One of the most publicized projects for servicemen and women is the United States Armed Forces Institute, although most of the people who have read the many articles on soldiers studying auto-mechanics in European foxholes and sailors learning Russian in Quonset huts in the Aleutians would be hard put to identify the agency which sponsors such a program. The establishment of USAFI was no mere accident. It is an official Army and Navy correspondence school operated for the purpose of enabling the serviceman to continue his civilian education while in the service. It was established as such under War Department Directive in the fall of 1942 and has been administered by trained officer and enlisted personnel of the Army’s Information and Education Division and the Navy’s Educational Services Section.
USAFI has had an existence of almost three years during which it grew from the nebulous to the concrete. It has literally followed the soldier to his foxhole and the sailor aboard his ship. Its importance to servicemen overseas can be realized if you consider that the European Theater Branch Headquarters of USAFI in London last March was handling 1,100 applications a day for correspondence and self-teaching courses from Army and Navy personnel in Europe.
This is not the time for an appraisal of USAFI but rather an opportunity to point out the crisis it faces. Two things have suddenly contributed to its importance and emphasized its significance: the discharge of men from the services and the education clause of the GI Bill of Rights. USAFI can be an important means of making easier the transition from soldier to student. In line with this role USAFI has already endorsed a plan drawn up by civilian educators for accrediting military education and education gained while in the service and has promulgated it for the guidance of all school authorities. The serviceman knows that his school principal, through the publications of the American Council on Education and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, has been given concrete recommendations on how to convert his military training into credits which he can offer toward a diploma from his high school.
This plan is set down in a book entitled Guide to Evaluation of Educational Experiences in the Armed Services, published by the American Council on Education, Washington, D. C., and known as the Tuttle Handbook. Every high-school principal and superintendent should have this book so that he will be familiar with the procedure that education officers in the forces, and the servicemen they counsel and represent, arc working with.
This plan is the fairest and most intelligent that could be set up under the circumstances. Its principal recommendations are four:
(1) That the high school grant a maximum of 4 credits or 2 units, the college credit not to exceed ½ a semester, for the successful completion of basic or recruit training, the credit to vary if and as the duration of the training period varies from the usual 12 or 13 weeks.
(2) That credit be granted for the successful completion of an acceptable specialist training course of 12 weeks or more, acceptable being defined as that which represents educational experiences for which there arc counterparts in civilian life or secondary school curricula; in other words, training courses which have acknowledged educational value, the amount of credit for any given course to be determined by the recommendations for that course in the Guide.
(3) That for each USAFI, Coast Guard, or Marine Corps Institute correspondence course satisfactorily completed, the high school or college grant credit in accordance with the amount of credit recommended for that course in the Guide.
(4) That schools recognize the possibility of granting academic credit for general, over-all educational growth and experience while in the service, even if this educational achievement is not demonstrable in terms of formal military instruction. The school should recognize the fact that a soldier or sailor who has been on foreign station or aboard ship doing the ordinary military duties assigned him has undoubtedly achieved a certain amount of educational growth even though he cannot point to specific advances made in any given subject.
That in brief is the formulated accreditation policy on which educational officers in the field are working. The plan also includes further recommendations for officers’ indoctrination, officer candidate, and informal off-duty courses.
It was my experience in the European theater that the Navy educational officer in putting this accreditation procedure into operation was not getting satisfactory cooperation from most of the high-school principals and superintendents to whom he wrote for help in counseling students. For example, a Radioman First Class would come to him for help. This man had had three years of high school before he joined the Navy three years previous. He had had approximately six months of military training in Navy training schools, including boot training and three months of radio school. He had worked his way up to petty officer first class in one of the Navy’s most highly skilled branches among enlisted rates. Now he wanted to take courses in USAFI in the hope of either getting his diploma while still in the service or at least of shortening the period of time it would take him to get his diploma when he returned to school. The educational officer’s first move was to write to the high-school principal. And this is what he was likely to ask:
(1) Please send me a transcript of this man’s record.
(2) How much academic credit must this man earn to complete his work for a diploma?
(3) Of this credit, how much will you allow him for his military training, an account of which is enclosed?
(4) How much credit will you give him for each successfully completed course in USAFI as suggested in the Guide?
(5) If you agree to accept USAFI courses for credit, which courses from the enclosed list of courses which are available in this theater do you suggest he take?
