ScreamingEagle

Having some time to refelct upon my USMA experience, I find this interesting now that I've been a PL for 15 months now and dont have all the worries I had as a Cadet (much different worries now). Every class says the class after them has it easier, and in some cases, this is true, because every classes experience is different. I know I felt that way with the classes of 07, 08, and 09 when I was there, and I know that 03, 04, and 05 felt that way about us. Every year there is some horrible limit on the corrections that can be done to plebes that send upperclassmen into a roar (I had an instructor, class of 93, tell us that when the officially ended the 4th class system when he was a cadet, he verbally told his TAC that this place made him physically ill and he didnt want to be part of it anymore). The point is, everyone always thinks someone is getting over.
However, I do think there is a great deal of value in the yelling and the putting people under more stress than they can take. That trains you to be a better leader when things get bad, when bullets start to fly, and when people get hurt. You need to be able to deal with horrible, horrible things, not letting them distract you, and focus on what needs to be done at hand. Having experienced Beast, you learn some of that, even though it may not be the best method, it works for the resources available at USMA. Putting people under stress brings out the best and worst of them; one needs not look further than about the 5th week of any given Ranger School class to realize that people under stress show their true colors. Beast cant use the Ranger School model, they cant take away THAT much food and sleep, so there are other means to do similar things, mainly creating a stressful environment which is multiplied in effectiveness when you yell at people. Its been the military's training model for dozens of years (up until recently), and it's worked.
That being said, it does not teach good leadership. I dont think any reasonable USMA grad ever walked away from graduation and thought, 'i'll treat my platoon like it were beast." That's just stupid. However, if all you did at USMA was yell at people to get them to do what you wanted, you missed the core of leadership, by definition, which is to influence others to achieve a common goal. Yelling it great fro plebes, it teaches them how to deal with stress, because there will be a time when they have to do so, but it isnt so good for upperclassmen, because its a cop out of having to actually learn how to influence others.
As always, its a difficult balance, but I do fear that we, as an Army, have to be careful not to get too far away from the basic standards and discipline that we're always taught, faught, and won with. I do feel that some of the changes made to training, army wide, in the last decade have been detrimental to the mission.
My two cents.