Bologna Meets the Battlefield – Using Historical Battlefields in Modern Academic Military Education

Abstract

Traditionally Staff or War Colleges used battlefields from the past as training tools for officers. Analysing and discussing historical military confrontations on the location that these confrontations had taken place, is thought to increase the understanding of officers about the realities of war and improve their decision making in the future. In many ways, it is a very practice-orientated method of education military professionals. Its aim is not to turn the officers into academic military historians. A more reflective or academic approach to educational visits to battlefields seemed, from the military standpoint, unnecessary. But because in recent years, military education has reached the level of its civilian academic counterpart more and more, the battlefield tour has to adjust to that level as well. That is why we need more thorough academic reflection on this didactical tool. This process started about two decades ago, but needs to be developed further. Not only because of the creation of military educational curricula that follow civilian academic standards, but also to find affiliation with cultural historians and historians of memory, lieu de memoire and tourism, who increase our understanding of the battlefields of the past. This chapter examines the Dutch effort to create a battlefield tour that both meets academic standards on bachelor level as well as gives cadets professional insights into the ‘realities of war’, which are relevant for their future work as subaltern officers. Based on the philosophy of the ‘thinking soldier’, but also rooted into the history of military education, this academic version of the battlefield tour should help officers in training developing critical thought and skills for academic analysis.