How Good Is Annapolis? An Answer

YOUNG OFFICER ON ACTIVE DUTY

LT. COMDR. EDWIN E. KINTNER

IF the United States Naval Academy is designed to produce a skeletal framework of technique and tradition upon which American manpower and industrial genius can quickly place muscle and sinew for modern warfare, then Annapolis appears to have admirably performed its duty. Yet the Academy system is being criticized from many sides. Most of its critics, like Ralph Lee Smith in “Why I Resigned from Annapolis” (Atlantic for October, 1947), make two fundamental errors.

First, they use for comparison the liberal arts educational system in the United States. In reality, what Annapolis attempts to produce differs intentionally and widely from what most civilian schools have as a goal. Annapolis still aims to do what most colleges have long since given up attempting: to train young men for a specific vocation. In a short undergraduate course it must imbue cynical American boys with patriotism, devotion to the ideals of democracy, a spirit of responsibility to the Navy and the nation, and a willingness to relinquish certain of the emoluments of civilian life in performance of a duty to the citizens of the United States.

Second, these critics imply that hazing is the sum and substance of plebe year. As a matter of fact, physical hazing is no part of the official system of discipline and military training through which a plebe must pass.

Keeping these two fundamental errors in mind, I should like to offer my opinion of the Naval Academy, based on my experience afloat and ashore as a naval officer and as a student at two excellent civilian schools.

The entire tone of superior-subordinate relationships in the Navy is set by plebe training. Annapolis must accept boys from all parts of the United States, reared in democracy and the easygoing lack of discipline of American life, and in four years develop a military sailor. The midshipman must be taught his place in a military organization; he must understand the philosophy undergirding this organization; he must have an appreciation of how this organization works in action; and he must become acquainted with the practical techniques of military life.

The customs of plebe year are almost all in answer to this problem — that a civilian farm lad must be made into a military man of the sea. The attention which each plebe must pay to his dress and the details which he observes in stowing his gear establish habits of exactness and neatness which make possible the uniformity of detail of which all efficient military organizations are so proud. Practices like bracing up at the table and remaining in proper uniform at all times produce the alertness and snap so necessary in young officers. The regulations requiring plebes to obey without equivocation all orders given them by upperclassmen inculcate habits of strict and prompt obedience to orders without which a military organization cannot function.

Smith admits that the majority of upperclassmen take no part in physical hazing. The present first class at the Academy has, on its own initiative, condemned the practice. Maintaining plebe “rates,” however — very different from hazing — is the responsibility of all upperclassmen. These rates are the fundamentals of plebe year. Some of the most important are: —

1. Always remain braced up outside one’s room — that is, shoulders back, chest out, chin and stomach in, eyes straight ahead.

2. Walk in the center of every corridor, and square all corners.

3. Double-time off the terrace into Bancroft Hall when released from class formations. The terraces are crowded between classes, and this rate tends to clear them quickly.

4. Sit on the forward half of one’s chair at table to prevent slouching against the back.

5. Speak to an upperclassman only when spoken to.

6. Answer as quickly as possible any professional or newsworthy question put by an upperclassman.

7. Maintain rigid table etiquette at all times.

8. Snap to attention and “sound off” whenever an officer or upperclassman enters one’s room.

These are the primaries of plebe year. They are unpleasant, but not humiliating. Within a few months they become habits — habits which are partially retained the rest of the plebe’s life. They, and similar ones, are the only parts of plebe year sanctioned by Naval Academy regulations. Hazing, in the sense of physical punishment, is specifically forbidden. Such hazing is gradually dying out. That it exists, I do not deny, but several of my classmates were severely punished for having engaged in it, and I was threatened with dismissal as a first classman by a senior executive officer who mistakenly thought he had seen me use a bread tray on the stern of a plebe. I agree with Smith that drastic action should be taken to eradicate it completely, but certainly hazing is not nearly so prevalent as his article would indicate.

