There’s a concept called “bulldozer parenting.” This refers to parents who beat every obstacle for their child before the child has a chance to struggle. Although this is intended to protect children from short-term harm, psychology instructors Rachel Sherman He observed that this “ultimately produces psychologically vulnerable children who fear failure, avoid failure, do not learn how to cope, and are less resilient.”
These same good intentions can lead to “bulldozing” of soldiers by senior leadership, such as the troubled implementation of the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT).
The traditional Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) is Assumptions of the Cold War era Ground combat was a thing of the past, an illusion that left many soldiers physically unprepared for what they faced during the Global War on Terror. Early versions of the ACFT, addressing lessons learned from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, posed significant challenges for the force.
As expected, the heightened expectations were met with the first wave of failures. Even though the leg tuck has been part of training doctrine for over a decade, the first ACFT exam showed that: 60% of women, 8% of men One iteration could not be completed. army data They then revealed that seven months after introducing ACFT, these failure rates had dropped to 22% for women and 2% for men. The same data also shows that despite easier passing standards compared to APFT for most demographics, soldiers fail at an even higher rate, 22% of women and 5% of men. Indicated.
One way to solve this would have been to give soldiers the time and resources to rise to the challenge. Instead, under significant political pressure, the Army chose to remove the leg tuck and rewrite the scoring table to ensure that most soldiers passed.
It also sent a clear message that if soldiers failed too often, future attempts to raise standards would be halted. This was the opposite of what the ACFT was designed to address: the need for tougher training and higher standards for a new era of combat.
The test began in 2018 as an Army-wide, field-tested, criterion-referenced assessment. That means the standards are based on predictable demands arising from combat operations and occupations, officials said. Intentionally setting the minimum passing score low than these demands. After these adjustments, the scores were adjusted to reflect the average level of performance, resulting in a criterion-referenced assessment.
Remember, without real changes to training and policy, these were the same performance levels that leaders recognized as inadequate when they first directed the development of ACFT. Also, because this was a pilot study, the soldiers had little incentive to undertake the test. Raters collected data in the absence of consequences for poor performance or rewards for high performance.
Despite the orders of Congress RAND Corporation report Discovering that the ACFT passing score is designed to be easier than the actual challenges Soldiers face, and observing that it is already improving the Army’s fitness culture, leaders I was very concerned about the initial pass rate.
Despite the Army challenging troops with new fitness standards. Wide range of improvements As units and individuals adjusted their training, the Army rewrote its scoring tables to make it easier to pass the exam. The RAND study even observed that at the time the revisions were made, few soldiers even had the opportunity to be tested a second time, but some did show significant improvement.
If this test was introduced to address fitness deficiencies, how is it acceptable to base standards on current performance? Once in place, those standards were immediately bulldozed to save soldiers from suffering.
So what is left for us?
Higher scores are still difficult to achieve, but passing requires just 10 push-ups, a 2/22 mile run (for the fastest tier), and a walkable sprint-drag-carry . If you are unable to run due to injury, your rowing standards are very slow; Bottom 5% of competitive 10-year-olds. This is of particular concern because the updated policy means that soldiers who are medically disqualified from participating in all testing events could be deployed on a column-only basis.
Focusing on the newly lowered standards, Congress directed Army to establish higher passing scores for combat missions. Previous iterations of the ACFT did just that, establishing a single basic Army standard, but placing higher requirements on more physically demanding jobs. For example, in 2020, the two-mile crossing time for male and female soldiers between the ages of 17 and 21 was 21 minutes. By comparison, the current crossing time for male soldiers between the ages of 17 and 21 is 22 minutes, and for female soldiers in the same age group it is 23 minutes and 22 seconds. The running time passing score wasn’t raised because it was unrealistic, it was changed due to an outcry when people found it challenging.
Balance is required. The military must take care of the people, Resilience is not developed in resilience classes — Those lessons are important, but real growth comes from applying the lessons learned through hardship. Going into combat lacking the requisite physical, mental, and spiritual resilience has consequences for more than just failing a physical fitness test.
The Army may be able to overcome obstacles at home, and that may make people happy for now, but we cannot force our soldiers to go into harm’s way unprepared. It is your responsibility to ensure that this does not occur. The Army can continue on its current path and lower the bar until everyone can get through it. Or you can set your expectations high and watch people rise to meet them.
Alex Morrow is an Army Reserve officer with experience working in several military human performance programs in the Army and Space Force. He is hosting MOP and MOE PodcastsYou can also find us on Instagram (@mops_n_moes). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official position of any organization with which the author is affiliated. [email protected].
