Want to reform military education? An easy 1st step would be banning PowerPoint

Richard Russell:

One reform measure — which no doubt is not in the docket — would be easy to propose, extremely beneficial to PME’s quality, and of lasting intellectual benefit to graduates as future military leaders: banning PowerPoint on campus. PowerPoint has become so acculturated and institutionalized in the military writ large that it retards the quality of research, analysis, planning, operations, strategy, and decision making at all levels of command. The banning of PowerPoint in PME for use by students, faculty, administrators, and guest speakers, however, would be horrifically difficult to implement given its powerful hold over the minds and practices of today’s military.
 
 Numerous serious strategists, practitioners, and soldier-scholars over the years have bemoaned and warned of the dangers of the military’s PowerPoint obsession. These warnings from the lips and pens of serious strategic thinkers should squash any belittling dismissals that PowerPoint’s use is not an issue for serious curriculum reform. Marine General James Mattis, former combatant commander of Central Command and no one to mess with on the battlefield, publicly commented, “PowerPoint makes us stupid.” Accomplished conventional and unconventional warfighter, best-selling author, and soon-to-be three-star general H. R. McMaster observed, “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control.”