Mandatory Military Service

Agreed Brian

As I said prior, Mandatory Service has a multitude of aspects that make it worthwhile or useless.

Country, Management, Position, Temperament etc all play a part in if it is worthwhile or a compete waste of time/resources....

“	Visit their first prostitute Get puking drunk a couple of times Learn to smoke	”

It's worth remembering that many of the people announcing the virtues of military service and announcing that it "made a man" of them mean nothing more than the list above...

I don't see compulsory civilian service as that different to military. Besides, it's unlikely to ever happen because some one is always going to be making too much money providing whatever service the conscripts would provide instead.

If my taxes are going to be spent funding a bunch of people to make busy I'd prefer it to be in terms of providing a choice of training and education. Bring back full grants for university study and fund apprenticeship courses with major employers (and bring some of those employers, like the post office and the railways, and the gas and electricity suppliers back under govt control).

When I interview graduates for jobs I am not interested in how many people they can cook for, or anything else they can achieve when they are forced to do it. I want to know how much they can motivate themselves to do and if they know when to ask questions and how to ask them.

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Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

“	Originally Posted By: john100 It's worth remembering that many of the people announcing the virtues of military service and announcing that it "made a man" of them mean nothing more than the list above...	”

Proof?

“	Proof?	”

I've talked to lots of (ie many) old codgers with fond memories of their drunken youth in military service dedicated to a dying empire who mean nothing more than that. Read the torygraph some time and tell me if the "bring back national service" articles (there is usually one somewhere in among all the "let the police pistol whip black people" articles) and show me there's genuinely anything more high minded than this to it.

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

“	Originally Posted By: john100 I've talked to lots of (ie many) old codgers with fond memories of their drunken youth in military service dedicated to a dying empire who mean nothing more than that. Read the torygraph some time and tell me if the "bring back national service" articles (there is usually one somewhere in among all the "let the police pistol whip black people" articles) and show me there's genuinely anything more high minded than this to it.	”

I guess the UK military is far different than...


As for the US, of course the drunken times and partying are par for the course and enjoyed, but the majority of people I know, met, served with, all have expressed some benefit from their service.
If you talk to a wounded soldier/vet, even though they had a bad experience, many will talk about how they wouldn't have changed things and their service to others was a reward.
Even those currently against the war and those in power who ordered it, still express the good things they did or tried to do and what they gained from their service on that front.

Agreed, and many would have few other venues for such improvement.

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"It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought the fool, than to open it and prove it so." KungFuTze
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." T. Geisel

All that is very nice but it has nothing to do with compulsory national service. I have no doubt that those who choose the military and choose to remain in the military do so because the choice makes sense to them in terms of benefits outweighing drawbacks... That is very, very different to compulsory national service.

If you want to talk about compulsory service you are going to have to go back to at least the time of the draft for the vietnam war, and that was so relatively easy to avoid you might well have to go back further. I can point you to lots and lots of people who wish their experiences as a result of that draft were anything like as good a thing as a mere waste of time.

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

“	many would have few other venues for such improvement.	”

because they live in a society structured that way. Giving people the choice to improve themselves in return for military service is fine. Insisting they undertake military service in order to improve themselves is very different.

In my experience of recruiting in a sector where good staff are like gold dust I can honestly say I have no interest in any training the military provide. Instead I find I end up repeatedly recruiting people like myself, who were given a degree education in return for enduring a few years poverty and paying exhorbitant taxes afterwards - because such people are the ones with the necessary skills. In addition to the essential core skills for which a military background is useless all of these people have absorbed more of the essential "soft" skills than those who come from a military background. (That includes candidates with a US military background, sorry).

I'm suggesting that instead of compulsory military service the state look at ways to provide more training more useful to a civilian career and "soft" skills more directly relevant to civilian life.

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

sammy : "....job or no job"

your just too hardcore for me

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"...any theory that satisfies the facts demands assumptions which are completely absurd."

Aleister Crowley

“	Originally Posted By: john100 In my experience of recruiting in a sector where good staff are like gold dust I can honestly say I have no interest in any training the military provide. Instead I find I end up repeatedly recruiting people like myself, who were given a degree education in return for enduring a few years poverty and paying exhorbitant taxes afterwards - because such people are the ones with the necessary skills. In addition to the essential core skills for which a military background is useless all of these people have absorbed more of the essential "soft" skills than those who come from a military background. (That includes candidates with a US military background, sorry). I'm suggesting that instead of compulsory military service the state look at ways to provide more training more useful to a civilian career and "soft" skills more directly relevant to civilian life.	”

Sorry, can't disagree more. I received the most essential, useful and profitable skills for my career while in the military. I use those skills every single day, both tangible and intangible. (I also learned some skills that may or may not be essential, like how to do a proper pub crawl and still make it to work in the morning; and while I doubt I'll ever have to disarm a claymore mine in the course of my day, I can treat a sucking chest wound better than anyone else I know.)

While there are certainly some useless ****bags who didn't take advantage of what was available to them and who pi$$ed and moaned their whole 4 years and are now useless as workers -- that was not my experience at all nor that of the majority of people I served with.

