“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones” – Albert Einstein
Einstein was supposed to have answered a question about future wars using the above statement to indicate how powerful the weapons would be after the WW II. If there is going to be a WW III then most of the life forms on earth will be annihilated, and the survivors will have to start from scratch. Even though the atomic bomb, which came to be with the help of his theories, may still be the deadliest of the traditional arsenal a country possesses, the modern-day warfare is completely different from what Einstein’s generation experienced during the first two world wars.
Though most of the fighting would take place in cyberspace even before a gun is fired, or a bomb is dropped, manufacturing and selling weapons will continue to be one of the biggest industries in the world. With the rapid evolution of new technologies, armies that possess the smartest weapons will undoubtedly command superiority over the others. Therefore, the security forces of the countries around the world will either, have to improve the education and training programs, or recruit people with necessary capabilities, in order to handle smart weapons effectively.
National security and education
Most countries have been focusing on these aspects such as recruitment, advance training and research and development within their military establishments all in the name of “national security”. Any amount of defence spending can easily be justified since the line between war and peace is not clear at all in today’s world. Each country says: “we do not want war and we are prepared to do everything in our power to avoid conflicts with other nations. But (this is a big “but”) since we cannot predict when, or how or from what direction and mode aggression may come, we must be prepared to meet any threat ranging from an isolated terrorist act to full-scale military confrontation at any moment”.
One can imagine what will happen, to the weapons industry and manpower industry where multinational corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Airbus, BAE Systems, Honeywell, Saab and Bechtel, to name a few, some with defense revenue even bigger than the GDP of countries like Sri Lanka, if all these powerful countries stayed true to their words of “avoiding conflicts”. It is not a secret that the global economy runs the way it is now thanks to all the conflicts around the world. This makes it easier for any country to justify allocating the biggest chunk of their national budget to their defense programs which include education and training of their personnel.
Aspects of military education
Even though “educating the military” can be justified within this context of national security being on par with the rest of the world, it is completely different from “militarising the education”. Oxford dictionary describes “militarisation” as: “the action or process of giving something a military character”. Most of the countries have exclusive military schools and academies such as West Point Academy in New York, Annapolis Naval Academy and Colorado Air Force Academy in the US. There are additional programs where state funded universities have agreed to accommodate a limited number of military cadets under programs such as Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) partially funded by the Department of Defence.
Those cadets go through their academic program with the civilian students while participating in their military training under the guidance of the ROTC office. There are private schools too in the US, established as college-prep military schools at primary and secondary levels. There are graduate schools also established by the Department of Defence for post graduate studies of the officers in the US military.
The United States Military did not become arguably the best in the world by accident. Military education is also used as a tool to promote recruitment. There are about 200,000 students in ROTC programs at any given time with about 50% joining military service after graduation. Not only do they train their own military, but they also train the military officers from other allied countries including countries like Sri Lanka. Yet, they have not crossed the line to provide education to the civilian population of the country, though there is a lot of money to be made in the business of education.
In addition to recruitment, military education focuses on social conformity under the guise of “discipline”. Whenever the military talks about discipline that includes obeying commands without asking questions. There is no better time or place for conditioning young minds of a nation to accept conformity as the way of life than the years they spend within the system of formal education.
This, even without any involvement of the military, is already being practiced in schools in most Asian countries and in some private schools in western countries too. Students wear a uniform, and they must follow all the rules and regulations of the school or face the punishments ranging from being shouted at (verbal abuse), corporal punishments (physical abuse), all the way to expulsion (dishonorable discharge), depending on the severity of the violation and/or the mental state of the teacher (Commanding officer), who decides what the punishment should be, at that time. Students are not allowed to point out any wrongdoings of the teachers and often, they are not given a chance to present any counter arguments or at least to present the facts, if any, in their defense. If the whole class stuck together and did not reveal the perpetrator of the crime then, instead of admiring their unity and bravery, the whole class gets punished. It perhaps will not be an exaggeration to say that our schools cannot get any more militarised than that even if the Department of Defence gets the control over them.
Difference in civilian education
However, there is a big difference in civilian higher education, where the students are given a much higher degree of freedom, while adhering to a set of rules and regulations even in countries with military style primary and secondary education systems as described above. A proper university education system should ensure the freedom of expression for students and staff alike and encourage students to engage in discussions and debates on not only the matters related to the particular subject they are learning at the time but also on matters concerning the society, the country, or the planet, in general.
Universities should be able to produce people who can think on their own, not on command, and understand the problems faced by the general population and create innovative solutions. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has even launched its own Global Citizenship Education (GCED) program which plans to empower learners of all ages to assume active roles, both locally and globally, in building more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, and secure societies. It certainly is questionable whether an education system run by a military can achieve such goals when the primary concept a military is established on is to fight the enemy, which is based on the separatist ideology of “us against them”.
When the proponents of militarised education say that it is not militarisation, but they can produce well-disciplined graduates they do not see the contradiction in the fact that the discipline they refer to is conformity which kills the two most important characteristics a graduate should have; freedom of thinking and expression. Nevertheless, if the citizens of a country feel that they are better off if the military attended to all day-to-day services of their civilian needs including education, healthcare, agriculture and even running their eateries and grocery stores, during peacetime, and make no effort to find the reasons why the civilian society has failed in taking care of those needs to their satisfaction, then such a citizenry certainly deserves nothing more.
The writer has served in higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fourteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected] )