Tom note: Here is the 10th entry in our 10 Long March posts for 2018, the most-read item of the year, which originally ran on June 15, 2018. These posts are selected based on what's called 'total engaged minutes' (the total number of time spent reading and commenting on an article) rather than page views, which the T&P editors see as a better reflection of Long March reader interest and community. Thanks to all of you for reading, and for commenting–which is an important part of this column.
I have spent the past year being graded, evaluated, and assessed as a student at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC). After graduating and reflecting over the past year, I will now grade, evaluate, and assess CGSC.
The military history curriculum at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College (CGSC) will be gutted in the 2019 academic year. The school’s leadership has chosen to shift away from the strategic, operational, and tactical lessons of the Vietnam War, and the complexities of military innovation in the interwar period. Next year, a substantial chunk of the military history curriculum will be reduced to make room for more tactical wargames.
United States Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) was not the best year of my life. But it was a year of my life, and now that that year is some six years in the past I think that I am able to perhaps provide an alternative perspective to U.S. Army Major Jamie Schwandt’s pretty damning assessment of it.
The Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, provides the 10-month-long command and general staff officer course. The program serves as an Army officer’s mid-career, graduate-level, professional military education and fulfills congressional, Joint, and Army requirements for officer development. Over the past few years, however, it received some considerable criticism over how it’s structured and operated.
