Traditional Wood Badge - Giving a Demonstration

[TAHAWK]

The original Wood Badge, 1948-1971

 

From "Teaching a Skill," in "Making Training Sessions Interesting," Appendix, Wood Badge Instructor's Guide to Practical Training, Boy Scout Course, 1959 Printing.

 

 

"You talk about the skill, and the learner listens. [L]et him ask questions. . . . [if] you write about the skill, and the learner reads it,. . .he has the advantage of a permanent record that he can review, But it lacks the force of personal presentation, and also the chance to clear up doubtful points by answering the learner's questions.

 

You demonstrate the skill by doing it yourself. . . . He has proof that the skill can be done - and in the way you demonstrate it. This is more forceful than when you merely talk or write to him.

 

You coach while the learner practices that he is learning. Coaching means correcting the learner. . . . Practice drives home the details until the skill becomes part of the learner; also he likes the action required iof him by practice.

 

The learner teaches the skill to someone else. . . . They are sure they know a thing when they have shown someone else how to do it."

 

 

Does this sound at all familiar these sixty-five yeasr later? I hope so.

 

Also, you might find this article by George Crowl interesting:: http://www.crowl.org/george/EDGE-Effective_Teaching-MOL.doc

 

[RememberSchiff]

Yes, we called it "teaching" and it had been around long, long before Wood Badge.

 

Later, others felt a need to rename, repackage, or otherwise over-complicate what usually comes natural for most. Show-Tell-Do, EDGE

[TAHAWK]

I think:

 

Scouting has been reformulating and rephrasing since 1907. Change will happen. If there is low confidence in those making changes, the tendency is to assume the change is negative (e.g., dust-up over replacing Springfield with M-1)

 

Teaching, as the linked article points out, was made far more complicated in 2nd version of Wood Badge and then simplified in the current version of Wood Badge..

 

Noting the substantive changes is more interesting to me, like the deemphasis on independent patrol activities.