Distance Learning and Susie Rotten Crotches

I've been transcribing a tape in which a former female Marine, schoolteacher and current contract government employee interviews a current male Marine who is charged with revamping the entire Corps educational program from the "box of books" method where you get, quite literally, a box full of books plus a multiple choice test, then read the books, take the test, mail it back, and presto, you have taken the course, to a distance learning program that gives the 80% of the Corps that aren't able to go to an actual school to get graduate military education more of a classroom feel, a collaborative feel, et cetera, thus preparing them to be better officers in the future.

So in general they are working towards a more competent military, which is a good thing.

Which doesn't mean that everything has changed. When I was in high school, in Mr. "Fair Game for A Quiz Gang" Mitchell's class, we watched a Marine Corps training video in which screaming drill instructors yelled at the Marines "You just want to go home to your little Susie Rotten Crotches, don't you?" after sending them into a closed room full of tear gas and in general beating the holy heck out of them. SRC would of course be a lovely term referring to one's significant other.

While Mr. Marine Corps Distance Learning didn't refer to women in that way, he did say "ain't" a lot (he is a speech and communication specialist) and he and the woman interviewing him bemoaned the fact that when creative writing is taught students aren't given what basically amounts to a nice little box to put your writing in (and I agree with this in some form -- you've got to know the rules before you can break them). They were all, grr, where are the RULES!

But what made me laugh out loud and also think that, despite the years that have passed since I saw that video, the Marine Corps remains at its heart as it was, was this quote:

It’s the responsibility of the command, the commander, the boss, supervisor to support and ensure that the student is achieving those goals, and to provide the kind of emotional support – I don’t mean about hugging and junk.