Do you feel soldiers are better or worse off with the new approaches for corrective training?

2019-05-17T05:02:34-04:00

This is an opinion based question: With the big push for corrective training in the form of physical exercise to become only a quick attention grabber in the past few years, do you feel the soldiers are better or worse for it? Do you think we have become more professional and mutually respectful from this change? Do you believe this was a good direction, why or why not? What do you typically do now for corrective action and do you think it is more effective than our previous smoke session corrections?

I’m asking this for no particular reason really, just a follow up on an interesting debate I saw ensue in the office. I think in general, officers seem to think the change is for the better by giving a more involved role to the leader than exercises, but I tend to find NCOs feel as though our main tool has been taken away and that things like counselings and essays don’t really make effective means for correcting actions and discipline building. Just interested to see what others have to weigh in.

Response by CW4 Craig Urban made May 17 at 2019 5:05 AM

2019-05-17T05:05:27-04:00

NCOs run pt. Generals are to old and fat. What about Patton
Schwartzkof?

Response by SSG Jose M. Hernandezsanchez made May 17 at 2019 6:39 AM

2019-05-17T06:39:46-04:00

SSG Mistark,
Well, first and foremost I joined the Army back in 1992 when corrective training involved smoking the hell out of Soldiers. Must of us during that time, we got the point after the "smoking session", that's just the way it was.
I honestly think that corrective training starts at home with parents. When I or one of my other brothers messed up, it was dealt with right away, which brings my first point...deal with the possible problem right away or as soon as possible. One other thing is that the correction has to be related to the incident or problem area. And this is when most of us, me included make/made mistakes when applying an effective corrective training...we just smoked them.
Me, I'm not totally opposed to essays as long they are performed correctly and related to the incident. We all had a Soldier who was or are always late for formation, and what do we do? Have him/her show up 10-15 minutes prior to formation, correct? But in reality, what is that going to do? I would have him/her conduct some research, and type an essay on the importance of been at the right place, at the right time APA style, then present it to you. And if you have done essays APA style, you know is a little bit of work. Give the Soldier a time frame to complete it. I had a Soldier conduct a research on backward planning because he kept showing up late to work. After the task, he found himself waiting outside the building almost 15 minutes prior to work call.
Some Soldiers need more drastic measures then others, it depends. But the main thing here is that the correction has to be dealt with right away, and related to the deficiency.

Response by SPC Private RallyPoint Member made May 17 at 2019 10:58 AM

2019-05-17T10:58:36-04:00

So I heard stories of an army way back when like the 70’s time period where you did 20 push ups and got told to get up and fix yourself. But that’s a time when everyone is highly professional and didn’t rely on the Army to do it for them. People knew what was right and they weren’t raised to be little twats by their parents. So that type of corrective training where you doing 20 push-ups was just to say “you messed up” here’s a way to remember it a little better was fitting. Then you got to the 90’s and 2000’s where smoking the hell out of people was the way of life. Now the army wants to transition back to a phase where everyone was much more professional and you don’t have someone inchworming down the road in full kit past 2000 because he showed up unshaven. However in my opinion the type of people joining the army now are not the type to have the capacity for being personally responsible anymore. For every 20 soldiers (given the same demographic of straight out of high school since we know 30 year old SPC’s are pretty squared away usually) I’d say there is 1-4 decent soldiers that only need to be shown what is right so they don’t make a wrong. Whereas the rest are all stubborn little mama’s boys with zero ambition to change themselves they think they’re smarter and better than their team leaders and decide to not respect a single word they say. I’d rather see people like that get the piss smoked out of them but on the other hand I think it’s more humiliating to be discharged from the army without an honorable

