What is the most dated scouting skill requirement?

[raisinemright]

ASM411,

 

Keep an eye on your state firewood rules. Since the Emerald Ash Borer seems to be everywhere, Michigan just removed the firewood restrictions in the lower peninsula. They don't encourage it but it's no longer illegal to transport firewood.

 

Maybe Ohio will follow.

[Eagle1982]

I can see it, Scout campout 2028

 

SPL, "Timmy can your patrol set up the Axe Yard?"

 

PL, "What's an axe?"

 

 

[WaldenPond]

Saws are quicker for sure. But there is something about letting a boy use an axe that says "I trust you", and "Take a whack out of that" and "You are ready to use a tool that men have been using since the stone age". It's symbolic utility may still be there- even if the saw beats it in other ways.

 

Besides, the scout axe is an original scout tool. We still encourage the kids to light fires with flint and steel. There are a lot of high tech items that make other scout skills seem obsolete- unti the batteries run out and the gadget breaks.

 

Saws also break- it is a lot harder to bust your axe.

 

 

[Bob White]

technology changes things. Drums and smoke signals were replaced by by flags and telegraph, were replaced by telophones and walkie talkies.

 

New technology replaces old technology. I have no doubt that someday we will take out our I-Pod/GPS unit and emit a low level laser beam that will split the log.

 

But for now there is rarely need for the use of a handax. Just as you rerely see a farmer pushing a plowshare through a field. You think he wasn't happy to get a horse, and then an International Harvester?

 

Technology is not a bad thing, Remember only the governemnt had computers and they took up an entire room?

 

What skill in the current handbook do you see closer to besed out? Even loggers rarely use hand axes.

[WaldenPond]

Most of the world still relies on the machete. A good sharp machete beats a hand saw for the stuff an inch thick and thinner. And you can wear a machete on your belt pretty safely.

And the problem with the technology is that it sometimes does too much work to be educational- such as the calculator and the word-processor. I have met parents who have argued to me very passionately that hand-writing (print or cursive) is dead and that they are not concerned wit their children learning it. I have met parents who think that calculators are a skill to be learned- along with computers.

 

If the technology does not elevate- but only makes things easier- then I say GO-Luddite when you are scouting!!!

 

The same goes with compass and star navigation versus GPS.

 

Walden Pond

 

[perdidochas]

And the problem with the technology is that it sometimes does too much work to be educational- such as the calculator and the word-processor. I have met parents who have argued to me very passionately that hand-writing (print or cursive) is dead and that they are not concerned wit their children learning it. I have met parents who think that calculators are a skill to be learned- along with computers.

I'm sure the ancients said the same about reading and writing.  It ruins the memory and takes it's place......  Until the advent of the SAT writing exam,  I wasn't concerned about handwriting.  In real life, about the only thing I write is notes to myself.  Anything I expect to communicate with someone else I type.  Calculators are a skill to be learned.  How to use them is not an automatic thing. My wife was a math teacher. She taught students who couldn't work a calculator correctly. 

If the technology does not elevate- but only makes things easier- then I say GO-Luddite when you are scouting!!!

So what era do you wish to stop at? 

 

The same goes with compass and star navigation versus GPS.

Both should be learned for when the GPS breaks, but practically speaking, it is silly not to use GPS, if available. 

 

[Beavah]

Yah, bunch of old fuddy-duddy's here, eh?

 

I learned to ski on leather hiking boots and wooden skis, eh? Taught yeh a lot about balance and weight shift and control.

 

I wouldn't wish that on any kid. The new equipment shortens the learning curve from years to months, and is safer to boot. A bit harder to maintain yourself, though, just like modern computerized car engines.

 

So instead of learning the fine art of balance and weight shift on wood and floppy leathers, lads now get to learn the fine art of balance and weight shift by doin' aerial acrobatics and grinding rails. Who'd a thunk it? The lads can't do square roots by hand, the way I can. Darn calculators. But you should see 'em solve problems I never would have approached at their age by whizzing through Excel.

 

Yep, some of da old skills get lost when we use technology. But the kids can use it to go farther and faster than we ever did, and open up whole new vistas.

 

Me, I want that for the kids. I'm willing to give up the hand axe or my old wooden boards to see it happen.

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[DugDirt]

I think a common problem in this 'classic' discussion is that many of the commentators here are falling into an "obsolescence trap".

"We don't need to learn that because it's an obsolete method"..

 

The real point of most skills to be learned anywhere (but in Scouting esp.) is that they instill much more than the ability to produce the end product. "The destination is not as important as the journey" - as the old saying goes.

 

Solving problem A at the most fundamental level (least tech) produces the natural insight and the confidence to apply methods B and C (likely using more tech).

 

Practicing all the methods helps build the skills needed to apply the old skills and methods to new problems and devlop new methods.

 

I can quickly teach a "map and compass" trained person to use a GPS and rely on him to 'get me there' reliably in a crtical situation, but I would be less likely to give a GPS-only 'gadgeteer' a critical navigation task.

 

 

[DugDirt]

Additional neat story I heard at work some time ago and had to search the web to find it..

 

from http://mark-ray.com/samples/astronaut.doc

 

It's about Astronaut Mike Fossum and "knots".. There's a multitude of angles the full story could be taken in this forum (read it all at the link), but the part below applies well here for the "knot-haters." - just a little jab.

