Manual Training - Experiential Learning

Much is said about the scope and effectiveness of our national education system but one irrefutable fact is the decline of what was once called ‘manual training’ then ‘industrial arts’ and now ’tech ed’. As schooling has become increasingly focused on academics scools have closed or diminished shop classes.

Purely academic pursuits are important but the value of experiential learning is equally so.

Scouting is an important source of experiential learning.

Scoutmasters should study and understand the difference between academic and experiential learning. It is all too easy to allow Scouting to devolve towards the powerful academic influences at play in our society.

Perhaps the greatest danger is academizing Scouting’s experiential advancement program.

Scouting is not, as founder Baden-Powell once said, “training school of efficiency through curricula marks, and standards.” It is something much more lively and elemental. If it were up to me no Scoutmaster or Scouting instructor would ever be allowed to conduct classes, issue written tests or worksheets or to otherwise rob the experiential basis of Scout instruction with the mechanisms of academia.

Denying ourselves these and other purely academic processes is not merely a trick of semantics or some version of politically correct speech – these mechanisms should not resurface unchanged under a new name.

I would rather see Scoutmasters and Instructors relying on the elements of discovery, experience and independent inquiry. Our attitudes and practices should reflect the highly individualized basis for evaluating achievement. Our work is largely placing the search for knowledge and the development of skills squarely in the hands of the Scouts themselves.

Scouting presents them with complex and intriguing challenges, resources and the latitude to explore these fascinating things experimentally with unobtrusive oversight free from coercion.

Scoutmastership is merely the practice of creating an environment where Scouts can learn for themselves and assuring that the resources they need are close at hand.