Giving the Viet Cong the good ol' one-fingered salute.

This interview over at the USNI blog gives us a great look into the mindset of the men that endured captivity at the Hanoi Hilton. Unified, defiant, tough, and able to find and/or inject humor into the toughest of circumstances. Nice to see this. One generation of USNA grad passing wisdom to another. I've said it more than once. The experience of four years at the service academies is more than an academic preparation. It certainly served men like CDR Galanti well. As a squishy liberal arts type, and someone who teaches mids, I find it interesting that he says this:

JJ: Did your training at the Academy help you overcome captivity in Vietnam?
PG: Yes. Many of the leaders in Hanoi were Naval Academy graduates. Admirals Jim Stockdale and Jeremiah Denton (’47), Bill Lawrence (’51) and others. I often refer to my Hanoi experience as Plebe Years Bravo through Hotel. Admiral Stockdale said the same thing. He lamented the softening of plebe year and the over-emphasis on computer and other people unfriendly endeavors. Our old “Jack of all trades master of none” USNA B.S. degree was the best “major” in existence then. When USNA decided to do the “Major” thing and join the academic standards rules of the majority of colleges and universities, the experience went downhill in my opinion.

Why? Our degree was 160 semester hours almost equally divided between Hard Sciences and Humanities. We all had classes on Saturdays and the curriculum was identical. We were engineers who could write. The degree was good for grad school in nearly any discipline. We all took two years of a language which, more than anything else, improved our English. I am, frankly, appalled by the inability of many midshipmen and USNA graduate officers to express themselves beyond a vocabulary of only a few hundred words. In informal conversations with mids when I visit the yard, the many seem barely literate.

I can't say that I agree with this blanket assessment of mids' communications and language abilities, at least insofar as it is a critique of the academy, as opposed to the overall trend of our society away from stringent standards in education.

I coach a team of what are essentially ethics debaters, and teach introductory philosophy, and have taught the mandatory ethics course at USNA, as well as running some independent studies. In my experience, while mids often have difficulty writing, they are brighter, and quicker on the uptake when dealing with philosophical and ethical arguments than are their civilian counterparts. They are more disciplined, and more prone to seek help. I do often hear the complaint that the engineering heavy course of study does not leave enough time for the "squishy" stuff. In that I concur with Admiral Stockdale and good Commander Galanti!