Military recruit training, commonly known as basic training or boot camp, refers to the initial instruction of new military personnel. It is a physically and psychologically intensive process, which resocializes its subjects for the unique demands of military employment.
Major characteristics Initial military training is an intensive residential program commonly lasting several weeks or months, which aims to induct newly recruited military personnel into the social norms and essential tasks of the armed forces. Common features include foot drill, inspections, physical training, weapons training, and a graduation parade. The training process resocializes recruits to the demands made of them by military life. Psychological conditioning techniques are used to shape attitudes and behaviours, so that recruits will obey all orders, face mortal danger, and kill their opponents in battle. According to an expert in United States military training methods, Dave Grossman, recruit training makes extensive use of four types of conditioning techniques: role modeling, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and brutalization. Inductees are required to partially submerge their individuality for the sake of their military unit, which enhances obedience to orders to perform actions normally absent from civilian life, including killing and prolonged exposure to danger. The resocialization of recruit training operates in several ways, as follows:
Confinement and suppression
Once their training has begun, the right of recruits to leave the military estate (or to quit the armed forces) is denied or tightly restricted. By shaving the head, issuing uniforms, denying privacy, and prohibiting the use of first names, individuality is suppressed.
Control and conformity Recruits' daily routine is highly controlled, in the manner of the 'total institution' described by the Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman. For example, the training regime determines how recruits must make their beds, polish boots, and stack their clothes; mistakes are punished.
Throughout their training, recruits are conditioned to conform to military norms and to work as a team. In particular, recruits are repeatedly instructed to stand, march, and respond to orders in a ritual known as foot drill, which is derived from 18th-century military practices and trains recruits to obey orders without hesitation or question. According to Finnish Army regulations, for example, foot drill is essential for the esprit de corps and cohesion, accustoms recruits to instinctive obedience, enables large units to be marched and moved in an orderly manner, and creates the basis for action in the battlefield.
Stress and punishment The training process applies stressors continuously. Instructors may deprive recruits of sleep, food, or shelter; shout personal insults; use physical aggression; or give orders intended to humiliate. According to specialists in U.S. recruit training, the conditions of continuous stress deplete recruits' resistance to the demands made of them.
The intense workload and sleep restriction experienced by military recruits leaves them little attention capacity for processing the messages they receive about new norms… Therefore, recruits should be less likely to devote their remaining cognitive effort to judging the quality of persuasive messages and will be more likely to be persuaded by the messages… Evidence from Canada, the UK, the U.S. and elsewhere shows that punishments are used routinely to condition group conformity and discourage poor performance. The role of group punishment in Canadian Army training, for example, has been described as follows:
Coming from civilian society that elevates the individual, recruits are now in a world where the institutional value of the group is supreme. One has to be a team player or risk ostracism. The military does things quite deliberately to intensify the power of group pressure within its ranks. The group is made responsible for each member... even though it may seem manifestly unfair to make the group suffer for the individual.
Bonding and the hierarchy of esteem As a buffer against the stressful conditions of their training, the trainee group normally forms a strong bond of mutual loyalty. Researchers in the U.S. have described it as an intense "we-feeling", which can feel more powerful than the civilian bonds that recruits are familiar with. In 2006, an official report on Australian Defence Force training explained the importance of the group bond:
Willingness to apply lethal force requires… sufficient bonding within the team to override each individual’s natural human resistance to kill. The toughness and bonding required increases the closer the contact with the enemy. Recruits are taught to be proud of their identity as professional military personnel, and of their unit in particular. Heroic regimental stories and symbols are used to ennoble the recruits' own unit above others, and above other branches of the armed forces (an aspect of interservice rivalry), thereby establishing a hierarchy of esteem (also known as a hierarchy of respect); the same stories are used to draw a contrast with the purported inferior norms associated with civilian life. (Cf. Unit cohesion)
Aggression and dehumanization
Evidence from Australia, the UK and the U.S. shows that recruit training systematically stimulates aggression, particularly in those enlisted for ground close combat roles. Bayonet practice is an example, as the strong language of this instruction from a British army corporal illustrates:
I wanna see it in your eyes that you wanna kill these fuckers. Imagine these dummies are the fucking Taliban and they’ve just killed some of your mates. You wanna fuckin’ kill them. Show me your war face! [Recruits yell] You need some fucking more aggression, show me your war face. Another example is milling, an exercise used for infantry training in which pairs of recruits wearing boxing gloves punch each other in the head as aggressively as possible.
Fieldcraft and fitness Recruits are taught the basic skills of their profession, such as military tactics, first aid, managing their affairs in the field, and the use of weaponry and other equipment. Throughout, the physical fitness of recruits is tested and developed, although evidence from Israel, Norway, South Africa, the UK and the U.S. has found that the heavy strain on the body also leads to a high rate of injury.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