Response by SGT Nicholas M. made May 17 at 2019 11:55 AM

2019-05-17T11:55:57-04:00

So far, it has been a Win/Lose in my opinion. It was taken away because toxic NCOs were abusing their power, so now everyone lost the corrective tool to cover the CoC's back end. The flip side to this, is that command teams tend to only utilize UCMJ as corrective action when a large mistake has been made. In my experience, my command team will not push article 15's for repeat infractions of policy violations, tardiness, etc. It leaves us a little toothless when we write counseling after counseling with the "magic bullet" at the bottom and nothing ever comes of it. The only thing I can actually do at my level is make them write essays or papers on the issue. According to our JAG office, if a Soldier is late, I cannot make them do physical training because the action I am trying to correct has nothing to do with physical fitness. So I could make them show up even earlier, but that would also require that I show up earlier than them as well, and so on so forth.

TL;DR: Good, non-abusive leaders lost a valuable tool to correct minor deficiencies instead of pushing paper all the time, and command teams are so used to not pushing paper for article 15's unless someone has committed a serious violation. So it makes us powerless to do anything but assign menial and tedious taskings that leave our Soldiers with nothing but contempt instead of respect.

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made May 17 at 2019 12:53 PM

2019-05-17T12:53:27-04:00

This is an old army story. I asked a CSM if he ever screwed up in his career to which he replied yes. He was told to cut a parade field with scissors. He told me he never screwed up again.

Response by PO2 Russell Houston made May 17 at 2019 9:44 PM

2019-05-17T21:44:58-04:00

The true test of "corrective action" will only be seen on the battle field

Response by MSG Private RallyPoint Member made May 18 at 2019 12:30 AM

2019-05-18T00:30:50-04:00

Regardless of the direction of the corrective action, the end goal is to educate the Soldier of their error, right? A quick smoke session is, of course, an immediate action. But what about remedial action? One could think this being one and the same of basic rifle marksmanship. Most times, a quick fix action resolves the problem. Other times, a more in depth action is required. Understanding the Soldier and the infraction will get you to understand the best way to correct the infraction. Some would say that a quick smoke session is the best COA. But really, all you are doing is improving their PT score but not really addressing the problem? That is why I go with essays. When one of my Soldiers screw the pooch, I have them write an essay addressing their infraction, the ramifications of their actions that they can face and what could happen to the unit due to their brainfart. Educating their body is just a quick/immediate action. Educating their mind is a much more effective remedial action.

Response by Maj Private RallyPoint Member made May 25 at 2019 9:12 AM

2019-05-25T09:12:21-04:00

I joined the Marine Corps in 1993, and they were asking the same question. “If I can’t call them a blistering, profanity-laced tirade of bad names, and have them clean the garbage cans with their tongues, and PT through the night, and PUNCH or SLAP them, how will I be able to effectively train them?” Hazing and physical assault had only been recently outlawed. “But they’ll never learn how to polish their boots properly if I can’t haze them! They’ll back-talk if I can’t beat them!”

Fast-forward to today. Everybody who went through with the “new” rules has retired already. Was there a radical spike in disobedience, NJPs, or courts-martial? Of course not. Americans are smart enough to learn how to learn by simply telling them. In other countries, with illiterate peasants who are naturally belligerent, this may not be true.

And yet, just a few years ago, a combat-hardened drill instructor at Parris Island hazed a recruit so badly, he jumped off the third floor stairs to kill himself. Stuff like, putting him in a clothes dryer and turning it on. Where TF did that come from?? At what point did he believe this was acceptable? Did he really believe that this sort of abuse would make a better, more squared-away Marine, who would look back at that and THANK him for toughening him up?

Response by SFC Francisco Rosario made May 27 at 2019 1:56 PM

2019-05-27T13:56:48-04:00

The problem with this new approach is (in my opinion) the "One Size Fits All" mentality. Not all service members are the same, nor do they function and react the same. When i was still on active duty I would taylor the corrective traning based on the Soldier. It was never the same, however the intent and purpose was the same. The results were good for the most part; there was one or two that needed a bit extra training before the results got better. This is the way i always approached corrective training because even if I had two Soldiers committed the same offense, the training was different because they were different.