In American media, Drill Sergeants are often portrayed as mean and shouty. Yelling at recruits / treating them like garbage.
The only thing I could think of is that they’re going for a “military service is hard so I’m going to make this as unpleasant for you as possible because life is hard” kind of thing, but couldn’t discipline be instilled in soldiers without the yelling and humiliation? Why is this the only way?
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Air Force vet here.
Basic training has evolved over time and has a different purpose for each branch. One of the biggest reasons for the yelling and ordering around is to essentially stress test the recruits. Almost every recruit class has at least 1 or 2 people that freak out when under extreme stress like getting yelled at. And if getting yelled at by someone that means you no harm while in a safe location causes you to freak out/have major panic attacks/shut down then you likely will have a hard time if you get deployed and put in a stressful situation at a hostile location and encountering people that want to kill you. So those people usually fail boot camp and are separated by the military who simply sends them home.
It’s often said that it’s also to “break people down and build them back up” but I don’t agree with that. I never felt broken down and rebuilt, and I don’t see that in anyone that left basic training. It’s more like to teach people to work as a team and that selfishness will bring down the whole team. Group punishment is used often, where if one person screws something up, everyone pays for it. It’s to teach members that when you’re out in the field in a hostile location, your actions can get your whole team killed. So basic training enforces this idea at a foundational level.
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