Conversely, a majority of the people I went to college with couldn't figure out how to get a paper bag off their head if you printed the instructions inside it for them. Hence, I firmly believe that college is a heartily useless institution for most citizens who would do better to learn an actual trade than waste upwards of 50K (and climbing) on an average U.S. college education and come out not knowing how to actually DO anything.

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"Pain can be a great teacher of compassion and humility."~ Unkotare-san

"Whatever the case, it proves that countless disasters can be prevented by simply assuming everyone you're working with is a moron." ~ Adam Brown, 5 Tiny Mistakes...

“	Originally Posted By: bobblehead Agreed, and many would have few other venues for such improvement.	”

My just-graduated-from-high-school kung fu brother signed up for the Navy, he starts in July/Aug. He saw the armed services as the best way to earn money and gain skills in our lousy economy...plus he wants to jump out of planes and go diving

...at least he won't be on land in Iraq or Afghanistan...right?

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It's going to differ from industry to industry, in different countries, and every one is going to have their own experiences. The main reason mine are so radically different from your own is, I suspect, partly the specialist nature of what I do and partly the very different nature of our university experience.

“	how to do a proper pub crawl and still make it to work in the morning	”

An essential of any good degree course.

“	I can treat a sucking chest wound better than anyone else I know	”

I can get a drowning paddler out of a river faster than anyone else I know (and have done so more than once or twice) as a direct result of my student days.

“	there are certainly some useless ****bags who didn't take advantage of what was available to them and who pi$$ed and moaned their whole 4 years and are now useless as workers	”

The same applies to graduates. Not much of an argument for compulsory military service which is supposed to "fix" such people.

“	a majority of the people I went to college with couldn't figure out how to get a paper bag off their head if you printed the instructions inside it for them	”

No offense to your alma mater but that is due to the nature and structure of the institution. These people would either have failed their degree at mine or dropped out because they couldn't cope with all the extra stuff besides just "learning" that was part of getting a degree. It's no coincidence that a couple of years after I graduated the govt started messing with universities to make courses more "applicable" and cutting funding and now I find there is never any one more than a couple of years younger than myself on any major project. Oh well, means I don't have to worry about younger competition.

“	come out not knowing how to actually DO anything.	”

This is the crux of the problem. A degree is about getting an education - not about learning whatever will be out of date by the time you graduate. All those saps who thought their java course was going to make them millionaires are now realising they should've studied ancient roman history and learned how to gather, process, and use information rather than how to "DO" something.

“	waste upwards of 50K	”

And here you have the core of the problem. Selling degrees to the highest bidder, however many essays you expect that bidder to write in addition, is never going to produce quality results. My wife and her sister were the first from their family to go to university. As children of unemployed parents in an area of chronic third generation unemployment they were never going to be able to pay for a degree - so the govt paid for them and both have gone on to pay back the investment both in taxes and in service to society many times over. The reason my sister in law's patients can see a doctor without fighting a criminally uncaring health insurer or fighting with beaurocracy is that she got her training at the state's expense and is therefor prepared to work for the state's benefit.

__________________
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you
High mountains are a feeling
I don't need to sell my soul, he's already in me

“	Originally Posted By: john100 All that is very nice but it has nothing to do with compulsory national service. I have no doubt that those who choose the military and choose to remain in the military do so because the choice makes sense to them in terms of benefits outweighing drawbacks... That is very, very different to compulsory national service. If you want to talk about compulsory service you are going to have to go back to at least the time of the draft for the vietnam war, and that was so relatively easy to avoid you might well have to go back further. I can point you to lots and lots of people who wish their experiences as a result of that draft were anything like as good a thing as a mere waste of time.	”

You were in the States during the Nam draft and can actually speak for the people drafted?

I have 2 uncles and numerous friends, all drafted, who had no actual plans to join the military, that all talk about what they gained, what they learned and how it made them what they are and how that probably wouldn't have happened had they not been drafted.
Sure, the draft sucked, but it still did have an effect

I have a few Israeli friends who all say that while they felt it was pretty sh1tty while they were in, they all grew to the point where, especially when amongst us fortunate (read spoiled) Americans, they were glad for the perceived changes it made in their minds and bodies.

__________________
"It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought the fool, than to open it and prove it so." KungFuTze
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." T. Geisel

“	Originally Posted By: john100 It's going to differ from industry to industry, in different countries, and every one is going to have their own experiences. The main reason mine are so radically different from your own is, I suspect, partly the specialist nature of what I do and partly the very different nature of our university experience.	”

Absolutely, and your assessment of the state of U.S. universities is fairly accurate.

To just carry the "dumb" a few more integers, a friend of mine who graduated from a college in England was constantly getting this question from American job interviewers: "It says here you have a degree?" "Yes." "But it says here that you only attended college for 3 years." "Yes." "You can't get a degree in 3 years, son."

I told him to change his resume to show just his graduation date and the degree. It worked -- no one ever asked him that series of questions again.

__________________
"Pain can be a great teacher of compassion and humility."~ Unkotare-san

"Whatever the case, it proves that countless disasters can be prevented by simply assuming everyone you're working with is a moron." ~ Adam Brown, 5 Tiny Mistakes...