Okay, Franko, I‘ll bite. I might regret it, but here goes.
I was an air cadet for four years, left as a WO2. Bad eyes made me realize I would never fly, so I decided to go as "green" as a pigeon could (uniforms at the time notwithstanding), focusing on shooting and survival training. I had a great time, too; I attended a few national shooting championships, spent a summer in the wilds north of Chicoutimi and another great summer on staff. I never thought I missed anything.
That was over ten years ago, and now I‘m back, helping to start a shooting program at an inner-city corps that‘s lucky to parade 18 on a good night -- while the air cadets in the same building parade at least twice as many. This tells me something‘s not right.
Air cadets get to fly, sea cadets go to sea, but what do army cadets do? Hmm, let‘s see. Oh yeah, adventure training. But wait, don‘t Scouts do that? Yeah, I thought so. There‘s no freaking "army" in army cadets anymore! We were looking through old photo albums the other night, and there are some great pictures from the late 70s showing cadets demonstrating section and platoon attacks with BFA-equipped C1A1s and Bren guns. Holy crap! The universal reaction from the half-dozen or so cadets looking over my shoulder was that they wished they could do that. But why not?
Yes, a lack of "real" military experience among CIC officers can be attributed to this decline, although I also think that‘s a cop-out on the behalf of those too close-minded to see the benefits of a non-military approach to things. That said, I find it hard to believe that a basic primer on small unit tactics couldn‘t be worked into the JOLC(L) or just added as an additional course, like RSO or Abseil Instructor. The rot at NDHQ could also be blamed, as well as a lack of vision or courage of conviction, especially throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Money is always an issue, especially for army cadets and securing qualified instructors for field exercises involving "army" training -- many units simply can‘t afford a weekend‘s pay for a Cpl or Sgt to train cadets. And then of course there‘s always the argument about teaching kids how to kill, something my wife trots out every now and again, ie, "You‘re actually going to teach inner-city kids how to shoot straight? Do the police know you‘re doing this?" BTW, she only says that to jerk my chain -- as a teacher she understands and appreciates the benefits of focus and discipline that shooting instills in young adults -- but your average soccer mommy might not be so easily persuaded.
I‘ve spent a lot time since I came back talking to cadets and trying to find out why they joined, and they all say because they want to know "what the army‘s like." Other than shooting, I don‘t see much offered by the current army cadet program that gives them a taste of the "real army". Kids join air cadets because they want to learn to be a pilot, and they join sea cadets because they like boats (and which I never understood, quite frankly
), but it bugs me that army cadets don‘t learn about what it‘s like to be a soldier. This varies from unit to unit of course, but I find the overall program very weak.
One of the aims of cadets is to encourage interest in the CF, and I don‘t feel that army cadets is doing that right now.
And don‘t get me started about abuse of CHAP, poor discipline and lack of respect for uniforms!
