Managing Diversity in the United States Army

1405 Words3 Pages

The United States Army consists of soldiers from many diverse cultures. Citizenship is not a requirement to join the Army, so people enlist from across the United States as well as from many countries around the world. The Army has its own unique culture that is a conglomeration of the many cultures that make up its population. Each new soldier is expected to adapt to this new culture and integrate as a member of a larger team. Helping new soldiers make this adaptation as quickly as possible and with few difficulties is a challenge for the leaders of new soldiers throughout the Army.

The primary challenge for leaders in the Army is taking a group of individuals and molding them into a team. The framework that is employed to the greatest effect uses task-oriented instruction and is called battle focus training. After major objectives are defined, they are broken down into smaller sets. These smaller sets are known as collective tasks and are designed to be accomplished by small teams of soldiers. Each soldier is assigned one or more individual tasks that work together to accomplish the collective task. Training begins by teaching soldiers how to accomplish each of the individual tasks. At this point, emphasis is placed on the soldier as an individual. Although training is conducted in small groups, soldiers are evaluated independently of their peers. Once individual task mastery is achieved, leaders have soldiers begin to work together to accomplish collective tasks. This method of battle focus training incorporates aspects of both individualism and collectivism to accomplish the ultimate goal.

The most difficult barrier to conducting initial individual training is the varying backgrounds of all of the soldiers. In ...

... middle of paper ...

...srooms to better understand where some of my soldiers and their families come from. Family oriented events can be improved to appeal to more soldiers and families, regardless of their background.

The United States Army is not a mirror image of the average American classroom, but the training we do shares many things in common. Training is performed both individually and collectively to take advantage of the benefits of both. The Army has done a lot to overcome cultural barriers in recent years, but there is still room for improvement. Many of the methods implemented by the teachers in Managing Diverse Classrooms could be implemented to improve training and cultural awareness in the daily operations of the Army.

Works Cited
Rothstein-Fisch, C. & Trumbull, E. (2008). Managing Diverse Classrooms. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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