clude the army field forces engaged thereon. Fulfilling this mission, Leavenworth is now crossing the threshold of major change. The practical effect of the transition now under way will be a completely revised and rewritten course of instruction for 1957-58. This course will be directly related to the mission of the Army and will place greater emphasis on developing reasoning ability, decisiveness, professional standards, and character in our graduates. We found that the optimum curriculum and implementing College organization required that the instructional departments be reorganized on functional lines. The required organization grouped related functions and more definitely fixed responsibility. The next logical step was a decentralization, under broad College guidance, of curriculum planning to the 1957-58 departmental committees who were to actually write the new units of instruction. This allowed for considerably more individual initiative and use of the collective ability of the staff and faculty. This decentralization was then carried into the Directors of both Department VI (nonresident instruction) and Research and Analysis were made Assistants to the Assistant Commandant to highlight their missions and give them more prestige and authority. Finally, to round out the control at College level, the Faculty Board was strengthened and placed directly under the Commandant. The advantages gained by these changes will be elaborated upon later. The 1957-58 Course will be based on the most modern current doctrine for the atomic age Army, and will be presented by a College whose revised organization and instructional philosophy are directed toward meeting the challenge of the advanced forms and tempo of warfare. The Challenge It is the responsibility of the Command and General Staff College to ride the crest of the wave of progress and help harness its tremendous force to the accomplishment of the Army's mission. The urgency for the change was evident and it soon became clear that it must not be merely superficial. In addition, it was determined that the yearly correc That first mushroom cloud at Hiroshima triggered a chain reaction not only in the technical nuclear field but in the minds of men—a reaction which has generated an irresistible wave of innovation and progress which now is surging upward and onward over outmoded concepts and thinking. In the light of events since Hiroshima, the so-called "common sense" of past military thinking must be held suspect and called upon to prove itself or to be labeled as reactionary, sterile thinking. centralized College staff by changing it from the director system to the coordinating system. In addition, to insure necessary control, a Deputy for Doctrine was appointed to assist in coordinating planning and preparing both doctrine and instruction. The tive partial rewrite would not suffice. To obtain a properly balanced curriculum and an integrated supporting organization, it was necessary that personnel allocation, scheduling, the examination system, the new educational concept, and methodologies all be considered concurrently and woven into the new course from its very inception. Thus it can be seen that the entire change had to be programmed for completion in a single year. Although expected resistance to change has been encountered, this sizable task is actually ahead of schedule due to the dedicated officers of the staff and faculty who have given it their full support. The directed conversion of all divisions to the new organization, coupled with the recent US CONARC policy requiring service schools to emphasize atomic instruction from the outset, with nonatomic instruction covered as a modification thereto, pointed up the necessity for a complete revision of the 1957-58 Course. As can be seen, this gave the College a unique opportunity to incorporate other essential revisions. It allowed the concurrent examination of corps and army doctrine and the modernization of administrative support concepts, based on new troop lists and currently evolving doctrine. It permitted the orientation of the curriculum to support the concept of the Army's mission set forth by the Chief of Staff, with its increased emphasis on local wars and other situations short of general atomic war. This reorientation necessitated a shift in emphasis of a majority of instruction, placing it in more likely locales and situations, in line with the role of the Army today. The revision will allow the College to nity, by examining course cont rect a growing overcrowding o riculum and, more important, t ultimately result in a reducti author-instructor workload. It al tion of a long recommended vie curriculum design-that the co best a compromise and that it i cover a smaller amount of rea sary material thoroughly, empha portant areas, than to risk treatment of a greater amount of Educational Survey Commis An Educational Survey Comm pointed by Major General Ga Davidson, former Commandant, a ed up numerous areas for imp This commission consisted of tinguished retired combat com Lieutenant Generals Troy H. I Geoffrey Keyes, and Manton S. E three equally distinguished civi cators: Dr. Jacob S. Orleans, Coordinator of Teacher Educati Colleges of the City of New Y Harl R. Douglass, Director of of the University of Colorado; Harold F. Harding, Assistant De College of Arts and Sciences, O University. General Davidson and I agr many of the commission's reco tions. The tenor of its findings Our greatest problem is changing the approach and the though esses of our officer corps to keep it abreast and ahead of developments. Outmoded concepts and half measures applied concepts of the future atomic battlefield could spell national d keep instruction abreast of the rapid evolution of all combined-arms doctrine caused by technological developments in areas such as air and ground mobility, missiles, surveillance, atomic weapons, air defense, and signal communications. This revision also gave us an opportu seen from the following extract report of June 1956: It is far better to improve the s ability to solve problems of the fut to master details that will be o this year or next. |