This is the kind of letter that a good many Navy educational officers serving at ship and shore stations in the United Kingdom wrote. The questions called for concrete answers, for any kind of attempt to co-ordinate this man’s educational program in the Navy with his past and future civilian education would need to be based on a specific understanding with his school principal.
In a good many instances the resulting answers from the school authorities were satisfactory. They included the invaluable transcript of the man’s record and usually a specific answer to the questions on accreditation. But all too frequently the responses from school authorities were disappointingly vague, displayed an ignorance of USAFI, either an ignorance of, or an unwillingness to agree with, the policy of accreditation laid down in the Guide, and an equivalent unwillingness to formulate a policy of their own.
What the educational officer sometimes ended up with was a transcript of the man’s record, a vague statement of the number of credits still to be made up by the student, no answer at all on the question of credit for already completed military training, an evasive statement as to just how much credit would be given for USAFI courses, and sometimes a list of USAFI courses which would take the average serviceman years to complete if he worked at it exclusively of military duties.
A typical case of faulty co-operation was the attitude of an upstate New York school authority with whom I corresponded. He ruled that his school would give credit only for the completion of USAFI courses or specialist training courses at Navy or Army schools. In other words he rejected the committee’s recommendation of credit for recruit training and its suggestion of crediting military experience generally. At first sight it might appear that his stipulation was merely in strict accord with the excellence of his school’s standard. But there is an injustice inherent in such an attitude.
In the first place recruit training may not have a great deal of acknowledged educational value, but it certainly has some. And any high-school principal can satisfy himself on just how much by consulting the Guide to Evaluation of Educational Experiences in the Armed Services, which describes such a training course and evaluates it in terms of educational credits.
In the second place few Army and Navy specialist training schools are operated overseas and certainly none aboard ship. I can think of only one such Navy school in the whole European theater. Consequently the average enlisted man who is overseas or aboard ship is prevented from attending such a school. What this principal was saying in effect to the serviceman was, “I can give you no credit for your military service overseas regardless of how varied or how valuable your experience and overseas training are. Regardless of how rapidly you advance in rate or what skills you acquire under combat conditions I can give you credit only for skills acquired in classrooms back home.” Such a policy is not only unjust to the man but ignores the fact that only a very small percentage of the Army’s and Navy’s skilled men learn their skills in specialist schools. The vast majority learn their jobs aboard ships, at foreign shore establishments, and in the field where necessity and the exigencies of conditions actually produce more specialists and rated men than the schools back home.
School authorities should realize that it is much easier to deal with the problem now than to wait until the boys come home by the thousands and descend on the schools with a copy of the GI Bill of Rights in one hand, and in the other an honorable discharge.
A clearly defined attitude on the part of each school principal is needed, and right now. He should either agree with the accreditation policy already formulated, or draw up a policy of his own. Such a policy should state what credit will be given for military training and for correspondence and self-teaching courses, should be based on some realization of the difficulties of administering and supplying such courses to students in foreign theaters, should take into consideration the fact that what will count when the boys come back home is not how much physics, civics, and history they have forgotten but how much you can compensate for this forgetting by an over-all mental growth and educational development that war has brought to them, and it should reflect some realization of the fact that if a returning serviceman cannot very well be fitted into the traditional educational system, then the traditional educational system will adapt itself to accommodate him. For he will not come back alone but in thousands, and with what may prove to be an all too-exaggerated opinion of what his country owes him.
In short, the program of the United States Armed Forces Institute can accomplish the job it has set out to do if the school authorities acquaint themselves with USAFI and what it is endeavoring to do. Every high- school principal and superintendent should know the accreditation policy which has been laid down, not by the armed forces but by civilian educators, for the guidance of the armed forces, and decide whether or not he accepts it. If he does not, he should formulate his own policy and make it available when asked by the educational officers who are counseling his students. He should familiarize himself with the USAFI publications, especialy Form 47, Application for Credit for Educational Achievement during Military Service, the pamphlets “Earning Secondary School Credit in the Armed Forces” and “Higher Education and National Defense” (American Council on Education Bulletin No. 69), and the Guide to Evaluation of Educational Experiences in the Armed Services, which lists the educational courses available to service personnal and describes all training programs conducted by the armed forces.
Most Navy, and in all likelihood most Army, educational officers in the field are former teachers who bring to their duties some amount of practical experience in education. Most of them feel that USAFI is at best a poor substitute for the classroom back home. But it happens to be the only substitute, and upon it ride the hopes of many a GI. With a little more co-operation and understanding from civilian educators at home USAFI will work effectively in the field.