Quote

"As Fossums crew prepared for STS-121, shuttle engineers became concerned about the Velcro straps that would hold down a piece of equipment in the payload bay as Endeavor returned to earth. When someone suggested tying a knot, Fossum said the clove hitch is what the Boy Scouts would use. In typical NASA fashion, the engineers convened meetings, researched knots, conducted pull testing and materials testing, and finally settled on the appropriate knot the clove hitch."

 

 

[Bob White]

Scouting has always taught useable skills. They have also had the good sense to realize when skills become obsolete or at least less meaningful and to remove or replace them. There is a good reason why there is a computer merit badge and not one for using an abacus, and why semaphore and tourniquets, and butter on burns, and artificial resuscitation just to name a few have been removed from the scouting handbook over the years.

 

Even which knots we teach have changed. I doubt that you will see knots removed because they are still practical in the real world. Many occupations and activities still use knots.

 

But if we are to use the outdoors as a tool to teach the values of the Oath and Law then we should teach good basic skills, and carrying an ax is no longer a smart or useful outdoor skill.

 

It's fine that as a scout you felt that the ax was important, but remember that you are no longer a child and lots of things that were common place hhave been improved upon, why anchor scouts with carrying equipment that they will likely never use except in order to earn a paper card for their pocket just because you used an ax when you were a kid.

 

Let's use scouting to teach scouts good values not to help you relive your youth.

 

 

[DugDirt]

Bob White.. Just so I understand, exactly why do you think skills with an axe, (hatchet, boy's axe, or camp axe) are not important to Scouts?

 

Just so you know where I am coming from, I consider the tool and skill with it an important part of a Scout's - and my personal- field gear.

 

I have several, but love my Wetterlings mini-hatchet and for larger work (but not too big to pack) the Snow & Neally camp axe. I always carry one of various models small saw.

 

I suppose some laser device will make all blades obsolete someday - but that would just not be any fun now would it?

 

The first skill (with hand axe) I learned as a WEBELOS was making tent pegs out of inch thick sticks (yes we killed trees if we coudl not find good deadfall) It was a skill and memory that never left my head or hands - or heart. Let's just say it was about WAY MORE than learning to make tent pegs with 5 chops. Great thing was I did not know what it meant to me at the time. That's the magic about a lot of Scouting.

 

So I admit I am biased Again though, why no axe?

 

 

 

[Eagle92]

I actually had to use a hand ax recently to cut firewood. I had a saw too, but for this job the ax was the best choice.

[Bob White]

DugDirt

There are many reasons. There is only one use for a hand ax. To split relatively small wood to get to access the dry heart wood when the exterior is wet.

 

Ground fires are prohibited in large portions of the wets and Southwest United States.

 

Use of ground wood is widely prohibited thropugh much of the country.

 

Use of ground wood for fires is not a good conservation practice.

 

With the popularity and availability of fuel stoves the actual need for a hand ax is relatively rare.

 

Because they are seldom used an axe's weight mkes it a poor choice for backpacking.

 

If your argument is that it teaches a scout self sufficiency or maturity, it's a weak argument. There are lots of other skills and adventures that do that, so it does not make the ax necessary to accomplish that goal.

 

Early on as a Scout and a Scout leader there was an actual purpose to having a hand ax. Then again I still know morse code but I have not had a need to use it except for a Klondike Derby I was in in 1967.

 

Times change., and at some point you need to learn to teach Scouting values to kids in their world not in the one you grew up in.

 

Other than those points I think axes are fabulous .

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Beavah]

I can quickly teach a "map and compass" trained person to use a GPS and rely on him to 'get me there' reliably in a crtical situation, but I would be less likely to give a GPS-only 'gadgeteer' a critical navigation task.

 

Yah, DugDirt, but you're answering da wrong question there, eh? Of course you can give someone who has already acquired solid navigation skills how to use a GPS fairly quickly and then rely on him.

 

The real question is what is da best way to teach new folks, eh? What's best for boys who have no prior skills?

 

My guess would be that given how great kids are with tech, the best way to teach 'em navigation might be with a GPS, eh? No more drawing contour lines on the back of my knuckles to try to get 'em to visualize what they mean on a map. Just flip back and forth between the 3-D and flat views. Then, once they've got those skills down, yeh can move back to battery-less procedures that require you to visualize in your head - provided they need battery-less skills for backcountry travel (GPS's I find burn through too many bats to be worthwhile as primary nav on long trips).

 

Now, me personally? I'm a sun, wind, and contour navigator myself, don't bother with a compass hardly at all. Darn things get lost, break, or freeze. But I wouldn't start by teachin' a lad that way. Any more than I'd start by teachin' 'em how to do square roots by hand. Yah, yah, doin' square roots by hand gives yeh better number sense and more of what a square root means, and yah, "your calculator batteries might die" or da calculator might break. Correct answer to that is to bring a spare .

 

As for axes, I honestly can't say I can think of a single time in the last couple of decades where I really needed a hand axe in the field. I can think of a few group campsites where scouts with woods tools did some damage, though. No doubt they were killing trees to make tent pegs like their Scoutmaster did when he was a lad.

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[NC Scouter]

When was the last time anyone really needed to whip the end of a rope?