Woodcraft as Adult Training

[acco40]

To paraphrase my colleger calculus professor ...

 

Scouts skills are like sex, you don't learn by taking a class, you learn by doing. Camp, work with rope, sharpen an axe & knife, etc. IOLS is supposed to make the participant get a flavor of what the boys go through. Are the boys experts after a one hour troop meeting on knots? Of course not, so why do we expect the Scouters to take a course like IOLS and become the expert?

 

I found the best teaching tool is to sign up to teach a skill. Pride, fear, etc. are great motivational tools to make one learn the skill before a bunch of folks start looking to you for guidance.

[Eagle92]

Acco,

Why i am a very big proponent of the older scouts teaching the younger ones.

[HICO_Eagle]

I guess I'm with Kudu on most of his thoughts and I like a lot of the ideas on curriculum here. I will happily take courses that enhance my skills and ability to help my boys. Wood Badge doesn't do a darned thing for me (and the more I hear about it, the less I like it). IOLS sounds great for anyone who didn't actually live through the program but it's redundant and useless for a lot of people. Yes, more and more people involved in Scouting at the adult level need it but it seems more and more like a lot of decisions at Council and National levels are being driven by people who weren't Scouts and don't seem to have much of a clue about Scouting.

 

I just about gag everytime I see the signs up, "Every Scout deserved a trained leader." No, every Scout deserves a COMPETENT leader. Training does not equal competence. Never has, never will -- but the professional educators and "leadership developers" don't understand that any more than Neville Chamberlain understood treaties don't equal peace.

 

Let's keep the Scout skills in Scouting.

[acco40]

HICO_Eagle, I'm really frustrated with this either / or mantra on Leadership / Scoutskills that Kudu preaches.

 

Let's look at the education we give our professionals that work with Cub Scout and Boy Scout age boys. They get a mixture of "Scoutcraft" courses - mathematics, English, history, science, etc. and also a lot of "Leadership" courese - child development, child psychology, learning behaviors, etc.

 

Is one better than the other? No. Again, get trained in both but if you only take one, take the courese that best addresses your biggest deficiency.

[Kudu]

acco40 writes:

 

Let's look at the education we give our professionals that work with Cub Scout and Boy Scout age boys. They get a mixture of "Scoutcraft" courses - mathematics, English, history, science, etc. and also a lot of "Leadership" courese - child development, child psychology, learning behaviors, etc.

 

Scouting is not school.

 

In fact Baden-Powell spent a considerable amount of energy explaining that Scouting is the opposite of school.

 

acco40 writes:

 

Is one better than the other?

 

Yes: Scoutcraft is better.

 

acco40 writes:

 

I'm really frustrated with this either / or mantra on Leadership / Scoutskills that Kudu preaches.

 

Then explain the "Patrol Method" presentation of Scoutmaster-specific training in which "leadership" experts removed ANY mention of a Patrol Leader or a working Patrol and replaced them with leadership EDGE theory.

 

This is the Patrol Method presentation, mind you.

 

Leadership Experts: Stupid or Evil?

 

I mean, really, what kind of "leadership" expert removes the Patrol Leader and a working Patrol from the Scoutmaster-specific presentation on the Patrol Method, acco40?

 

Leadership Experts: Stupid or Evil?

 

Presumably these are the same "leadership" experts whose goal it is to use The Guide to Safe Scouting to officially ban Hillcourt's Patrol Method and Baden-Powell's Patrol System in celebration of the BSA's centennial.

 

Leadership Experts: Stupid or Evil?

 

Which is it, acco40?

 

Stupid or Evil?

 

The purpose of a Patrol is Adventure: To go out on patrol without adult EDGE experts:

 

Patrols are ready to go hiking and camping on their own just as soon as the Patrol Leader has been trained, and the Scouts have learned to take care of themselves, have learned to respect growing crops and live trees, to avoid unnecessary danger, and in all ways conduct themselves as Scouts...It should be your goal to get your Patrol Leaders qualified for hike and camp leadership at an early stage Handbook for Scoutmasters, fifth edition, page 118.

 

Yours at 300 feet,

 

Kudu

[Stosh]

By the time I reached Boy Scout age, I was already a skilled woodsman. I had carried a pocket knife for two years before becoming old enough to earn my Totin' Chip. I had built more campfires before scouting than I did in scouting.

 

This weekend I'm packing up my kayak and heading out for a two day run on the river. PoraPottie? Heck no! I have dug more latrines than any scout of today. When I went to camporees as a scout, digging the latrine was one of the camp setup chores we always had to do. Having an outhouse at summer camp was a treat. Every time I hear a SM yell at a boy for not unzipping his tent far enough, I think back to my SM. He never had to yell at us for that, none of the tents had zippers. I was way beyond scout age before I bought my first tent with a screen door and zipper!

 

One of the reasons why many of these skills are now obsolete is because we camp at developed campsites, cooked pre-processed meals, set up modern tents and flies and eat off of picnic tables. Philmont and BWCA even have developed sites.

 

In the past 3 months how many registered scouters have put down a wool blanket on the ground, laid down on it, covered themselves with another wool blanket and got their 8 hours of zzzz's in? It's getting tougher now that I'm 60 years old, but I can still survive in the woods like I did 50 years ago.

 

Woodcraft/Scoutcraft are still important skills. To think that one can promote an effective program without them is to assume that all scouting activities involve flush toilets and picnic tables. That really limits the adventure possibilities along the way.

 

Does real adventure involve a backpack stove instead of a two-burner camp stove? or does it involve tinder, kindling, and maybe a match or two or for the really adventurous, flint/steel, magnesium, or a couple of sticks one whittles? I cheat, I use a magnifying glass on sunny days. Anyone still know how to make charcloth?

 

The more woodcraft/scoutcraft a person knows, the greater the adventure they can plan for. I just hate to think that Scouting adventures will be limited by the lack of those skills.

 

When I was SM of the old SM Fundamental course, I was always amazed by the number of future SM's I was teaching that had stopped by Wal-Mart to buy a tent and sleeping bag for the training weekend. I often wonder how much adventure the boys these SM's had ever had a real adventure in the woods.

 

Stosh