Thus, most practices of plebe year have definite objectives. There are many which are simply facetious, and in these the plebes often take as much pleasure as the upper classes. They are the military counterparts of the traditional college fraternity initiation. They can be abolished at Annapolis with as little harm and with as little regret as at Podunk U.

Much of the criticism of the academic quality of the Naval Academy is unfair in that the critics do not consider the variables necessary in the training of a naval officer. In order to avoid misunderstanding, I should like to explain what the Academy system of teaching is, and why it must differ from systems of civilian schools.

Naval officers are required to perform varied duties. One tour of duty may be as a division officer, with close personal contact with men. The next may be as gunnery officer, the next as navigator, another as engineer officer. To perform all these duties adequately an officer must have a sturdy foundation in many subjects, but more important, he must have the ability to attack new problems on his own, dig into explanation books and texts, and quickly come up with sufficient knowledge and information to handle properly all the facets of each new job.

The same is true, but perhaps to a lesser extent, in many other professions. The Naval Academy, unlike other schools, prepares for it. The fundamental principle of Academy teaching is self-teaching. Basically, each midshipman prepares his lesson in every subject before he arrives in class, using his textbook as a source. His instructor (and at the Academy the classes are never larger than fifteen men per instructor) explains the lesson in his own words, paying especial attention to any questions a midshipman may have. Then, and this is an indispensable part of the Academy system, each midshipman recites at least once in every class every day. He is graded daily, and his daily averages form 60 per cent of his final grade, an examination at the end of each two-month period forming the other 40 per cent. In other words, at the Academy a man must prepare for each course daily as well as bimonthly, and he must do so personally, not allow his professor to do it for him. The usual college system of slackness for two months and a violent cramming of information, vomited up by the mind as soon as exams are completed, is impossible for the student at the Academy.

Smith has had little opportunity for comparison of Academy teaching with others, and he certainly does not appreciate how it contributes in a later period. After three years at sea I returned to M.I.T. for a three-year postgraduate course in Naval Construction and Marine Engineering, a course completed in two years as a result of the wartime speed-up. Before entering the Academy, I attended an excellent liberal arts junior college. I sincerely believe that Annapolis contributed a better preparation for the job I was preparing to do than either of the other institutions. This statement has been duplicated by many of my fellow officers who have attended various civilian colleges before and after their Academy years. Practically every one of them agrees that the results of their studies at Annapolis were as good as at civilian schools, or better. I can say unequivocally that I was fully as well prepared to handle the practicalities of engineering duties aboard ship when I graduated from Annapolis as when I received my Master’s degree from M.I.T. Because the midshipman is confronted by the immediate necessities of day-to-day studying, he is unable to appreciate that five or ten years later he will retain far more of the details as well as the broad outlines of his curriculum because he has been forced to struggle independently through every lesson in every course every day.

Of my class of twenty Academy officers at Tech, sixteen graduated with honors, and one performed the almost unheard-of feat of completing the course in postgraduate school with a perfect straight A multiple. The officers from civilian schools and the civilian students taking the same course did not approach the records of the Annapolis men. If Academy training is a “deathblow to any comprehension of the theory underlying the work,” then these figures certainly do not show it.

No human organization is perfect. I do not intend to argue that Annapolis is. Like Mr. Smith, I should like to see changes made in the Academy system in an attempt to increase the quality of the men who will serve their nation with me. To that end, I make the following suggestions: —

1. Make Academy appointments completely competitive. Under present regulations, any physically normal boy with a friendly Congressman and $1000 to spend boning up for entrance examinations in special prep schools can become a midshipman. No other single factor would better the general quality of the Annapolis product more than an improvement in Annapolis raw material. Appointments should be based on nation-wide competitive examinations including mental, psychological (including moral), and physical factors.

2. Completely eliminate hazing. As I have mentioned, Academy regulations expressly forbid hazing, but as Smith says, a great deal more pressure must be exerted by the Executive Department if the practice is to be stamped out. (But let me repeat: observance of plebe rates is not hazing, and these rates must be preserved as an integral and important part of the training of naval officers.)

