How To Make A Paper Aeroplane (Or Education The Army Way) Part 1

The first couple of weeks of my new course were spent in a classroom - well a room where classes were taught at any rate.

Every lesson in the army comes in a set formulae. It doesn't matter if you are learning how to make a paper aeroplane or how to launch a nuclear missile the lesson will be in the same format.

First of all there are the Preliminaries. The beginning is a good place for them really. The Preliminaries include such exciting things as the instructor introducing themselves (by Day 3 of Week 1 this was comedy in itself); pointing out the fire exits in their best air hostess impression (by Day 3 of Week 1 this had lost any comedy valued it may have had); and asking everyone to switch off their mobile phones (although no-one every does).

Having allowed a short pause to allow one and all to recover from the excitement the instructor then moves on to the Aim, Incentive and Reason Why. This goes something along the lines of:

"The aim of today's lesson is to teach you all how to make a paper aeroplane. Once you've learnt how to make a paper aeroplane you'll be able to send messages across the classroom without the instructor noticing. When you join the Origami Platoon you need to able to support your mates with suppressive paper aeroplane sorties."

I'm sure you get the general gist..........