Early In The Twentieth Century, pilots visited remote islands by air, dropping off goods for natives. On subsequent visits, these pilots noticed that the natives had built flimsy stick-and-twig replicas of their airplanes. Anthropologists named this phenomenon "cargo cult behavior" because the intent was to obtain more of the cargo (goodies) provided by the visiting advanced culture. The islanders assumed that by re-creating the symbol (the airplane), the desired goods would magically reappear. Fortunately, we no longer rely on cargo cult thinking to fulfill our needs, right? Maybe not. If you look at how our industry began training pilots in the 1990s, you'll see that we may indeed be engaged in cargo cult thinking. During the past two decades, the FAA and some industry educators assumed it was possi- ble to re-create an event (i.e., produce private pilots with airline-type safety skills) by re-creating the symbol (i.e., using airline-type training strategies and philosophy).
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