This is an amazing thread for an old salt who has been out of the Navy longer then most who now serve have lived. I remember while attending school at Mare Island, the guys who were in training for PBR duty (That's Patrol Boat River) during their PT would march by the barracks and the cadence call would go something like this "If I had a high IQ, I could be a NUKKY-PO". That was in 1967. At that time there was a war and the draft. RO's then came from the top 5% of the ET's, and almost all had some college. They all were trained in electronics school to the component level, and well versed in transistor theory (state of the art then) as well as in vacuum tubes. (Have any of you seen one of them?). Anyway, without electronics theory, you cannot be a good technician, without nuclear and engineering theory you cannot be a good operator.
Case in point. Once while in Subic Bay, I visited a high school buddy, then an E-5 MM on a conventional frigate tied along side us. He took me on a tour of his ship's engine room and told me about how they could not keep vacuum on their turbine generators. I took me about one minute to find the problem. The warm-up recircs where open, in fact they were nearly frozen open. I explained the theory to him, and with glazed eyes he nodded. Later, he sent a letter thanking me, because the problem was the always open recircs, now he was the hot MM on his ship.
Anyway, back to Nukes. Not all RO ET's were able to ply their trade, in fact, on Bainbridge there was not enough technician work for the number of ET's in engineering. While I was there, there were perhaps maybe four or five who did the bulk of the maintenance and repair work, and it usually went to the non-operator qualified guys to do, or to those interested enough to volunteer. The game in our division was to qualify as soon as you could so you could to get out of things like maintenance.
Back to the point, the difference between an accountant and a bookkeeper, is the understanding of business theory and general accounting principles. The difference between a Nuke ET, MM, or EM, and non-nuke ratings, is the nukes understand the theory behind everything they are doing. To down play the importance of theory, is to jeopardize the ship and her mission, like my buddy's ship, the one who could not keep their generators on line in warm waters because they did not understand, or care about the underlying theory of how the machine worked.
I am also sadden to hear that civilians are now used in training. Back in the day, instructor duty was a reward and considered prime duty, even in Idaho.