much more we can learn from the military.

How about:

(1) illegal detention
(2) torture
(3) summary execution
(4) abuse of human rights
(5) running a dictatorship
(6) overthrowing elected governments
(7) harassing homosexuals
(8) operating illegally in foreign countries
(9) supplying weapons to guerilla groups.

Then for schools we could add:
(1) obeying orders without thinking
(2) bullying others
(3) breaking laws
(4) glorifying war
(5) acting dangerously

Yes, there's certainly many things our kids could learn from the military. Of course, as a teacher, I think I might just choose something else for mine.

Greg.

I want Uncle Sam to use better grammar.

Just out of curiosity (since you brought up military life), how do you feel about school uniforms? Do you think they inspire unity, duty, respect, and the like? :)

Mrs. C--I have to admit that it's been a long time since I've reviewed research on school uniforms. If I remember correctly, results were disappointing--but the assessment may have changed since then. I suspect that, as with so many things, school uniforms "work" if they're part of a coherent educational strategy that addresses students' particular needs. Just popping kids into uniforms probably won't do much, but I state the obvious.

There is something important about the military that you did not mention: strict enforcement of appropriate behavior.

In many of our worst schools we have allowed one or two students to act out so egregiously that they disrupt learning for the entire class. These students can also monopolize the teacher's time.

It is not always the fault of the disruptive child. For example, in my last year of teaching I had a six-year-old child who had been badly traumatized by her natural father. The little girl would often have terrible temper tantrums in class. When this happened, not only did learning in my class stop, but it also stopped in adjoining classrooms as those teachers ran to assist me. This went on for the enire year.

In suburban schools when something like this occurs, parents often place so much pressure on the principal that action is usually taken to help the disturbed child or remove him from class. This should be done in all schools.

In my opinion, providing help for severe disciplinary problems in all classsrooms would be a common-sense way to improve education in our most challenging schools.

Very true, Linda. If we don't want to exclude children like your little student, we have to figure out a way to get them services and/or an alternate setting as soon as they start to show that they are losing it. When we don't it sends a message to the other children that we are powerless to create an orderly environment for them; for a few that message functions as permission for them to start acting out too. For the rest it simply damages their trust in us (as it should).

Been thinking about this some more, after a conversation with my husband, a veteran. He drew a distinction (in the realm of memorization) between things that you have to learn in the military hands-on (things like how to dissassemble, clean, and re-assemble your weapon) and things that you can memorize "from a distance" -- that would be things like the names of dental tools used in various dental procedures, what forms are needed to document the different treatments, etc. So, it's not really "drill" versus "hands-on." It's more like physical repetitions versus mental repetitions. I think many educators or ed school faculty think that if children are doing something with their hands, that doesn't count as "drill."

Here's where it gets complicated. My husband is also an amateur linguist. He has studied many languages, including some that are no longer spoken, and some that have pictographic or heiroglyphic writing forms. There are mountains of repetition involved in learning how to speak or write these languages. However, since he has chosen to engage in this activity, it doesn't feel like a burden to him. I think part of what people are reacting to when they disdain drill is that they know or sense that children are resisting the need for it (no surprise; children like fun activities more than repetitious ones, at least until they get to feel gratified by the fact that they've mastered something and feel good about it). If the children didn't resist, the adults wouldn't be so quick to search for other instuctional methods. So to me the question is how do you build in "drill," or repetition of basic skills and conetent, to the point where the children get to feel mastery early and often? How do you make addition facts feel at least a little like basketball skills, where kids seem willing to practice endlessly?

Because really, there are a lot of things that kids need to learn and be able to do that involve repetition. Trying to embed these skills and contents in hands-on, inquiry-based activities is VERY inefficient. Hands-on and inquriy work better when the students already have the skills, and at least some of the knowledge. Think of soldiers trying to learn to clean their firearms using the inquiriy method. Bad use of time.

Claus, what sort of "drill and Kill" environment did you teach in? was it the curriculum or the school management that dictated that method?

I would like to inform you that many of the military's best practices would help improve high school graduation rates and increase postsecondary participation. It would be really great for all participate.
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