What a Surprise?

Let's start with a shot of some homemade catsup. I'm not much a a catsup guy. Mustard is more to my liking, but I will use this.


Last week the Navy announced it was relieving the commander of his duty on the USS Memphis, a nuclear submarine. It seems there has been some cheating by the crew, encouraged by the officers, on tests the crews take to qualify for operating the sub. This is the AP story in the Minneapolis StarTribune.

Reminds me more than a bit of the Atlanta schools test doctoring trouble; this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes that situation.

I am not condoning either choice to cheat, but what would lead normally honest people to do something they usually wouldn't? A few lines and a quote from the Navy article caught my eye and started me thinking.

"They say sailors know how to handle the nuclear technology, but commanders competing with one another to show proficiency have made tests so difficult — and so detached from the skills sailors actually need — that crew members sometimes bend the rules."

'"They've expected more and more paperwork, with higher levels of compliance, and over time those expectations diverged from what people are actually doing," said Brownfield, who is now researching nuclear sustainability as a graduate student at Columbia University. "In the nuclear department, the test became so difficult it really had no bearing on what people were doing on a daily basis."'

So it is not just education that has lost touch with the real world. The tests were "so difficult. . .and so detached" that they had "no bearing on what people were doing on a daily basis." What are we doing? Shouldn't someone throw up a red flag and change the direction we are moving?

But we don't and aren't, and the problems keep multiplying.