WWW: If you choose to read through my originator's thread you'd see it was extracted by scorggs and started off on it's own. I had no intention of sparking such a debate and made that quite clear immediately after the hijacking of post on a previous post. Even the title was 'arranged' for me, so please don't berate me for that.
You are correct I have no experience of military life but then again I wasn't fighting in the first world war to know it was nasty episode in the human chapter.
Nevertheless considering the subsequent posts by people I would feel things have moved onto a uniform/casual wear debate, whereas it was originally entitled along a slightly different persepctive of military mannerisms in civilian flight schools. Obviously uniform is one example but ceratinly not the sole issue that surrounds this topic.
I personally think that a professional standard on it's own is simply a bridge too far for most people these days. They don't even have the fundamentals and can't study, express themeselves, show empathy to others, exhibit self control and manners, lack of general knowledge (rapidly approaching the level of the US public), etc. However I feel these issues need to ideally be addressed by the mainstream schooling system and not the flight shcool they are there to focus on flight training and not to complicate things with teaching other aspects too. I'm sure the same can be said about other professions. Do you remember the Chief Surgeon in carry on films that had the big beard with an equally fluffy name Sir Bum-phrey
He commanded respect by all and was a very well eductaed in both his profession and general upbringing, he no doubt took personal responsibility for his actions and a care for all his staff.... honourable. Fast forward to the present day and there I am at a wedding sitting next to a very senior doctor using colourful language, driving a 'kitted out' car (rude boy style), a display of constant arrogance accompanied by a very selfish tone to all. That is the result of today's disrespectful system that we are pushing the young people through.
I agree with many of this thread that other unwelcome facets of social behaviour have unfortunately found their way into our FTOs but flying is still a very serious business. However many define flight training through their personal experience as a passenger (it's takes a long time sitting down then you get there and the doors open), I turned a 747 on my Microsoft flight simulator thus I'm a semi-qualified pilot, I saw a documentary on the Discovert channel and they have computers flying the aeroplane therefore anyone can fly it. Most unfortunate but there you have it....
The conclusion as far as I can see it is to raise standards outside of the FTOs so the 'input' of student can make better use of the training to be undertaken. The RAF wouldn't want to combine every stage of training from Initial Officer right upto adanvanced weaponary and conversion training into one single college, so why should civilian FTOs.
Until we can't get rid of the 'excessive left wing tendancies' in society then we are prone to lots of bad quality students.