The Higher Education Swindle.

One of the less welcome parts of this year has been several weeks of debate about student behaviour. Numerous emails and meetings with higher-ups and constantly having to argue the same point over and over again.

What was the topic of dispute? We had suggested that well-educated twenty-somethings should dispose of rubbish safely in bins! Not just general waste but that chemical and clinical waste should be safely and promptly disposed of. Given that my girlfriend had a pair of nine-year old nephews who manage to put rubbish in the bin without even being asked to I had not regarded this as an unreasonable request for people who theoretically are being trained as the next generation of scientists.

One of the arguments made to me was “students really enjoy this course”. “I like doing it” is not actually an adult argument but here we get to the crux of the matter.

Science is a discipline. That means some things have to be done a certain way. There are right ways to do things and there are wrong ways. You only learn the right ways and get into the habit of using them if the wrong ways are corrected. Being told “don’t do that” or “tidy that up first” is not fun, however. So there are whole courses where basic safety and good practice are not enforced. People pay thousands to come to a university and supposedly learn a trade yet leave without the basic skills and disciplines they need. But that is fine, so long as “student satisfaction” levels remain high. Those might fall if someone who is being a jerk and endangering others is told not to be a jerk!

 

 

The problem revolves around money. In the past few decades the idea has arisen that each university should make a profit. The more students we can run through the machine and the more fees the better. However, the desired product of a higher education should not be a satisfied graduate. Students, by definition, do not know everything. They have no idea if they are getting an adequate education or not. Looking at each university as an isolated money-generating system is a fallacy Universities are supposed to produce graduates who are prepared for their future working roles. The better the quality of graduate the better for industry, the economy and the society as a whole. Institutions such as road-repair or the police force are not expected to make a profit. They exist because we know that their function facilitates the rest of society running more effectively. Universities should be regarded in the same light.

At the moment very little has been changed by our complaints about safety and professional behaviour. In fact the main result is that our warning has gone on record against the day when inevitably these laissez-faire practices result in someone being seriously hurt. Practical classes are little more than a crèche in white coats, but everybody is having fun and fills in the feedback reports as desired. I resign myself to the fact that courses are now entertainment rather than education.

The Books

 

 

Red Next To Your Head

I was having a light-hearted discussion on “field uniforms” with a friend. The idea was a practical uniform that could be used for general tasks rather than as a dedicated combat dress. I believe the latter role would be better served by combat smocks that can be worn over body armour.

One source of inspiration was the British battledress. I was also looking at the Afrika Korps. Why the Afrika Korps? Unlike most European combatants Germany had very few colonial holdings so when they went to war in Africa they had to design everything from scratch. It was a useful crucible to determine what traditional uniform features they were using were worth keeping. The first attempt included high lace-up boots, breeches and a sun helmet. Experience in Africa produced radical changes in the uniform. Ankle length boots with trousers that could be bloused into them, or shorts became commonplace. So too did a long shirt which could be worn instead of a tunic. The most distinctive uniform item, however, was the peaked Afrika Korps cap.

During my reading I turned up the interesting piece of information that these caps were lined with red material. Some green aircrew clothing has an orange lining. The idea is that if the crashed crewman wants to be seen rather than camouflaged he wears the item inside out. If a similar idea was intended for the Afrika Korps cap why red and not some other colour that might be more visible in desert conditions?

It is possible the red lining was intended for another form of signalling. Placing a luminous panel inside a patrol cap is described in this article.But if signalling with the red interior of a cap was a common technique why did later German army designs of headwear not have a red lining too? I have a post-war BW hat of similar design, but no red lining.

Another possibility was that the red cloth was the cheapest cloth available. A friend who is an English Civil War enactor has often pointed out to me that “many civil war regiments on either side wore red. It was often the cheapest cloth that could be had”. Including in this was Cromwell’s New Model Army, establishing the penny pinching and “just make do” traditions that the British Army has struggled with for so many centuries!

The actual answer is in fact far more interesting. Red lining was believed to improve protection against the sun. Read more on this topic here!

 

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Dreaming Again!

A somewhat restless night, but some interesting dream fragments.

Generally it is advisable to attack or defend against an enemy from their outside gate. This train of thought naturally got me to thinking about ways to handle being on the inside gate. This train of thought evidently occupied the deeper parts of my brain and my sleeping mind had some insights.

According to my dream, part of the body can be viewed as a sort of arc shape. This runs from one hand, up the arm, includes the shoulders and head and goes down the other arm to the hand. These body areas constitute the most accessible targets if fighting on the inside gate. Certainly the arms need to be controlled or dealt with to facilitate access to other target areas on the rest of the body.