3. Change the methods of selecting instructors. Professors in all non-professional subjects should be civilians. Instructors in all professional subjects should be naval officers considered experts in their fields, and not officers due for a tour of shore duty. This, too, is an important point upon which I strongly agree with Smith.

For the past one hundred years the Naval Academy at Annapolis has been developing naval officers who have made the United States Navy without equal, professionally and materially, anywhere in the world. If the three changes I have suggested are made — the first, major and beyond the ability of the Academy to initiate, the others minor and gradually being accomplished through the Navy’s own initiative — I am confident that Annapolis will continue to produce professionally competent and psychologically disciplined young officers who will dedicate their lives to “fighting the fleet” in the interests of the United States.

THE FIRST CLASSMAN SPEAKS

NEWBOLD SMITH

THE Navy is very cognizant of public opinion, and naturally we midshipmen have discussed the article by Ralph Lee Smith at length, with an eye to self-criticism and possibly to rectifying any detrimental setup which we might have.

What many people do not realize is that this place is an engineering school; even more than that, a specialized engineering school. It is a trade school, if you must use the expression, but what engineering school isn’t? You don’t go to M.I.T. to learn six different professions, do you? This is something like M.I.T. The many boys from M.I.T. who are here do very well, invariably. It differs in that there are no electives (except in foreign languages), and that we do not put out such a finished engineer in one specific field, but instead make a man a fair student of (a) electrical engineering, (b) marine engineering, including many elements of mechanical engineering, and (c) naval subjects such as navigation, seamanship, ordnance, and Leadership. The naval subjects are our forte. We become more expert in these subjects than any lawyer becomes in law. We must, because we will later have men’s lives in our charge.

We get a lot of criticism for being narrow and specialized “trade school boys.” Here’s the answer to that. We have more than three times as many required units in arts courses as do M.I.T., California Tech, Purdue, and Lehigh. We have English, History and Government for four whole years. In that department we study American diplomatic history, naval history, European history, economics, American government, constitutional law, naval law, public speaking, and literary appreciation. Since coming here, I’ve read works of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Balzac, Ibsen, Goethe, Thackeray, and Hardy. In foreign languages we make our choice and study it for two years. There is no prerequisite. We start from scratch, and the emphasis is on speaking the language. In class we are not allowed to speak English, not even so much as to present the section or to give commands when marching to and from the class. This system has its points.

A man can get very discouraged here in his first three years. He is never in a position of great responsibility or command. He is a follower, not a leader. He is pounded and molded and taught obedience, fidelity, and loyalty. Then, in first class year, he reaches the ultimate. He is allowed to show initiative, to do the leading. But he must first have been a follower and a good one. Herein lies the great failure of many of our short-term reservists. They just couldn’t handle men. Leadership is an important course taught here academically. It comprises the elements of psychology and sociology and uses the case system in the main. Much of the time, the student must stand on his feet and tell the class and the instructor his ideas.

There were trying times in my case, when four years seemed a long while, when the first classmen were particularly exacting, when I got behind in academics, and when to quit seemed the only alternative. They don’t teach that kind of stuff here, and the weaklings fall by the wayside. This school has a high rate of attrition. It’s very common that an entering class will have 1200 and end up with 800. That’s a failure of 33.3 per cent. The government spends a good deal of money separating the chaff from the wheat.

As for Mr. Smith’s criticism that “the assignment of men who were surely fine command officers to posts in the academic department, where their lack of real knowledge of their subject is only too painfully obvious, is one of the most serious failings of the academic program,” I have this to say: Smith is not correct. Reason: he wasn’t here long enough to find out some pertinent facts. There are only two regular officers in the Department of English, History and Government. There are only two officers in the Department of Mathematics. Practically the whole Marine Engineering Department is composed of regular officers, but why not? The Seamanship and Navigation and the Ordnance and Gunnery Departments are also manned by regulars; again, why not? About 50 per cent of the Electrical Engineering instructors are officers, and most of them are good. The Executive Department is, of course, entirely composed of officers. The same is true of the Department of Aviation. Our instructors can teach aerodynamics just as well as technicians from laboratories at Langley Field. The civilian instructors are better paid than their counterparts in college. Only when he attains the rank of professor does a college instructor make more money.

