Fodder for Your Professional Reading: The Officer as a Teacher

摘要

Some identity seems to exist between the terms officer and teacher in the US Army. In spite of the Air Force's roots in the Army and West Point, is it possible that no similar identity exists in the Air Force? One indicator might be that Bradley, Eisenhower, Patton, and many other Army officers spoke of deliberate mentoring programs run by their seniors to educate their own band of brothers. Based on my own study of Air Force memoirs and biographies (and my line experience), such programs have not been nearly as common in the post-World War Ⅱ Air Force. Bradley, Tasker Bliss, Douglas MacArthur, and William Westmoreland all served tours at West Point and still reached the pinnacle of the Army. Bradley and Bliss served more than one tour there. Mac-Arthur and Westmoreland both served as superintendent and went on to become chief of staff. However, the only faculty member of the Air Force Academy to become chief of staff so far is Gen Ron Fogleman, who had only a two-year tour at the academy. There, as at the Naval Academy, the superintendent's job is almost always a "sunset tour," and for many years that has frequently been the case for AFROTC professors and war college teachers.