Does Professional Military Education Matter?

[rangerrebew]

 
Does Professional Military Education Matter?
by FreddieMay 16, 2019

‘Education should implant a will and facility for learning. It should produce not learned but learning people. In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned are equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists’ Eric Hoffer 1

It seems that the #PME is becoming ever more pervasive, it appears regularly on my social media feeds and there are a wide array of blogs and websites offering informal PME to anyone who is interested 2.

However, there are few studies of the value of PME, whether it actually does make us better at our jobs. On a quite basic level, how does all that international relations taught to an Officer Cadet in Faraday Hall at Sandhurst help him when leading his Platoon in an attack, or when dealing with a typical everyday G1 drama? Most of the time it doesn’t, and what would actually be more beneficial for that Officer Cadet is a lesson on JPA or soldier career management.

I have heard before that military education, learning and reading neither inspires soldiers to clear trenches or bayonet the enemy, or is directly linked to tactical success. No one in the heat of a firefight has thought ‘what would old Wavell do?’. There is therefore doubts as to the usefulness of PME on some levels, and therefore why to spend time on it at all?

https://wavellroom.com/2019/05/16/does-pme-matter/

[Maj. Bill Martin]

I should point out that the stated premise is asinine, and that the author disagrees with it as well.  He's just setting it up that way as a foil to explain why PME is important.

Having gone through PME both as a midshipmen and officer, including being on the instructor side, he's absolutely right.  Just as one example that he points out, the Germans through their general staff system were really the first to institutionalize it, and it gave them a huge military advantage over their contemporaries.