Mr. Smith fails to realize that we get a broad education by traveling in Europe and other parts of the world on summer cruises. He quit before we started post-war cruises. He also fails to realize that we are producing naval officers, and that a naval officer must combine many attributes. Mr. Smith is way off on the discipline situation. He should have been in my platoon. I would have seen to it that he had the rudiments of military indoctrination. He peeves me, because he is joining the host of anti-military, anti-aristocracy, anti-lawand-order bolsheviks that find it so easy to criticize and so hard to be subordinates.

The Navy from its conception has been an autocracy, not a democracy. Where life and death are at stake, you cannot put questions to a vote! You cannot make yourself so close to your subordinates that they think you’re kidding when you give them an order. Too many Americans do not realize this. Too many have not had the proper training. Too many are disrespectful of elders, of traditions, and, far more important, of rules.

This is my conclusion: (1) Mr. Smith was a crybaby, and (2) he had illusions about this place before coming here. That is my opinion, and yet I am a man who finds fault with things, specifically the U.S.N.A., every day. This is a tough place, and when it comes to my college education, I don’t take off my hat to anyone, be he a Harvard, Yale, Princeton, M.I.T., or Wabash man. Naturally, to compare fairly, one must evaluate the standards of minimum requirements, and we have tough ones all the way around.

The material coming to the colleges from the high schools is not up to snuff. There has been a decline in training of the fundamental elements of honor and respect. Gentlemen, in the true sense of the word, are becoming fewer and fewer. Here is a place that gets some rough timber but does a hell of a lot of whittling! Our candidates are bright, have good eyes, are ambitious, but that’s all they have in common at the start.

FROM THE CIVILIAN PROFESSOR

HORACE J. FENTON

ANYONE judging the Naval Academy by Ralph Leo Smith’s article alone might easily get the impression that the institution should be immediately subjected to a Congressional investigation, and then revamped from the ground up. The factual statements in it are true. They are not imaginative or dressed up to make entertaining reading. I am sure of that, for I was there as instructor and associate professor from 1904 to 1924, and am fairly familiar with the system. The upperclassmen do assume considerable responsibility in the training of lower classmen, and sometimes they overdo the matter. The method of instruction is peculiar to the Academy and not above reproach. And yet as I read this paper I could not help wishing that the writer had stayed on, endured the whips and scorns of the Academy, and finished the course. Had he done so I feel very sure that he would have acquired a very different feeling for it, and would not have written in quite the same way.

Admittedly the Naval Academy is a hard school. There is none other in this country that demands so much of those who enter, or disciplines them so thoroughly, with the exception of the Military Academy at West Point. Uncle Sam pays midshipmen a salary and takes pretty good care of them too, in return for which he insists that they knuckle down to business about all the time. From reveille to taps, with the exception of brief periods called liberty hours, you are studying, reciting, drilling, or attending to some prescribed duty. The courses of study are prescribed. They are exactly the same for all midshipmen, and there is no snap course in the lot. You do what you are told to do, you meet satisfactorily every requirement, or you get out.

Mr. Smith got out not because of scholastic difficulties or any failure to live up to other requirements, but because the constant drilling, the rubbing by upperclassmen, and the apparent insufficiency of the instruction system disgusted him. He was within his rights to do so, but before we judge the Academy from his paper it is well to remember that some thousands of other American youths have been through the mill before him, have endured the drilling, the rubbing, and the long assignments, and that is why the Navy during the late war was in such good hands. Suppose King, Nimitz, “Bull” Halsey, and a few dozen other officers of almost equal stature had quit the Academy midway in the course because they hadn’t liked it?

