My Dear Wormwood,
Your most recent letter caused me to reflect upon my time as the head of one of our schools for officers. It was a trying assignment to be sure. The worst facet of the job was dealing with the instructors. Too many seemed to believe that it was their job to get the students to think! I spent a great deal of my time attempting to get the instructors to understand that the goal of the school was not thinking but teaching rote processes.
After such a lecture to one of my more obstreperous and foolish young instructors, he had the nerve to reply in a whiny tone, “But, Sir, I thought we wanted to teach them to think.” I immediately set upon him and told him that if by such “thinking” the students were induced to think heretical thoughts, then it was self-evidently counterproductive and undesirable. I reminded this imbecile that, in the end, “This is still the Marine Corps, not an educational institution like Harvard or Princeton.”
One of my other challenges at this time was to ensure that each student received the exact same instruction as every other student. This was very difficult and absorbed a great deal of my attention. Both students and instructors have varying abilities. In order to ensure that everyone receives the same instruction, I found it necessary to ignore these individual strengths and weaknesses. I had to enforce a uniform system of teaching that didn’t depend upon the abilities of the instructor or the intelligence of the student. It is unavoidable that all students must move at the pace of the dullest witted among them. Instructors who wish to do more or do things differently than their peers must not be allowed to deviate. They must do no more and no less than everyone else. We owe it to the students that, no matter how good or how bad the instructor or how intelligent or dull they may be as students, the result is the same for each.
The same instructor that I mentioned earlier chafed under these restraints. He claimed that it was a form of communism! I’m not convinced he followed my orders to the letter, but I was too busy to leave my office and see what he was doing. He was the most talented instructor at the school, which made him too dangerous to be tolerated. Having marked himself out to me as a troublemaker, on his fitness report I made him the “stump” on my reviewing officer’s Christmas tree, thereby effectively destroying his chances for promotion. I heard he left the Marine Corps shortly after, thank Nick, which is exactly what I had intended. The best must be cut down as a lesson to others not to leave the pack. I was not promoted because I was a thinker. I was promoted because I knew my place and how to please my superiors. No one shined up the handle on the big front door better than I did; I promise you! This is a lesson for you, Wormwood. You would do well to commit it to memory.
Gen Screwtape
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