-Jules- said:
I'll preface this by saying that I was on one of the trial platoons. I survived. I also would have survived without my cellphone. However, I don't think that allowing electronics is a bad idea.
You think you would have survived. Luckily for you you had your cell phone so you didn't really notice not having it
One of the main issues that I've seen brought up over this thread is the belief that recruits will have access to their electronics at all times and that this will distract them from training. The rules set out for the platoon I was on were that electronics stayed in our rooms at all times during the training day. After that there were limitations on what we were allowed to do. No games, no movies, no posting pictures of BMQ on Facebook and a limit on the amount of time that one could spend on their phone per night. I'm certainly not saying that those rules were followed by everyone on platoon
So right here recruits were given certain privileges and still abused them.
So basically going against everything that recruit school is trying to instill. Following orders, discipline and self-control. Nice.
They were given an order but didn't think it applied to them, or didn't care. I'm sure if and when they deploy overseas they'll follow all the rules...
You guys had to have your access to cell phones limited like children being grounded from an xbox. How many instructors were required to stick around and monitor your cell phone usage? Did instructors have to stay until 1800hrs or later to make sure people weren't disobeying orders? It sounds like a big game of cat and mouse.
Several people mentioned that recruits don't need to be checking Facebook all the time and, if they have a true emergency, they will be provided with a phone. I can say from experience that Facebook was not as great an issue as most of you seem to perceive.
I'll counter this and say from my experience people are CONSTANTLY on facebook. I've seen BMQ, SQ, PLQ students alike updating from class instead of paying attention.
I have a claim thats 5 months old that I'm still waiting on, yet my clerk manages to find time to update facebook from work.
The majority of people on my platoon that had smartphones used them mainly for calling home and doing online banking. For those that did have emergencies, yes, a phone would have been provided but how much easier is it to deal with issues on your own time?
I don't believe the only thing they used it for was calling home and banking for a second. I'm not calling you a liar here simply saying I don't think you were really paying attention.
Doing online banking is a typical excuse why students (and staff) *NEED* their phones.
EVERYONE now days has some kind of family emergency to justify why they need to have their cell phones on them, and in hand. Guarantee you show up on a course and SOMEONE has an emergency at home. People seem to often be so hung up on staying connected that they lie about this shit.
Getting personal issues dealt with solely through the chain of command is not as easy as it's being made out to be. Also, all time spent dealing with personal issues with the help of instructors is time taken away from other activities. Your wife is having financial issues due to you being away? You'll end up taking time out to speak to staff, see a padre, see clerks to get pay issues resolved…all this takes away from training time. Call your wife after hours and get all the information so you only need to visit the clerks once? Simple. From what I saw, allowing the recruits to deal with minor personal issues as they came up instead of waiting until it snowballed into an emergency which (with no electronics) would have required a phone call to the school let the recruits actually focus on their training.
Those are fair points, the chain of command can be slow. But still I think this makes little tiny issues into "emergencies".
I'm not sure how being away would cause your spouse to have financial issues... You're not at home meaning you're not using electricity, not using water, not eating food in the house. You're on course getting paid and either TD or field pay, right?
If you need to speak to a padre then that's pretty serious. You're playing devils advocate with your theory on keeping cell phones stops emergencies from snowballing. If you have an actual problem then the staff will give you time to sort it out.
A few things that are, perhaps, less factual than they could be:
1. The platoon that the trial was done on was a warrior platoon. This isn't incorrect in itself but the platoon I was on was definitely brand new recruits. All of us expected to lose our electronics when we got to CFLRS and were very surprised when we were allowed to keep them.
So the warrior platoon was full of new recruits? So you were in the warrior platoon?
2. Those that didn't VR were lost later due to failing out of future courses. I'm not sure when the other two trial platoons ran but I doubt many, if any, of the people I was on platoon with are done their QL3 course. There simply hasn't been enough time since the trial to see the long-term effects on soldiers and what this means for the military as a whole. That's a study I would be interested in seeing.
I may have misconstrued what I was told and repeated it incorrectly. I'm thinking maybe it was a series of efforts on the recruit schools behalf to decrease the VR rate and the cell phone thing was just one part of it. I'm getting clarification.
3. Recruits were leaving because they weren't allowed to keep their electronics. The one real example that was shown of this was from someone that was on warrior platoon. I'd prefer not to comment on warrior platoon as a whole because there are recruits there that will make quality soldiers but it's also fairly well known that morale and GAFF is fairly low among some recruits in warrior. Perhaps those recruits weren't particularly interested in staying on with the CF for the long run and were just collecting a pay cheque until something prettier came along? One example isn't a lot to go on.
I don't mean to be crass here but basically the CF gave a platoon largely (heh) made up of a bunch of over weight recruits with "low morale", who's 'give a f###' factor is low, full access to their toys in order to try and keep them in the CF. A couple more than the normal average of these low morale, low GAFF ended up staying through recruit school.
I'm seeing it as their deciding factor in being soldiers, fighting for freedom and protecting Canada, is whether or not they were allowed cell phones...
Teamwork
Instructors said that teamwork suffered. This isn't something that is new information to the recruits that were on those platoons. We knew our teamwork was lacking and we were told. Often.
However, I don't believe that lack of teamwork was due to the electronics trial. A large part of it was due to being in blue sector and being more separated from each other than the typical platoon in green sector. This was one of the things that our instructors warned us about right away and it was something that we saw every day. We were the Hollywood platoon but many of us would have moved to green sector in a heartbeat to fix our teamwork issues.
The instructors can see that the teamwork was bad and can attribute it to the electronics policy. The recruits that were on those platoons saw what went on after-hours and, as one of them, I can say that lack of teamwork wasn't due to electronics usage.
I don't really see how having cell phones effects teamwork either - except as a member of a team when you constantly have to tell someone to get the #%$^ off their cell phones and help out/join the group.
"Just hold on, I got an emergency" "Just a sec, gotta send a text" "Just a sec, I'm in a convo with my wife" "hold on I'm doing something"
Hey where's so and so?
Yup, HAVING a cell phone means every little thing becomes an emergency that needs to be sorted out.
Cpl like that at my work. Day 1 of a course. Where is he when we need the admin NCO? Can't find him in the building, he's not answering his phone. Oh, an hour later he's in the crew cab in the parking lot texting his GF- has problems at home he's trying to sort out.
There were, as there always are, people that broke the rules and abused the privileges. However, this happens in regard to every rule and every privilege.
Which doesn't make it anymore acceptable nor does it mean we should let people get away with something just because other rules get broken.
The instructors do their best to weed those out, unfortunately a large majority of them stay on, but I really don't think allowing electronics during BMQ under controlled rules is going to have that much of an influence on the final product.
But you've already said they some of your peers couldn't even follow orders under the controlled rules. Doesn't that tell you what the "end product is?"
How will the poor young things survive on deployment without their cellphones? They'll adapt.
day.
spend thousands of dollars on unsecured cell phones
Disappear with SAT phones and spend WAY over their allotted time.
I'm not trying to attack you Jules I think it's great that you posted. You have a good perspective in this debate having been at ground zero and it's always hard to post against the crowd.
I think you also pointed out some flaws with this cell phone idea if you sit and think about it. Especially the part where the end product is soldiers that still couldn't follow simple rules in basic training. THOSE types would be better off VRing from the forces.
I'm assuming you meant that the average university student has seen more change within their first 20 years then the average baby boomer did in theirs. Now twist that concept and put it in the perspective of someone who has been in the military for that same 20 years i.e. I see your 20 and raise you 20, then stop and think what all that change may have meant for them. Kind of like comparing cabbages and kings isn't it?