Not only is the Academy a hard school, difficult to get into and demanding much of all who do, but in certain other respects it is quite unlike Yale, Harvard, or any other of the myriad educational institutions in this country. You are aware of the fact as soon as you enter the Academy yard. It is not a college. It is not even an educational institution. It is, as a naval captain once said to me, “a training school and nothing more.” It is a school into which youths are taken after a rather searching examination, and then for four years subjected to a mental and physical drilling calculated to lick them into shape for the exacting duties of command. The study curriculum stresses the practical; it touches the cultural rather lightly. Only in the Department of English are midshipmen led to the Pierian spring, and even that department leans to the practical, the art of plain composition.

In classrooms there is seldom any of that pleasant give-and-take between students and professor so characteristic of college classrooms. Seminars are unknown. Midshipmen go to class not to receive instruction as a rule, but to recite their lessons and be marked up or down for their pains. If one lingers after the hour to discuss a question with the instructor or professor, it is for a brief moment only and then at the risk of being termed a “greaser” by his fellows; that is, one seeking the inside track to the professorial good will.

Yet if the Academy is not fundamentally an educational institution, its graduates are by no means ignoramuses. In their four years of intensive training they have acquired a fund of practical information quite worth while, and the ability to use it. They have also acquired at least a smattering of literary culture, an upright carriage, habits of personal cleanliness, and a sufficient knowledge of the social amenities so that in whatever group they may afterwards be found they are not likely to be duds. Moreover, and this is one of the best gains of the Academy course, they have acquired the invaluable habit of putting the best foot forward every time. The phrases “I can’t” and “That’s not my line” are not in their vocabulary. To whatever duty they may be called they are more than likely to answer, “Aye, aye, sir,” and then go ahead and do the best they can. The habit has been drilled into them, and it sticks. That attitude should be drilled into every graduate of our collegiate institutions, but unfortunately it is not.

If Ralph Lee Smith found the Academy a hard school, I can well believe it. Every youth who ever was enrolled there found it hard. If the curriculum and the methods of instruction were not up to his expectations, I can easily see in what respects they were not. If he was treated rather brutally by a few upperclassmen, I sympathize with him. I have no respect for despots. But to his intimation, if not outright charge, that the Academy is a school of low grade, that its atmosphere breeds brutality and dishonesty, that it is a school which no self-respecting youth should enter, I take vigorous exception. In its capacity for turning raw and slouchy youths into upright, forceful men, for instilling in them a high sense of honor and respect for law, for drilling into them the habit of obedience to authority and that most helpful habit of doing their best in any situation, the Naval Academy is a superior institution.

FROM A RETIRED REAR ADMIRAL

GILBERT J. ROWCLIFF

IT is generally known that there is a proper channel through which suggestions for the betterment of the U.S. Naval Academy can be made. It is no less well known that the foremost educators of the United States have visited the Naval Academy often and have examined its methods. Indeed, for many years a distinguished Board of Visitors annually has analyzed and reviewed the performance of this school, and has made a report to the President of the United States, with recommendations. These reports are available to those who care about the merits of the matter.

The Naval Academy was established by Congress to fill a demonstrated need: to train young officers uniformly and adequately for the United States Navy. It does this, but it has never yet achieved a state of perfection. It is no “go as you please” diploma factory; nor is it a cultural finishing school of the plushy sort. It does strengthen the mental muscles of those who complete the course.

The Naval Academy enjoys some advantages which are usually the envy of educators: —

1. It is democratic as to entrance.

2. It is not dependent on the treasurer’s receipts or the popularity of instructors.

3. It controls all the student’s time.

4. It is highly progressive and has the finest equipment in the world for practical work.

5. The classes are small, and each midshipman must demonstrate his assimilation almost daily.

6. The principal instructors are not theoretical pedagogues without experience or responsibility. They may meet the midshipman of today in tight circumstances at sea tomorrow.

The Naval Academy has suffered from two major difficulties: —

1. It has not been able to crowd into four academic years and the summer cruises all the material desirable for a young officer’s training.

