Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 98

Methodological Concerns

Epistemological Concerns

Population-centric approach versus territory- or
fixed-objective-centric
Police-oriented approach, versus military-oriented,
versus information-oriented

How an army understands time, relationships, and how
to influence them
How an army views ways to gain support of the
population over time
How victory is framed—as the destruction of something
tangible, or as the intangible actions of the population at
risk (Do we understand a difference?)
How to measure success—as tied to metrics and
tangible items or actions, or as associated with
conceptual processes
How governance supports counterinsurgency, the form
of government best suited for this environment, and the
forms not suitable

Winning hearts and minds approach versus endsjustifies-the-means
Attacking a network, a system-of-systems nodal
approach
Securing territory in a clear, hold, and build
approach to capitalize on population stability
National government and centralized authority
tied to rule of law, enforced by security forces for
entire population
Train, advise, and assist security forces to operate
and eventually replace all occupying forces

How to teach security forces, in what manner, and what
tasks and functions to teach

Table. Methodological Versus Epistemological Concerns for Counterinsurgency
The U.S. Army’s generally accepted counterinsurgency methodology places primacy on securing
the population while empowering a governmental
form (democratic) we favor, supported by some
sort of viable security element that moves the society toward stability and viability.4 To achieve this,
we generally regard as essential having to establish,
train, and support security forces so they can counter
any insurgency within their nation, hence the name
counterinsurgency.5
Methodological debates on counterinsurgency
tend to address competing techniques, socioeconomic
theories, and military strategy. An epistemological
discussion goes further to address the abstract notion of counterinsurgency knowledge—and how U.S.
forces exchange ideas with the host-nation forces that
mold their empowered security element. This article
examines the perspectives of teachers and students,
and how the U.S. Army tends to understand the
exchange of knowledge through one form of pedagogy.
The Army’s epistemological perspective “acts as both a
gatekeeper and bouncer for methodology in that it determines and regulates what is to be known and how
it can be known.”6 The pedagogy of the Army—the
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essence of teaching—forms the invisible foundation for
any counterinsurgency concept or method.

The Old Master Explication Model
To address weaknesses in the Army’s pedagogical
approach, this article draws inspiration from modern
French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s The Ignorant
Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation.
This book is about the unusual teaching techniques of
French schoolmaster Joseph Jacotot, who was employed by the king of the Netherlands in 1818. Jacotot,
speaking no Flemish, was directed to teach French to
a class of students who only spoke Flemish. Jacotot’s
approach, based on what he called intellectual emancipation, challenged the entire Western model of classical education on epistemological, philosophical, and
sociological levels. He taught topics he did not know,
without learning Flemish, and he helped liberate his
students to learn French by finding their own path.
Rancière further developed Jacotot’s ideas.
Why would a story about someone branded a mad
schoolteacher by the mainstream educators of his time
provide any value to a discussion about counterinsurgency?7 Although teaching the application of organized
March-April 2015  MILITARY REVIEW