Steven Marcus
IN APPREHENSION HOW LIKE A GOD
In
our regiment we found a surprising number of "basics"
and "intermediates." These were, respectively, men who had not
completed the fourth grade or the seventh grade, or who in the
Army's judgment had not attained the equivalent of that degree
of education.
We made this discovery in the course of a survey required by
our Army headquarters. Periodically the Army undertakes a numer–
ical accounting, in general categories, of the educational acquire–
ments of its personnel, and in each unit the Information and Educa–
tion Section, of which I was a member, is responsible for this report.
The motives behind these surveys are never quite perceptible,
especially since it's plain enough that the Army does not collect sta–
tistics in the interests of general knowledge. They are probably
relevant, however, to those occasional manifestations of snobbery, re–
ferred to as "economy", that characterize the service, in which a
directive or circular is "promulgated" ordering the compulsory re–
lease from active duty of all men who fall below a certain dismal
competence of learning. These directives are so forested with quali–
fications and exceptions that they rarely serve to bring about the
winnowing effect they seem to intend.
In
another way, though, they
do make their mark: they normally send the Regular Anny men
into a panic. Information and Education offices are besieged with
queries and shouts for help from those who suspect that their liveli–
hoods are in jeopardy and who want to learn the quickest and most
efficacious way of disqualifying themselves from the provisions of
the most recent circular.
In
most cases, I was grateful to find, there
is
a way out.
We also discovered that a large number of our permanent per-