2. Under the entrance system it has not been able entirely to exclude young men who are temperamentally and psychologically unfit to become officers. However, it manages to eliminate most of these before graduation.

There is some reason to believe that during the war the Naval Academy had to bear additional difficulties: —

1. The already crowded course was shortened to three years and the crowded space became congested.

2. The number of officer instructors was diminished radically, while those retained were overburdened and unhappy at not being at sea.

3. A few young men took advantage of the appointive system to go to school in a security and immunity which for the time being appealed to them or their parents.

I became interested in the Naval Academy in 1897. I managed to enter, to graduate, and to serve for forty-seven years. As a plebe I was sometimes hazed, and early learned that it was unprofitable to lose my temper or my equilibrium. I was harassed sometimes by instructors and by the officers of the Department of Discipline. Generally I was too busy to browse comfortably in the library, and I was usually too tired to lie awake at night brooding over my troubles. Stupid as I was, I soon got the idea that it was up to me, even at the age of sixteen. My principal concern was my own deficiencies as related to the standards of a great institution which I seem to have recognized as more important than any individual in it.

Many changes have come to the Navy in fifty years, and great changes have been made in the Naval Academy to keep it up to date. It is a matter of pride that the graduates have steadily improved and advanced in professional and technical training, and that they are fully as good as in the past in character, dependability, courage, and maintenance of the Academy’s wonderful traditions.

During the war the graduates of the Naval Academy were able to take to themselves and assimilate a dilution of young and intelligent, but generally untrained, temporary officers in the ratio of about twelve to one without losing the war at sea. Results were accomplished by teamwork and common understanding, rather than by individual brilliance. No Navy but ours could have handled the stupendous job in the Pacific, in addition to vital operations elsewhere.

On the whole the long concatenation of staffs at the Naval Academy owes no apologies to anyone. Neither do the graduates. Apparently the intent of Congress has been rather well carried out.

I ALSO RESIGNED

ROBERT R. PARK

MINE is a unique position. I was one of 500 officers in the class of 1946, U.S.N.A., who served the required two years in Naval Service following graduation from the Academy and then resigned. Yet I find myself forced to defend the system.

To begin with, academics and the system must be differentiated. I do not defend academics at the Naval Academy. There is a definite need for a vigorous reorganization of the academic departments. But what Ralph Lee Smith has failed to realize is that the mission of the Naval Academy is to train officers for the fleet. This is a significant point, and perhaps it explains the paradox of the academic departments. The emphasis is to train, not to educate. If you receive education at the Naval Academy, consider yourself fortunate. But the training is superb, and by this excellent training, isn’t the Naval Academy fulfilling its function?

Does Mr. Smith expect geedunks at Kwajalein? Does he expect filets and mushrooms in the North Atlantic? Does he expect midwatches only once a week, and eight hours’ sleep a night? The Navy is austere. It is a tough life. The purpose of the system is to inculcate the will to accomplish the supreme task in the face of countless personal difficulties. It is a life of austerity, personal sacrifice, and service.

My conflict with the Navy came here. When I subjugated my personal desires to those of the Navy, I was happy. But there was the time we came into New York after four weeks on Operation Frostbite — I had the duty. There was the shore patrol in Kingston when the rest of the lads were enjoying the sights of Jamaica. There was the time I was summoned from Easter service in the mess hall to conduct signal drill for the division commander. I realized that my executive officer was actually on duty twenty-four hours a day, in port and at sea. The captain was always on the bridge. As responsibility increases, more and more personal sacrifice is demanded. The Navy is primary; your life, your interests, your wife, your family, all are secondary.

My friends at Annapolis tell me that the midshipmen, especially the plebes, arc being given privileges hitherto unthought of. The Navy Department and the Superintendent of the Naval Academy have a tremendous decision to make. Can personal sacrifice, severe working conditions, dullness, austerity, be impressed upon the midshipman’s mind by soft and silken ways?