Proficient Pilot: Psychobabble

The last edition was published in 2008, so when the revised edition became available, I checked to see if it contained any important changes. Instructors, after all, should remain current academically as well as with stick and rudder.

I was struck dumb by some of the new verbiage. No, it was worse than that. I shook my head so hard at what I saw that I almost gave myself whiplash. For example, students are no longer called students; they are now called learners. Really! Instructors no longer teach students; they instruct learners. Using my computer’s Search function to scan an electronic copy of the book, I discovered that “learner” (instead of student) appears an irritating 1,881 times. The word “student” appears only 42 times.

Does this mean that the FAA will be issuing learner pilot certificates instead of student pilot certificates? Are flight instructors going to be called coaches, trainers, or professors? Such changes seemingly made for the sake of change distract from learning what really matters.

I recognize that getting older might make me more resistant to change, which is why elders who bark excessively about change often are called dinosaurs. I probably have been guilty of that on occasion. In this case, however, I believe that I am on solid ground. I am certain that even younger pilots will find substituting “learner” for “student” to be awkward and unnecessary. (I am confident about this because I took an informal survey of younger pilots and found that I am correct; few are comfortable with the change.)

This reminds me of when the “biennial flight review” (BFR) was changed by the FAA to a plain “flight review.” The change made no sense. A flight review performed every two years is a flight review performed biennially, which means it is technically still a biennial flight review. But no. We are not supposed to call it that anymore.

A friend informs me that educational psychology—not something about which pilots need to develop expertise—says that there are six reasons why psychologists prefer “learner” to “student.” One reason is that “a student is typically a young person who has yet to graduate,” whereas a learner never really graduates and continues to be curious and engaged through adulthood. Another reason claims that “someone is a student when in a classroom,” which is more psychobabble. The cockpit of an airplane or flight simulator has always been considered a classroom for pilots. Ask anyone studying for an instrument rating if he or she does not feel like a student when shooting approaches under the hood.

Tradition as well as the dictionary define “student” as “one who studies; an attentive observer.” That’s good enough for me.

When I was a pilot for TWA and checked out in various aircraft, I absolutely felt like a student. Becoming qualified in each new type required intense study. Matter of fact, most pilots—irrespective of their experience—consider themselves perpetual students, a humble attitude that generally keeps them safer than those who do not recognize that there is always more to learn.

I consider myself to have been a student ever since Student Pilot Certificate #200208 was issued to me on my sixteenth birthday. I still am.

If substituting “learner” for “student” is not bad enough, the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook also substitutes “flight deck” for “cockpit.” Now this is truly absurd. By definition, a flight deck is “the cockpit of a large aircraft from which it is flown by a pilot and crew.” (It is also the deck of an aircraft carrier used for takeoff and landing.) It is ridiculous to refer to the cockpit of a Cessna 152 as a flight deck. You will never get me to refer to the rear seat of a Piper J–3 Cub as a flight deck. (Here comes that dinosaur again.) This change seems to be a classic case of change made for the sake of change, perhaps the result of someone attempting to justify his or her position by developing something new—even if nonsensical.

Some might want to rid our terminology of cockpit because they do not understand its origin. A coxswain (pronounced KOK-suhn) is someone who steers a boat, and the place from which he does this is the coxswain’s pit, an expression that in aviation became foreshortened to cockpit.

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