During my second tour as a U.S. Navy officer, I served as a navigator aboard a test warship in San Diego. In port, navigators often have little to do other than prepare for the next deployment. But not every military job is created equal.
On warships, even when tied to a pier, something always breaks, and it’s the Navy’s enlisted men and women who are called upon to fix it. The Navy’s most impressive asset isn’t aircraft carriers, it’s these young servicemembers who, often barely out of high school, roll up their sleeves in the middle of the night to repair a gas turbine, install a new pump, or less heroically, unclog a sewage line. The Navy has mastered the formidable task of turning fresh-faced teenagers into engineers, technicians, radar operators, information systems specialists, chefs, and logisticians.
After completing my military service, I worked for some years as a public school administrator, looking after young people who weren’t too far removed in age from my previous Navy shipmates. Though I entered education with a renewed mission of “making a difference for these kids,” my optimism crashed head-on into the stark realization that school remains a place utterly inept at preparing young people for the world. It’s worth asking why our public education system, which is better funded on average than in nearly every other developed country, isn’t capable of doing in 12 years what the military does in a few months.
By the time they complete their initial training, service members have a keen sense of their purpose within the organization they have just joined. When they graduate from high school, however, young people have little understanding of how the system they’ve just been funneled through will prepare them for the job market they are now expected to enter. It’s no wonder our public schools don’t seem to be doing a good job when it’s not clear what their graduates should be able to know or do.
It’s a tired refrain, in fact, to remark that our education system is broken. Our kids’ academic achievement has hit all-time lows, and they’re reporting higher struggles with mental health than ever before. Public confidence in our schools has dropped precipitously since the pandemic. Meanwhile, employers are struggling to hire qualified employees, and college graduates are increasingly finding themselves unemployed. If you only looked at their test scores, you would conclude the average Gen Zer was barely able to tie their shoelaces together. Give them some time aboard a Navy ship, however, and they suddenly become technical experts. The Navy alone trained over 40,000 sailors last year, many newly out of high school, in hundreds of specialties.