General Discussions

When you use history as a training tool there is a danger that the need for a good story can overtake the duty to history, if the author is not careful. Instead of a microscope, all you are doing is reversing the telescope, projecting the modern lesson backwards. The real problem is when it is confused with history in the adademic sense, or when it's practitioners assume this projection of ideas is what good writing is about.

Before anyone accuses me of being a snob, I'm no academic but I'm a professional instructional trainer and frequent course materials designer in my day job. I've received this style of instructional training with historical examples at RMAS and Staff College. The academic staff there are careful when they are published not to replicate these instructional notes. In a training manual there is no sense of duty to historical enquiry and although carefully and skilfully written lacks the same academic rigour.

For me the problem is with those officers who have received this training and think they have learned something of historical enquiry. They haven't really, all they have done is had historical context put around modern concepts. It's several levels up from the "Regimental History" shared around the kit maintenance sessions in the barrack room or recited around the mess table, but suffers from the same rearward projection.

It therefore tends to often trot out hackneyed myths and apochryphies, tying them to sweeping generalisations and shedding little or no real light. These manuals owe rather more to the approach of PT Barnum than AJP Taylor.

Just my personal opinion you understand, and who am I? No horse breeder for sure, but I can still tell the difference between a thoroughbred and a donkey.