Profile 4: LTC Jeff Kaplan

I interviewed Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Kaplan on September 5, 2018. LTC Jeff Kaplan oversees two Army ROTC programs: one at a smaller public suburban university and its hosting program at a large urban public university. He oversees a larger staff than many of my

participants, and this is reflected to some degree in his answers, which point out hierarchy and administrative responsibilities with more frequency. To put it another way, he has more to do than the average PMS (Professor of Military Science), and it was very generous of him to schedule an interview with me, which took place over the phone, while he was traveling.

LTC Kaplan’s interview typifies many interviews I had: he responds to my questions very literally, and briefly. Like many instructors I spoke with, he wants his cadets to develop

communication skills, but does not have enough classroom time with students to allow for the writing he would like them to learn.

LTC Kaplan’s emphasis on Army communication was a little bit different than my other participants. He does teach Army writing genres, and the genres he favors in his classroom (the Operations Order and battle analysis) deal with analysis of texts. But whereas most of my participants spent a majority of their classroom “communication” instruction on writing or a writing/speaking combination, LTC Kaplan actually spent more time on verbal presentation. I think this was partly his own preferred communication style—he did not seem to like writing, although he was very convinced of its importance and to his students’ understanding of it—and partly a reflection of his student population, who are better prepared for college and writing.

LTC Kaplan typifies many instructors who have been teaching for more than a year in his abandonment of journaling or more narrative writing assignments. While journaling is

encouraged by the Army ROTC curriculum and is recognized by instructors as a healthy tool for personal growth, most of my interviewees found it to be a distraction, and claimed that it became “repetitive” or “busywork,” as LTC Kaplan describes it. While this seems like the loss of an opportunity for cadets’ personal development, it is also simply a reality of the constraints of classroom time and the number of academic objectives that instructors have.

Additionally, LTC Kaplan shares some reservations about the differences between “military writing” and “academic writing.” This is a perspective that was shared by many instructors, but he articulates it most clearly.

“The selection process for Professor of Military Science [requires that] you have a master’s degree, and you have to have a good record to get selected. There are about 270 programs across the country, and every year there is a board held to select people to take these positions. [This host university] was high on my list and I was [selected for it]. I did teach the [an Army education course] course at [an Army base] where I was an instructor and mentor for our young captains that are in an academic setting…I think the fact that I was a teacher and instructor before helped me get it.”

“[Here in our program] I teach our seniors. I’m the senior person in the department, so it’s my job and opportunity to mold them for their next step, which is to be Army officers.”

“Their last year is really an opportunity to groom them and get them ready [to be officers]. A lot of our [lesson objectives] are dictated by Cadet Command, but we focus on [how] we want to teach them. Yesterday I taught about staff operations, the way we plan an operation.”

“I also teach the philosophy [of decision making]. We like to have our officers practice the way that they make decisions. We call that ‘mission command,’ decentralizing decision making, that sort of thing. We move into some ethics and leadership. The way the Department of Defense is structured, their relationships with their soldiers, their NCOs, primarily leadership based stuff.”

On the writing assignments he uses:

“It’s really up to me [how to teach writing], I have the lessons from [Cadet Command]. The conflict that we have with writing in the Army is that there is the academic way of writing, and then there is the military way of writing. And you’ve got to find that balance between the two. So what I have them do is, in the fall they do an academic paper. It’s basically a book report

on a book that I assign them, or they can get approval of one. They write a paper about their takeaways from that specific book.”

“I’m a big fan of General Powell, his leadership book is pretty phenomenal. There’s another book called The Generals [that I’ve used]. I’m more open to allowing them to choose their own [books] now. We will get everything from technology based books about warfare to some of the classic military literature. It diversifies the class a little bit when we discuss it and I find that more interesting.”

“In the spring semester I have them do a battle analysis, which is essentially a breakdown of a battle in history. It’s a 30-minute brief and they write a paper in the active voice, in the military way. Up front, break down what happened, and then explore some main points. The lion’s share of [the assignment] is the brief itself, but in the written portion I want a brief takeaway…like we say in the Army, we write bottom line up front, these are my takeaways, and the details are part of the brief itself.”

On the kinds of writing that cadets need to be exposed to:

“That’s a great question. One thing we do in the Army, all the way up to the general officer level and down to the platoon leader level, is we write a lot of Opords, operations orders, and there’s a specific format for that and how they are written. From day one when they get to campus, we teach them how to write a five paragraph Op order. It’s something you can issue to a subordinate that tells them the five Ws and how to execute, and that’s something that we use all

the way up at the strategic level—those [opords at higher levels] might be more complex documents, but the format is essentially the same.”

“That’s the most important [written format] for them to be exposed to before being in the military. Other than that, the active voice, how to write military. How to summarize a situation very quickly on one piece of paper, get to the point, no setting the stage, here’s the issue.”

“A lot of the time you find you need a decision very quickly from a superior. I’ve [seen] situations at the Pentagon where you go to someone, and it’s a General walking to his next meeting, and all you get to do is say, ‘Here you go, Sir,’[and hand him something] and he reads that one page and says ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ We have trouble breaking [cadets] out of that mind set of academic [writing styles] sometimes, they want to include fluff, and we reinforce what we call ‘bottom line up front,’ because we need a decision. We do try to mold them for that [approach to writing] and it takes a long time. I was well into my field years before [I was good at it]…I struggled with that throughout my career because I have a tendency to go back to the academic side of the house.”

On writing assignments that did not work well with his cadets:

“I had my first class [that I taught] do a journal and it became repetitive and not effective, so I dropped that.”

“Class discussion [about their written work] and briefing. They’ve got to get better at standing in front of people and briefing a scenario. That is by far the most valuable thing. As an Army officer you will probably do that more frequently than writing an executive summary, or writing a white paper. As a company grade officer you need to build the plan and brief it and plan the operation order.”

“Here at [the host university] the school has a great reputation, but there’s a lot of World of Warcraft kids at this school [laugh], and standing up and talking in front of people really takes them out of their comfort zone. But the more we do that the better prepared they will be.”

On what he wishes composition instructors knew about military writing:

“I would say the notion of getting to the point. I’m getting another master’s degree right now and I feel like I’m filling sheets of paper to fill them up. I know there’s an argument to be made, but there’s so much wasted space because of academic guidelines, and to me it doesn’t seem effective. I wish they would reinforce getting to the point, and using active voice. If there’s one thing, I would reinforce that.”