As enlisted the Marines face Corps prepares to require more demanding professional education requirements for promotion, junior Marines seeking promotion, Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Mike Barrett is backing the move in an open letter to the Corps.
Barrett appeared on Monday’s episode of “The Corps Report,” the Dec. 1 on the biweekly Marine Corps-sponsored video news update released on paydays. He The Corps Report to discussed upcoming the coming changes to professional military education, which include new resident courses for lance corporals, corporals and sergeants to be promoted to the next rank. a new command-sponsored leadership and ethics seminar for Lance Corporals, and a requirement to complete the Marines’ resident corporals course ahead of promotion to sergeant. The requirements are set to take effect Oct. 1, 2015.
“Don’t look at this as a roadblock; look at this as we are evolving as an institution,” Barrett said on the show.
The changes include a new command-sponsored leadership and ethics seminar for Lance Corporals, and requirements to complete the Marines’ resident corporals and sergeants courses ahead of promotion to sergeant and staff sergeant. The requirements are set to take effect Oct. 1, 2015.
Barrett has been closely involved in with designing the new PME professional military education standards, working with Marine Corps Training and Education Command to craft the leadership and ethics seminar.
“PME has always been a priority in Sgt. Maj. Barrett’s process,” said his spokesman, Gunnery Sgt. Chanin Nuntavong. “It took him from day one until now to make sure everything is lined up the way things should be.”
In the open letter, published as the episode aired, Barrett encouraged all Marines to read the 2,200-word Marine Aadministrative Mmessage that described all the new changes and requirements.
“So, why are we doing this? Simply answered — because the world is not getting any nicer, it is unstable and increasingly more complex and our Marines will be handling multiple tasks in chaotic environments, making critical decisions at the point of friction,” he wrote.
Those friction points include internal discipline issues as well as future combat and crisis response missions, he said.
Among discipline issues address by the new lance corporals seminar, he said, are drug use, alcohol, domestic violence, criminal activity, sexual offenses, hazing and suicide. Looking outward, Barrett he cited several crises Marines are currently confronting or could face soon including instability in the Middle East, and extremist threats, Ebola response in Africa, and providing security to U.S. borders as crises that the Marines are currently confronting or could face soon.
Nuntavong said Barrett wrote the letter and appeared on “The Corps Report” to help Marines embrace the rationale behind the new requirements.
“As Sergeant Major Sgt. Maj. Barrett traveled around the Marine Corps, a lot of the Marines … didn’t really understand why things were changing; they felt it was another rock in their rucksack,” he said. “So [Barrett] wrote a letter … explaining in his eyes the importance of [Eenlisted PME] and the changes that we’re moving towards.”
The new promotion requirements may place an added burden on unit leaders, who will have to devote time and resources to facilitating versions of the lance corporals seminar and sending Marine noncommissioned officers away to resident PME courses.
“The challenge is for commanders, senior enlisted leaders, frontline supervisors and the individual Marine to find the balance between advanced primary [military occupational specialty] MOS training/schools, pre–deployment workups, enlisted PME, family and social life,” Barrett said in an email to Marine Corps Times. “They’re all important, they’re all priorities, we can do them all — equally great! Be in charge of the challenge.”
During his video appearance, In his interview with the Corps report, Barrett said resident PME courses were a necessary sacrifice. boiled the thought down even further.
“If you think resident PME is a burden,” he said, “try ignorance.”
