Posted on Oct 23, 2015
SSG Timothy Sharpe
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What is it that the cadre and policy makers in NCOES schools think they are accomplishing by suppressing 240 years of culture. Secondly, I don't know of anyone who after the school was like "oh I better not cuss now I'm a warrior leader"
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SSG Daniel Deiler
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Drinking was and could still certainly be argued that drinking is a huge part of Military culture. It has attributed to many deaths, injuries, broken families and dreams, and has killed many a career. I doubt you would advocate that alcohol be glorified and supported by today's professional Soldier. Just like the glorification of alcohol, cussing is neither professional not conducive to a professional work environment. We're not talking about when bullets are flying...but when in a garrison or work environment, (whether that is at a range, an office or the bay of the motor pool) cussing has no place in the profession of Arms or oft used tool in a leaders toolbox.
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CW3 Jim Norris
CW3 Jim Norris
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Amen
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MSG Master Leader Course Facilitator
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It's a matter of professionalism and maturity. You will get there
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SFC James Needles
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Curtailing the use of profanity in WLC or any NCOES course for that matter is not about suppressing a culture or tradition. It is entirely about focusing on the course work to make your self a better NCO and leader. Its about professionalism and using tact to express your concerns, points of view, instructions and motivating others. No one expects all soldiers to just stop swearing because they set foot into an NCO Academy, that's just not going to happen. When you, however, as an NCO are conducting training you need the soldiers you are training to be focused on the training material and the lessons. Use of profanity can often be a distraction to the troops. I know this from personal experience, having been the NCO conducting training and reading AAR's later on and being advised by my superiors that my use of profanity was not only offensive to some of the soldiers but was also a distraction. That happened only one time. If you cant effectively train and get the information to your soldiers then your not effective as an NCO. I was once told that swearing does not impress people, it merely shows how illiterate you are.
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1SG Operations Sergeant
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It has been said clearly by many in several different ways about professionalism to your post, this includes the regulation govern this action.

Remember, we are an example to what the World sees and our actions however small and minuet changes the worlds view, simply, we're Ambassadors like it or not.

When a Soldier makes a mistake, it doesn't single them out but brands the Military or specifically the branch that owns them within their ranks. People formulate opinions based on our actions and the results taken especially when it violates their opinion to what should've been done. Not to stray too far off, we tend to want more severe punishment for others but mercy when we're in the line of fire.

There's many regulations, MILPER messages and policies that are not adhered too but over the years have been updated and brought to light to change a pattern of behavior that has caused much incidents and concerns within the unit, battalion, etc., the military branch or DoD.

The truth, professionalism is a must, would working at a Top 500 organization be acceptable with this behavior? Would it create workplace hardship? Professionalism to how we speak and carry ourselves is critical for effective communication that leads into diversity. Diversity has many avenues [layers] that goes beyond race, color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomics, etc. The point... The Military has a "Zero Tolerance" for EO situations among other areas such as SHARP, Drugs, etc.

My advise to those wanting a deeper understanding, not just the, "Regulation say so" but to be able to advise those who needs a better understanding, research diversity and workplace hostilities. Look at languages in the workplace. None of us wants to be belittled so we shouldn't do it ourselves, therefore we need to learn better ways to communicate effectively to bridge together our differences and become a better T.E.A.M.-S. (Together Each Achieve More - Successfully). As NCOs we need to keep it N.C.O. (Neat Clean and Orderly).

This was suppose to be my two cents but I seemed to have drop a few more coins.

To close, In 2006, when I was an instructor at WLC, an incident occurred when some Soldiers were playing and asking questions about a scene in Living Color to which a Soldier who was an MP stated the correct answer using the N-word. This sparked several issues the following day later when the instructor present said everyone laughed.

The point, the regulation clearly states the use of certain words that resulted in the Soldier [MP] not being able to work traffic and endure other issues with his unit.

Certain professions must watch these strict guidelines as there job depends upon professionalism, such as law enforcement, medical, dental, etc.

