When the usual suspects orate about how the internet is going to "revolutionise" education, I am interested, but it usually turns out to be an exaggeration. Some promising and/or worthwhile stuff is being suggested or offer, but the world is not going to be transformed. But when the US Navy says things like this, I find myself being more impressed.

I think that the reason for the contrast between these two reactions is that the US Navy, unlike civilian educational organisations, makes a point of dishing out orders to people, and of being obeyed. Not orders to everyone, of course, but to a lot of people. "Now hear this!", as they say over their ship's loudspeakers. (They do in the movies anyway.)

So, when US Naval officers announce that naval medical education is going to be revolutionised by being made available on line, there is an air of "whether you like it or not" about this pronouncement that is absent when civilians talk about revolutionising things.

This last stricture does not apply to actual revolutionaries. They cannot yet give orders but they mostly intend to. Civilian educators, on the whole, disbelieve in giving orders. They believe in things like arousing enthusiasm, and in attracting attention with pretty little pictures. They believe in "engagement". They believe in the voluntary principle.

The US navy believes in pretty little pictures also, as the particular pretty little picture that I have used to decorate this posting illustrates. But read what it says. It says: "Naval Medical Education and Training Command." Command. Civilian educators don't like to use words like "command" these days.

Personally, I think that the civilian educators are a lot more right than wrong. But I further believe that following the logic of not using the word "command" will have revolutionary consequences, and that a lot of these same civilian educators are liable to end up as revolutionees.