It may be an unfortunate and irrelevant coincidence that the enquiry into the illegal killing of Baha Mousa by British soldiers in Iraq should come so soon after the re-announcement and promotion of the Government's plans (the original proposal is three years old) to recruit retired military personnel into teaching. The Mousa affair is an isolated example of violence and cruelty in the otherwise commendable disciplinary record of British troops in the engagements of the past decade.
Some features of the military culture revealed by the report are disturbing, however: the closing of ranks after the event; the lack of effective management of the situation, at any level; and the continued use of interrogation tactics banned thirty years before. It is hardly surprising that troops working closely together in extremely stressful conditions should instinctively support one another, even when wrong had been done. But is this culture of blind loyalty and obedience really what's needed in school, when we are, in theory, trying to create an independent-minded, intellectually sophisticated workforce to compete in a hi-tech global economy?
We have, in a way, been here before. The Armed Forces have experience of dealing with large numbers of poorly-disciplined, unmotivated young people. For fifteen years after World War II they took in hundreds of thousands a year for Nation Service. As the fiftieth anniversary of their experience approaches, some former conscripts have over the last few years been recalling their reactions. This document, which accompanied an itv4 documentary, offers an interesting summary. For many recruits, the National Service was characterised by repeatedly mindless and vindictive tasks, designed to teach blind obedience: painting grass greener, daffodils yellower, and coal white are some of the most memorable. Broadcaster John Peel won an award for keeping the cleanest toilet on his base. He achieved this by padlocking the door so people had to use a different toilet.
The approach of the Armed Forces to National Service is very revealing. The Navy took no one, and the RAF very few. Complex machinery like submarines or fighter planes was kept out of reach. The vast majority of National Service trainees went into the Army, where there were plenty of unskilled jobs which an unmotivated youth could be bullied into doing. So the record of the military in training and motivating unwilling trainees for difficult, technical work is very poor. But in a twenty-first century, high-tech global economy, it's exactly those skills we need. I'm no business analyst, but in my perusal of the financial news I've yet to find reports of the Chinese or Indian coal merchants who are demanding white coal from Britain.
Some aspects of military life have changed since National Service, of course. Attitudes to women and minority groups have at least tried to keep pace with those in wider society. But the core of military training remains, quite rightly, the need to create a cohesive culture of immediate obedience in the lethal, fast-moving arena of active conflict. The Armed Forces are quite right to concentrate on this, but it is fundamentally incompatible with the need to teach pupils in school to think for themselves and become self-motivated.
Gove's Troops to Teachers plan misunderstands the nature of authority. It does not arise from having a puce-faced man bellow spittle in your face, but rather from a community with shared values, which respects its leader as an embodiment of those values. The reason Army officers are respected is because everyone they command is - voluntarily - a member of the military community with a very strong shared identity and purpose. The shouting, marching and stamping were an effect of this shared purpose, not its cause.
As a teacher I was involved in several school cadet forces and have participated in many activities in which pupils are directed by military personnel. The scariest people I met during my involvement in school cadet forces were teachers, who understood the psychology of leading the uncooperative, not officers (both commissioned and non-commissioned) who took respect for granted. My (admittedly limited and anecdotal) experience of seeing retired military personnel become teachers is that they find this lack of assumed obedience extremely difficult to cope with.
The lesson, therefore, schools can learn from military culture has nothing to do with the shallow concept of of discipline as testosterone and the toothbrush moustache, and everything to do with the serious notion of authority as a projection of shared values. Teachers need to win the respect of parents and pupils. Their professional status needs to be enhanced. The small numbers of parents and pupils (in some cases both are difficult) who cannot respect their teachers need to be dealt with firmly.
Unfortunately, most of Gove's recent proposals have the opposite effect. This suggestion of soldiers in the classroom reflects a low opinion of teachers' current performance. During the recent strike he appeared to suggest that striking teachers could be replaced by volunteer parents. Then there are Free Schools, which can hire unqualified teachers. Anyone fancy a free hospital with unqualified doctors? A free airline with unqualified pilots? (It's true that some teacher training is poor - I learnt little from my own - but the solution is to improve it, not drag unqualified people in from the street.) The disrespect Gove shows for teachers' professional status is breathtaking. I used to work with someone who'd been at university with Michael Gove. Apparently he is very clever. But his plans for schools are ignorant.
School cadet forces offer fantastic opportunities for kids to undertake adventurous activities. The last government had sensible plans to introduce cadet forces more widely in state schools. But their value is no different in kind from other outdoor activities like the Scouts, Duke of Edinburgh Scheme or many sports.
The knees of rightwing politicians have often turned to jelly when a big man in shiny buttons marches past. Gove should know better. Forcing a military regime on the classroom would not raise standards. Doing so by further degrading the status of the current profession - with which the government will have to work to raise standards, like it or not - would further erode the respect in which the profession is held by the public, with disastrous results.