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I've been in the Army for 16 years. Dumb recruits are their bread and butter. They wouldn't give them up for anything in the world. Independent thought,or intel

• whatshisface 8y ago
  Good highschool performance involves a lot of organized instruction-following. It's not so much that the dropouts are "dumb" per se, just that they don't perform well on mental tasks that they have been instructed to complete. Most of the poor academic performers I have known were more lacking in self-control than they were in IQ points. That's the antithesis of what the ideal soldier is pictured to be, a human machine that performs every task exactly right. Someone like that would absolutely steamroll highschool.
  • MisterTea 8y ago
    Poor high school performance can also result from other issues such as unstable home life or mental conditions. Dropouts aren't necessarily dumb.
    • deleted 8y ago
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  • phaus 8y ago
    There are people that can accomplish most tasks after having been shown once, but for some reason can't perform on texts or written assignments. Going back to the military, in the course for my technical role, we had a guy that barely passed each test,but was by far better than any of us on the practical exercises. If I had to hire one of us, I'd have picked him over the guy that got the highest grade for the course (which incidentally was me). I did poorly in highschool and I agree it was largely due to self-control. Once I was doing something that I wanted (working), I suddenly became a good performwr. Once I grew up a bit, I became interested in getting an education and did pretty well in college.
• chrisseaton 8y ago
  > Independent thought,or intelligence in general, are strongly discouraged unless you're lucky enough to be in one of the tiny,incredibly rare units that does something interesting. That's not been my experience in the Army (British, but I've worked with Americans). The Army fights hard to get soldiers to think intelligently and independently. One of the foundation stones of how the Army does things is 'mission command' (which the US uses as well) that is designed to make sure junior soldiers can think and act independently and that commanders allow them to do this and do not over-control them. One of the major lessons you learn as a leader in the Army is to decide what you want your soldiers to achieve, and then to give them the time and space to achieve that without excess control or direction. In fact I think the Army is uniquely good in society at developing young people to able to make their own confident decisions. The biggest difference I see between soldiers and civilians is that soldiers are able to make a decision and come up with a plan in any kind of chaos, and it's the Army that develops that. Junior soldiers who show potential are mentored and nurtured, up to the point of plucking them out of the ranks and commissioning them if they show enough potential, no matter what their background is.
  • phaus 8y ago
    The British might work differently, but the things you describe sound like US Army marketing materials and things that our officers say without intending to implement or follow up on. There are good commands that might be better than average, but most of the US Army is intentionally discouraged from taking initiative on anything more complex than mopping a floor. Another thing to consider is that when any nation does a joint excercise with another country, their primary objective is to make a good impression.
  • lovich 8y ago
    I was in ROTC for a few years, which isn't the actual military, but it is the future officers. They worked pretty hard to make sure we understood that even asking clarifying questions when assigned a task was both insubordinate and showed that you were incompetent. I don't know ow where it started but at some point one group of upperclassman took the approach of teaching the lower classman that they are allowed to listen and not speak under all circumstances, and every class after that felt like it was their turn to be in charge when they became upperclassman
• WalterBright 8y ago
  According to "The Pity of War" by Ferguson, the Germans in WW1 were able to kill British soldiers at about twice the rate as vice versa. They attributed this to the German Army giving goals as orders rather than methods, allowing the lower officers flexibility in achieving them. The British Army, on the other hand, would give orders as methods, with little flexibility. Flexibility means needing intelligent soldiers, not cannon fodder.
• CobrastanJorji 8y ago
  Dumb but not imbecilic. Dumb is "I point you that way and tell you to walk forwards and you walk forwards." That's useful, predictable, reliable. If I point you that way and tell you to walk forwards and you maybe walk for a few seconds but then forget what you were doing and decide now's a good time to call your mom, then you're not useful.
• colek42 8y ago
  My experience, in the infantry, has been that independent thought is valued, as long as it is at the right time.
• Lionsion 8y ago
  > I've been in the Army for 16 years. Dumb recruits are their bread and butter. They wouldn't give them up for anything in the world. The article seems to be talking about the almost dumbest of the dumb "Category IV" recruits, not the merely dumb. Prior to the Iraq war (when this article was written), the military more or less kept this category out: > on Sept. 20, 2005, the Defense Department released DoD Instruction 1145.01, which allows 4 percent of each year's recruits to be Category IV applicants—up from the 2 percent limit that had been in place since the mid-1980s [emphasis mine]. > Independent thought,or intelligence in general, are strongly discouraged unless you're lucky enough to be in one of the tiny,incredibly rare units that does something interesting. Are you sure you're talking about intelligence? It sounds like your really talking more about independence of thought and obedience. I could totally see the Army valuing obedience over intelligence, while still highly valuing intelligence (e.g. intelligence applied to fulfilling orders rather than questioning them).
• s2g 8y ago
  But smart is relative. The article is about people too dumb to be effective.