Word: cadets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...business of stuffing knowledge into cadets is scorned by critics as "the fire-hose school of education." Too often, complain some West Point teachers, students just try to skate by with Cs--"2.0 and go," in cadet slang. "I just feel I'm on a fast-moving train," says Cadet Captain Lissa Young, the ranking female cadet and a top student. "You find yourself groping and grasping for things you'd like to take more time with. The Army breeds an attitude of 'Carry out the order with the approved solution.' Creativity here is stifled by the fear of failure...
...cadet will not "lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do," according to West Point's honor code. "Here in everything we do, we talk of honor," says Colonel James Anderson, the master of the sword (director of physical education). When an instructor orders "Cease work" in an exam, cadets literally throw down their pencils, as if they had become instantly hot to the touch. A cadet tennis-squad player who hurls his racquet in a match is off the team...
...questionable enemy "body counts" served up by senior military leaders--many of them academy graduates--"cut right against the integrity we were taught at West Point," concedes General Palmer, a deputy commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam. (His much criticized superior, General William Westmoreland, '36, was a cadet first captain and later superintendent of the academy.) The Viet Nam War is an awkward subject at West Point. In class, cadets are taught that the military leadership was not blameless, but most subscribe to a "stabbed in the back" theory. Says Cadet Borgerding: "The Army fought well, but their civilian...
...critics question whether West Point should exist at all. In an editorial titled "Is It Time to Abolish West Point?" the editor of the monthly Armed Forces Journal, Benjamin Schemmer, a West Point man ('54), noted that it costs taxpayers $226,190 a year to train and educate each cadet. Tongue in cheek, he went on to suggest that the West Point barracks be turned over to New York State as a prison facility...
...duties and responsibilities. "We really believed in 'Duty-Honor-Country,' " says retired Colonel John Wheeler Jr., class of '42, "and we still do. The place gets hold of you. When I marched in my first parade I broke down and cried." Open-minded and unafraid to criticize West Point, Cadet Captain Lissa Young is hardly a military martinet. Yet old grads will not be surprised to learn that when Young takes her place in the Long Gray Line on Saturdays, she too sometimes has to swallow back tears of pride. --By Evan Thomas