This is not the complete reason for not cursing but it should help clarify some possible reasons, besides, if my children curse, well, I don't need a regulation to take action.
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SSgt Alex Robinson
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Look at it this way the use of profanity is often thought to show a lack of command of the English language. If you want to get your point across speak to people with respect. Many people such as myself feel the use of profanity is not necessary and unprofessional
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CW5 Jim Steddum
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So, the line in the NCO Creed... "No one is more professional than I..." I realize the Creed is younger than me, but does it suppress NCOs--or does professionalism not include refraining from uncontrolled profanity?
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SSG David Spooner
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You can be professional and not curse. Yeah, I've dropped my fair share of F bombs and other 4 letter words, which were usually directed at a Soldier who had stepped on his johnson. But the most effective butt chewing I recieved in my 20+ years involved no loud voice, almost zero eye contact and not a single cuss word. When I left MSG Duvalls office, I walked under the door. So you can get your point across extremely effectively and not use a loud or profane voice.
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MSG Kevin Elliott
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It has always been about professionalism, and I'll date myself my saying I went through PNCOC in 1981, BNCOC in 1984, and ANCOC in 1987. It was like that back then, but that didn't mean you wouldn't be taken to the woodline for a little one-on-one, that might include some profanity.
One of my Brigade Commanders explained that he used language appropriate to the situation. This was based on his experiences in Viet Nam and people getting wounded and killed because he flet he didn't get the point across when he didn't curse. Great leader, no matter what.
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SGT Dave Tracy
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Edited 10 y ago
Huh? I went in 2011, and I don't remember hearing that one. Maybe its new. Perhaps its about learning "professionalism". I do know that in combat arms, the Infantry specifically, you don't greet people in the morning without dropping F-bombs regardless of the rank of those doing the greeting. Even in the Reserves there is cussing, but not in WLC now...okay.
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SSG CH-47 Helicopter Repairer
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I can see why they are doing it. I always here the term the Army is a Profession and we are Professionals, so with my thinking is if we are going to walk around as professionals then we better start talking like professionals, I have asked Senior NCOs and Officers alike to please watch their mouths in my work are. I am not saying that i dont cuss or things like that but the work place isnt the best place to drop the F-Bomb 20 times in a conversation.
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SFC Senior Small Group Leader (Ssgl)
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It's a professionalism block. Most Soldiers drop an F-bomb from time to time but many don't have any other vocabulary than 4 letter words. The school house; weather PME, or
MOS schools is a time to reinforce the fact that we are proffesionals and need to communicate as such
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SSG Gerald King
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Profanity is NEVER needed to get your point across! I rarely ever swear and when I do, it is usually when I am alone and I am cussing out this dang computer!
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CW4 Angel C.
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Well the point is that being an NCO or Officer is a big responsibility so it's a way to remind you that you are a professional. I think it's acceptable around your friends but not around others and specially not around minors or civilians.
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SPC Carson S.
SPC Carson S.
>1 y
Well put, sir. Professionalism is a must when it comes to being a leader.
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SSG Technical Inspector
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#1 you are in a professional environment
#2 as well as in a professional business "ARMY"
#3 if one cannot control his/her self for a short period in an environment where one is to present themselves professionally (i.e. Academy). How can one be expected and/or trusted to go out and lead, mentor, and train young Soldiers professionally.

What gets me is that so quickly Soldiers (NCO's) forget they are PROFESSIONALS...
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SFC Patricia Zechel
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Maybe its time for the cadre and the policy makers in NCOES schools to start suppressing a 240 years of culture. From a Biblical standpoint, when a person is cursing, it causes bitterness and not for the goodness (grace) of the person who is cursing; and specially, it causes bitterness to the person who is listening to it. Also I would like to post this scripture about Taming the Tongue. It comes from the book of James 3:1-12 KJV:
3 My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.
2 For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.
3 Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body.
4 Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.
5 Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!
6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.
7 For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind:
8 But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
9 Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.
10 Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
11 Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?
12 Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.
So if anyone one who thinks profanity is a cool thing and thinks it builds people esteem up, well..think again.
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CSM Troy McGilvray
CSM Troy McGilvray
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Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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CSM Harold Burleson
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In reference to your comment on "suppressing 240 years of culture" I think you are referring to a Culture of Profanity you think is acceptable in our military ranks: Since listening to my Mentors decades ago from the Cold War and believing in them by following their Lead, I have been a Big Fan of the "No Profanity" common sense approach. Teaching our Warrior Leaders to Stand Up and give a Clean Speech to a mixed audience of military personnel and civilians is a Challenge that must be overcome at the primary level. After all, these young warriors are our future and we want them to be the very best in the business of representing our military on a professional level. They will not have to hesitate or be fearful of speaking when someone shove a microphone and camera in their face in an attempt to broadcast the information to a wide-range of listeners and viewers, maybe worldwide or presented on social media. Long Story Short; would you want to stand up and give a speech to a broad audience with your speech interlaced with profanity? If the answer is Yes, then I would like to be in the audience and have a word of prayer with you afterwards. You will have a life changing experience for the good, thanks to someone that deeply cares about others!
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SFC Don Ward
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You obviously don't know what the word "culture" means. The Army does not have a culture of bad language, any more than the infantry has a culture of growing idiots. Words do mean something, and if you have to rely on profanity you need to go back to school.
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MSgt Daniel Attilio
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I cannot recall any of the instructors at Career Course or Advance Course employing profanity as element in conveying ideas and lessons. Nor can I think back to those leaders I considered impressive as resorting to profanity to get a message across. Sure it came out occasionally and then there were the rare times you were bathed in profanity but that was not in groups, it was always a heated and targeted application. Profanity is not a norm amongst professionals.
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SSG Byron Hewett
SSG Byron Hewett
10 y
Semper Fi
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SGT James Bretney
SGT James Bretney
>1 y
Profanity is the norm if you are under extreme stress like gunfire
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CPT Manager
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Cussing, swearing while being unprofessional adds to the aire of intimidation. What kind of results, as a leader, do you get when you intimidate?
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SGT James Bretney
SGT James Bretney
>1 y
a leader who dominates

