From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college

to listeners across the country.

What does it mean for me to lead by example?

You're inviting the students into a certain kind of an intellectual life.

If you're not modeling that intellectual life yourself, if you don't seem like a good example

of the kind of thing

they want to become, then, you know, your instructions, your directions to them in the classroom

are going to be dead in the water. This is your host Scott Bertram and welcome to a special

Veterans Day edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. That's Patrick Whalen. He's operations assistant to the president

at Hillsdale College, also served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He'll talk with us today about

a recent essay he's penned, Why Veterans Make Good Teachers. Patrick, thanks for joining us.

Thanks, Scott. Good to be here. What do you believe veterans bring to the table that makes them exceptional teachers inside the classroom? So, Scott, I should start with a big caveat, which is to say that, you know, there are as many different kinds of veterans as there are different kinds of people. And so it's a, it's a headline. It's a generalization for sure. But what I think if, you know, for example, if you were to take this from the perspective of a parent, sending your kid to school, I think there are some things that you could expect your average veteran to have experienced in the military that would translate or could translate really well into the classroom.

So if you just think about what is your kind of basic military training consist of,

well, it's going to be a lot of physical activity.

Okay, there's going to be a lot of working as a member of a team.

There's going to be a lot of work on developing leadership ability.

There's also, and you know, for the teachers

out there, I think this will resonate. There's also a ethos of operating in resource constrained

environments where you have to improvise, adapt, overcome. How do you think leadership skills

specifically, perhaps that veterans gain in the military translate

to the classroom? Yeah. So I actually think, you know, there's a quote from a famous Marine Corps

general, a guy named General John A. Lejeune, who was a commander of the Marines that were

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