4 weeks into OCS and I FELT LIKE DYING. OCS was not entirely what I expected. In BMT, we mainly did physical training whereas in OCS, apart from the arduous physical training we had to go through every dawn and evening, the day was filled with lectures. Yes, actual classroom lectures. We would march to the lecture hall after our breakfast and sit in the lecture hall. The topics would vary from learning about the history of modern warfare to how the SAF’s organizational structure and the numerous bureaucratic administrative procedures we are expected to familiarize ourselves with.
To make matters worse, these lectures are conducted in what Freire referred to as the ‘banking concept of education’. We would come into the lecture hall every morning and after performing the usual military rituals with the lecturer of the day (silencing the room -> saluting the lecturer -> asking for permission to proceed with the lecture for the day), we were expected to open up our notebooks and write notes for the lecture. Many-a-times, when someone was observed to have his notebook closed or not taking notes, the lecturer would demand that he open the notebook and start taking notes as “this would be tested in the exam”. Freire writes that in banking education, “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (Freire, 72). I recall that there was one lecture on the importance of military preparedness using the case study of the 6-Day Israeli War. The focus of the lecture was clear – military training and preparedness. However, when I reasoned that there were many other factors which decided the eventual outcome of the war, the lecturer (who was a senior ranking officer) insistently argued that the state of the Israeli military was the decisive factor that led them to win the war. I was not in a position to argue with the lecturer but at that point, I felt that the lecturer was disregarding all my knowledge on the subject matter and was instead, trying to impose a standardized point of view on everyone in the room.
Looking back, the OCS curriculum was tight as only 5 weeks were catered for general military education. A large amount of information had to be downloaded into us within that short period of time which may explain why there was limited practice of the problem-posing education proposed by Freire. In all honesty, I felt that I did not remember a lot of what I was taught during that 5-week period. However, during the later parts of my officer-ship training, things turned out rather differently due to the different pedagogical methods employed and the reduced pressure on time-sensitivity.