Escaping the Classroom

Individual active instruction and personal evaluation are at the heart of Scouting but classroom style instruction is the universal default method of sharing knowledge.

Please don’t mistake what I am about to say as denigrating teachers; many of my friends are teachers and wonderful people.

I simply want to point out the difference between classroom methods and Scouting methods.

Classroom methods are not Scouting. In the classroom students are seated, inactive, passive receptors. In the classroom the teacher is the authority figure. In Scouting youth leaders are the authority figure.

Classroom instruction is not individual – what you have shared with a group is not shared with each person in that group.

Classroom instruction has a ratio of one instructor to a number of learners. The ideal ratio is one instructor to one learner.

Classroom instruction leads to things like worksheets and test taking; two things I would outlaw in Scouting if I could.

Worksheets and test taking are only needed when there’s one evaluator for many learners. Doug Stowe, author of The Wisdom of the Hands blog, is someone I would call a shop teacher (remember shop?). In this post he explains individual instruction. He quotes : All good education must be based on the nature of the child… In nature there are no two things exactly alike–no two trees, flowers, human forms or faces. No one will assert that the natures–physical, moral, or mental–of any two children are the same. If this be granted, it readily follows that … Class teaching may be good economically, but it is bad educationally . Good instruction moves incrementally from the known to the unknown, from the easy to the more difficult, from the simple to the more complex, from the concrete to the abstract. So how do we break out of the classroom model and practice Scouting methods? The EDGE method is an example of individual, active instruction; % of time Instructor’s role Learner’s role E xplain the skill 10% Active explaining Passive Listener D emonstrate the skill 20% Active demonstration Passive Observer G uide in learning 35% Active observation Active participation E nable the skill 35% Active observation Active participation EDGE accepts that there’s a passive role for the learner, but it is brief and focused. When we apply EDGE we are creating instructors. This increases the ratio of instructors to learners further escaping the classroom model. With EDGE everyone becomes an instructor. Our Scouts are conditioned by years of training in school to instantly accept and defer to the authority of adults. We do better when we use EDGE to turn Scouts into instructors and step back from instructing ourselves. When we create instructors we also create evaluators. When the ratio of evaluator to learner is one to one we no longer need tests and worksheets nor do we tax the time of one person to test many individuals. What about the quality and consistency of instruction and evaluation? Can Scouts instruct and evaluate well?

Quality, consistency and efficiency is the aim of the classroom but it is not our aim in Scouting. The founder of Scouting, Baden-Powell, explained it best (his original emphasis is preserved in this quotation); IN view of a very elaborate curriculum that was recently drawn up by one authority for standardizing the tests for badges, I was obliged to criticize it in this sense: I hope that the compilers are not losing sight of the aim and spirit of the Movement by making it into a training school of efficiency through curricula, marks, and standards. Our aim is merely to help the boys, especially the least scholarly ones, to become personally enthused in subjects that appeal to them individually, and that will be helpful to them. We do this through the fun and jollity of Scouting; by progressive stages they can then be led on, naturally and unconsciously, to develop for themselves their knowledge. But if once we make it into a formal scheme of serious instruction for efficiency, we miss the whole point and value of the Scout training, and we trench on the work of the schools without the trained experts for carrying it out. Our standard for badge earning — as I have frequently said — is not the attainment of a certain level of quality of work (as in the school), but the AMOUNT OF EFFORT EXERCISED BY THE INDIVIDUAL CANDIDATE. This brings the most hopeless case on to a footing of equal possibility with his more brilliant or better-off brother. We want to get them ALL along through cheery self-development from within and not through the imposition of formal instruction from without. B-P’s Outlook November, 1921.