So yesterdays blog was about the over-stimulation of students and how that creates difficulties with learning.

Today's' blog is about how art can be used to help train soldiers.

In particular a soldier's ability to pay attention to detail.

Yes that's right I said train soldiers using art.  What many people who have served recently and perchance some others will recognize S.A.L.U.T.E.

This is of course not the way we great each other for those who don't know but is in fact a reporting procedure for spotting suspicious or enemy activity.

S.A.L.U.T.E. stands for

Size- # of personal, # of vehicles, # of equipment
Activity- Deploying, Redeploying, Sustainment activities, Training, Defense.
Location- Coordinates, Airfield, Military Base, Terrain Association
Unit/Uniform- Company, Battalion, Brigade, Division / What type of uniforms do they have on?
Time- What time of day/night did you observe
Equipment. - Weapons, Vehicles, Aircraft, Types of Gear

This, of course, is a very nice military way of DESCRIBING things.

Allow me to illustrate for you.






What is this ?

Some of you right now answered that this is a pipe.

Some of you answered that this is a picture of a pipe

There is a distinct difference in the two answers.

A little history of this painting needs to be explained to help illuminate those differences. This painting was created by Belgian René Magritte at an age when art had focused so much on making something look as realistic as possible. So by stating that it is not a pipe in the text under the pipe, he is making a distinct separation that the viewer might have tripped past while viewing it.

It is not a pipe. It is an important distinction that by studying art you learn to take a step back and list out the the details in the image or sculpture.

How many times have you had to tell a troop, coworker or student to "Pay Attention to Details"? Details matter; details are the difference between life and death in the military and often they're the difference between doing something right or doing something over and over again. Often a student does not have a context for these details to come in to play.

Art provides that context. Take this painting for example.





Now answer a couple of questions.

1. What is the age of the painter when he created this message?
2. How many people are in the painting?
3. Why did he make this painting?




Ready for some answers?
1. If you look at the smaller painting that the apparent artist is holding onto, then you can determine the true age of the painter and it is much older then the apparent artist. The artist is using this as a means to show off his skills "turning back the clock".
2. Ten people are in the painting. Go ahead and count again. You may be having trouble seeing the person behind the beer glass or perhaps the person in the silver figure in front of the vase.
3. The reason why is shown through the flowers and the candle. What he has done is shown off the level of his skills as a painter. But as this is a Vanitas(look it up here) he has placed images of death. This is not because he is a morbid person, but because he is acknowledging his own mortality. The painter is saying to the viewer, "Act now; there is a time limit to my skills."

"Paying attention to the details." When I taught this lesson to high school students, more often than not, they could not count more than eight people. These are the people we are sending into the work-force or college and then we don't understand why they have trouble doing their work and/or drop-out after their first year.

 The ability to critically look at something and describe it is more than just something that a student needs in school or out looking for a job. If you look back up at S.A.L.U.T.E. you can see that each step is an exercise in paying attention to detail and describing a subject. Some of the steps are easy and are but some that a soldier needs to pay attention and distinguish aspects of uniforms, equipment, and/or weapons.

While the military is all about On the Job Training, on the battle field is not the time to start teaching an 18 year-old how to pay attention to details and how to search for visual clues. This is why the skills that art teaches us are so important, not only for our young people joining the workforce or are college bound, but perhaps especially for our young soldiers.