“What a Naval Officer Now Knows”: USNA in the NY Times

James Traub, writing in the New York Times has a good, high-level view of education at the Naval Academy in “What a Naval Officer Now Knows”. What they're really looking at here is how the education is different now than in the days of John McCain. One of the points he makes is that tenured faculty at USNA can teach their classes essentially with no interference and any way they want to. During my years at the Boat School, I was a European Studies Major, and I slanted my studies very heavily toward history--because that's what I liked! In my time there, I had three history courses that were taught with a Marxist perspective; one of my senior courses, Imperialism, used as a textbook Imperialism by V.I. Lenin, printed by the Export Press of the People's Republic of China. I can state without hesitation that the ability to think independently and form my own opinions and conclusions was clearly a part of what was expected of me during my Naval Academy experience. I have a minor reputation as an outspoken critic of my alma mater, but really I am convinced they are doing the best job of all of the service academies in producing officers who can think. (My real criticism is of the Alumni Association and the closed-off exclusive good-'ol-boys excluding any real participation or governance by the vast majority of alumni--but that's outside the scope of this comment.) I can only speak for myself but it was clear to me that just as Traub writes in his article, critical thinking is still an expected skill at USNA. Of course I was not an engineer.

Posted by trygstad | Category: USNA | 07:23 PM