The second image I got had the defender viewed from above with his arms out straight holding the attacker away. The perspective changed so the defender could be seen to be actually in a crouch, hands about waist level on the attacker. At this stage my sleeping mind was drifting off into thinking about vampires. Against an attacker whose main weapons are his teeth crouching down out of reach and holding him at arm’s length does have a certain logic I suppose. There is a Capoeira technique where one squats down under an attack and then springs up and kicks with both feet. Perhaps my dreaming mind was thinking of this

Before my mind drifted into a dream about an Irish actress being interviewed about a movie it provided one more martial technique. The straight arms on the waist were swung up, the hands pointing upwards to strike with the finger tips in spear-hand form. Obvious use was to strike up under the jawbone and attack the throat. I had recently seen straight arm double upward strikes in some Wing chun manuals. These tended to hit with the upper wrist or backs of the hands. Using upward angled spear-hands like this was a new idea to me.

As stated, these were things from a dream so how logical they are remains to be seen. Perhaps these ideas will inspire someone.

The Books

 

 

You Might As Well Jump!

As I mentioned in a recent post, jumping is something that has occupied my mind recently.

While I was writing the bayonet (or rather, bayonetless!) sections of Crash Combat I came across suggestions that a soldier should jump to change facing, or even to move around. If terrain is uneven jumping has obvious advantages over the shuffle step often suggested for martial arts or bayonet training.

Joseph Wayne Smith’s book on Wing chun notes that jumping up and jumping down from heights is a good exercise for a martial artist. He doesn’t make the logical leap that jumping may be part of the solution to some of the deficiencies in manoeuvre that he identifies.

Other than some rather cinematic techniques such as flying kicks jumping is something that many martial arts overlook.

In Viktor Suvorov’s book “Spetsnaz” he relates how spetsnaz puts great emphasis on a soldier’s legs and jumping ability.

“And there is good reason why the training of a spetsnaz soldier starts with the training of his legs. A man is as strong and young as his legs are strong and young. If a man has a sloppy way of walking and if he drags his feet along the ground, that means he himself is weak. On the other hand, a dancing, springy gait is a sure sign of physical and mental health. Spetsnaz soldiers are often dressed up in the uniform of other branches of the services and stationed in the same military camps as other especially secret units, usually with communications troops. But one doesn't need any special experience to pick out the spetsnaz man from the crowd. You can tell him by the way he walks....I shall never forget one soldier who was known as `The Spring'. He was not very tall, slightly stooping and round-shouldered. But his feet were never still. He kept dancing about the whole time. He gave the impression of being restrained only by some invisible string, and if the string were cut the soldier would go on jumping, running and dancing and never stop. The military commissariat whose job it was to select the young soldiers and sort them out paid no attention to him and he fetched up in an army missile brigade.... The officer commanding the spetsnaz company noticed the soldier in the missile unit who kept dancing about all the time he was standing in the queue for his soup....”

This energetic soldier was there and then immediately recruited into spetsnaz.

“The long jump with no run has been undeservedly forgotten and is no longer included in the programme of official competitions. When it was included in the Olympic Games the record set in 1908, was 3 metres 33 centimetres. As an athletic skill the long jump without a run is the most reliable indication of the strength of a person's legs. And the strength of his legs is a reliable indicator of the whole physical condition of a soldier. Practically half a person's muscles are to be found in his legs. Spetsnaz devotes colossal attention to developing the legs of its men, using many simple but very effective exercises: running upstairs, jumping with ankles tied together up a few steps and down again, running up steep sandy slopes, jumping down from a great height, leaping from moving cars and trains, knee-bending with a barbell on the shoulders, and of course the jump from a spot..... At the end of the 1970s the spetsnaz record in this exercise, which has not been recognised by the official sports authorities, was 3 metres 51 centimetres.”

Where I work is a popular area for parkour training. As well as the more spectacular techniques I also observe apparently more mundane drills such as jumping from post to post.

Parkour itself has been described as a non-contact martial art. As originally conceived it placed considerable emphasis on self-discipline and humility. That is something a number of sportsman and modern martial artists would be advised to emulate. Like many martial arts parkour is in danger of having its core values diluted by pressure to create a sporting, competitive form

Parkour has a number of things that the modern martial artist can learn from.

A fate would have it a movie featuring parkour/freerunning was on the other night. The athleticism and coordination was impressive as always, but I was also struck by the realization that the techniques themselves were relatively simple.

 

I noticed that two landing techniques were often used. One was obviously an adaption of the parachute landing fall. As owners of my first book or Crash Combat will know, I include this technique alongside more traditional breakfall techniques. It use in parkour is logical. The second technique commonly used was the shoulder roll variant of the forward breakfall. Some websites on parkour have some nice sections on how to perform this technique. If the forward breakfall is something you need to improve you could do worse than have a look at how the parkour community learns and practices it. They are making it work for 20 foot jumps down onto concrete, after all!

The Books