stay in your lane officer
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>1 y
SGT James Bretney a leader that dominated, is not that approachable, bad for the soldiers, rotten for the mission.
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SGT James Bretney
SGT James Bretney
>1 y
whatever

If the NCO uses foul language, too bad. So what? there are worse things.

Political correctness kills more soldiers than the enemy.
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Capt Jeff S.
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Edited 10 y ago
Profanity should be used sparingly. There is a time and place for everything and Gen Patton understood that much very well -- at least when it came to motivating his troops.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army:

"Be seated.

Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Battle is the most significant competition in which a man can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would be killed in a major battle. Every man is scared in his first action. If he says he's not, he's a goddamn liar. But the real hero is the man who fights even though he's scared. Some men will get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour, and for some it takes days. But the real man never lets his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.

All through your army career you men have bitched about what you call 'this chicken-shit drilling.' That is all for a purpose—to ensure instant obedience to orders and to create constant alertness. This must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who is not always on his toes. But the drilling has made veterans of all you men. You are ready! A man has to be alert all the time if he expects to keep on breathing. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit. There are four hundred neatly marked graves in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job—but they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before his officer did.

An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is bullshit. The bilious bastards who write that stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real battle than they do about fucking. And we have the best team—we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards we're going up against.

All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single man in the army plays a vital role. So don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Americans don't say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the GI shits, has a job to do.

Each man must think not only of himself, but think of his buddy fighting alongside him. We don't want yellow cowards in the army. They should be killed off like flies. If not, they will go back home after the war, goddamn cowards, and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men.

One of the bravest men I saw in the African campaign was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were moving toward Tunis. I stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing up there. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, sir.' 'Isn't it a little unhealthy up there right now?' I asked. 'Yes sir, but this goddamn wire has got to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No sir, but you sure as hell do.' Now, there was a real soldier. A real man. A man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty appeared at the time.

And you should have seen the trucks on the road to Gabès. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they crawled along those son-of-a-bitch roads, never stopping, never deviating from their course with shells bursting all around them. Many of the men drove over 40 consecutive hours. We got through on good old American guts. These were not combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost.

Sure, we all want to go home. We want to get this war over with. But you can't win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it. We want to get the hell over there and clean the goddamn thing up, and then get at those purple-pissing Japs. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. So keep moving. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler.

When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually. The hell with that. My men don't dig foxholes. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have or ever will have. We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.

Some of you men are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you'll all do your duty. War is a bloody business, a killing business. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood or they will spill yours. Shoot them in the guts. Rip open their belly. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it's not dirt, it's the blood and gut of what was once your best friend, you'll know what to do.

I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We're going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.

There will be some complaints that we're pushing our people too hard. I don't give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit either. I want men like the lieutenant in Libya who, with a Luger against his chest, swept aside the gun with his hand, jerked his helmet off with the other and busted the hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he picked up the gun and he killed another German. All this time the man had a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you!

Don't forget, you don't know I'm here at all. No word of that fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell they did with me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamned Germans. Some day, I want them to rise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl 'Ach! It's the goddamned Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again!'

Then there's one thing you men will be able to say when this war is over and you get back home. Thirty years from now when you're sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, 'What did you do in the great World War Two?' You won't have to cough and say, 'Well, your granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say 'Son, your granddaddy rode with the great Third Army and a son-of-a-goddamned-bitch named George Patton!'

All right, you sons of bitches. You know how I feel. I'll be proud to lead you wonderful guys in battle anytime, anywhere. That's all."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton%27s_speech_to_the_Third_Army
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CW3 David Covey
CW3 David Covey
10 y
Always loved that speech.. Great motivation.. Part of why I wanted to enlist. Not one commander today would dare give a speech like that..
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