The British Army is an organisation for fighting, right? Well, yes. But consider instead: The British Army is an organisation for teaching. And add: The British Army is an organisation for teaching people how to teach.

I asked my education-how-about-that? question (see posting below) to a friend of mine who is a British Army Captain. First, I got a big spiel about the decline of education in Britain generally. But then, we really got down to business, because my friend had a lot to say also about how the Army itself educates.

He started with "EDIP".

?????????

"EDIP" stands for: Explain, Demonstrate, Immitate, Practice.

First you tell them what you are going to tell them how to do. Then you show then by doing it yourself. Then you make them to do it. Finally you make them do it over and over again until they've got it as second nature.

That's what teaching in the Army consists of. But there's more. My friend then talked about how you, in general, set about teaching, about how you set up a lesson, about what you do before EDIP and after EDIP.

I need to look at my notes.

"Preliminaries, setting up – seeting plan – what are you teaching? – do you have all the kit you need?"

Before you launch in on the "explain" bit, where you tell them what you're going to tell them, you tell them why it matters, and why they personally will benefit from paying attention. Big picture, individual incentive. Incentive might mean a test at the end which they'll have ot pass. Fail and you have to do it again, etc..

After that you do EDIP, and then, at the end of the lesson, very important, you do that test. You check that what you thought you had taught them you actually did teach them. Failure to understand this distinction will risk many lives in very fraught circumstances. You have to be sure that they actually learned it.

And then finally, you look ahead to the next lesson and tell them what that's going to consist of.

Central to the Army ethos is that if you want to really learn something, there's no better way than to learn how to teach it. Thus, one of the first steps (not the final step as you might expect) in a major Senior Officer type career is that you become an instructor at somewhere like Sandhurst.

Second, although my friend the Captain made a great performance out of all this, he himself doesn't do that much teaching himself. He leaves that to his N(on) C(ommissioned) O(fficers), the Sergeants and Corporals who are the human backbone of the British Army and always have been. So in other words, the reason my friend is so fluent about How To Teach is that he has already been involved in teaching his subordinates How To Teach. Be an ace sniper by teaching sniping. Be an ace teacher by teaching teaching. The British Army is an organisation that teaches teachers.

Finally, if my prose has become somewhat excitable in this posting, this is because as soon as I started to write this I jumped back into the mood of the original conversation, which was also extremely enthusiastic and animated.

I had pushed a major Army button with this education question. I cannot promise that all of the above detail is exactly correct. I probably got important things somewhat wrong, and I can just about guarantee that I left important things out. But this I can tell you for sure. Asking a Captain in the British Army about how he sets about the business of teaching is like opening a window into his soul. To say that this is what he does, or what he thinks about a lot, is to underestimate it. This is what he is. This, minus all the state secrets that obviously can't be used by way of illustration, is it. This is the fundamental question to ask these guys if you want to know who and what they are.

Ask them about what fighting is like, and half of them don't know. The other half have no way of telling you, other than to refer you to certain books which hint at the reality of it. But ask them about teaching, and it's like uncorking a shaken champagne bottle.

I expect to be asking this question to many more teachers in the months and (who knows?) years to come, as and when I encounter them, and I expect many further fascinating answers.