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A Clash of Attitudes

© Andrew Willis

In European navies of the Age of Sail (approx. 1450-1890), officers came from nobility or the upper class of merchants. In the days of sail, and probably long before, the differences in socio-economic class between the regular seaman and the officers on board were enormous to say the least. The officers were educated, trained and used to being served by those whose "station" was, of course, far lower than their own. On a ship, those would be the deck seamen, many, if not most, of whom were there under duress, having been pressed into service. Essentially, they were kidnapped by the petty officers onboard the ship, who were merely proxies for the captain. Of course, once at sea, the captain of the ship was second only to God, and his word was law, right or wrong.

As marine engineering technology, including steam propulsion and armor plating in the 1860s and moving to true battleships in the 1890s, enlisted men soon became technicians, but still didn't have the expertise of the officers over them. Officers in the US Navy were college graduates, mostly from the Academy, while enlisted men still rarely had even a high school education. This difference in knowledge and ability still kept the separation between classes intact.

Over the course of the Twentieth Century, things changed. Enlisted men took more and more of the technical duties, and officers became more and more simply managers. I'm speaking here of first line officers: division officers and even department heads, whose job it is to supervise. These officers are not taught how to work on anything, as officers in the Age of Sail had to know how to effectively be able to step into any position aboard the ship. Instead, beginning officers are taught the very basics of the jobs of their subordinates and then are expected to "lead" them.

Since 1980 or so, the educational level of the enlisted force has dramatically increased. Today, it's not that unusual to find enlisted personnel with technical certificates and college degrees, even some who are better educated and more capable than the officers over them. Also, as the upper economic classes increasingly spurn military service, the initial differences in education and social position between people accepted for ROTC and the Academy and those accepted for enlistment fade as well. So the differences between officers and enlisted come then in initial training. This is enough to create the attitude of superiority that officers still tend to develop.