How Not To Know Everything

An experienced Scoutmaster knows a lot. They have seen perhaps ten, perhaps twenty groups of Scouts through their Scouting careers.

Training and experience have virtually turned them into Scouting experts, they can spot difficulties and errors before they are made. Ask them about anything to to with Scouting from how to build a fire to where to wear your veteran unit patch and they have an answer. To them there is nothing new under the sun.

There remains one skill to top off all this knowledge and experience – keeping your mouth shut. When the Senior Patrol Leader comes up with a plan that, several Senior Patrol Leaders in the past, did not work all that well the expert Scoutmaster immediately detects the impending problem and… keeps their mouth shut. When, for the hundredth time, a Scout tries something in a way that the first hundred Scouts the expert stands by and… keeps their mouth shut.

Questions of propriety and safety aside the expert Scoutmaster needs to learn how not to be the expert Scoutmaster all the time thus allowing Scouts and fellow leaders the experience of becoming experts themselves.

Trial and error, the scientific method, giving things a shot, having a go – these are all part of the joy of learning and growing up. Too much expert advice may, at times, hedge and constrain the experience of others sapping away the joy of discovery. The thrill of learning something for one’s self can be squelched by a know-it all.

I could say more, but should take my own advice.