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Scouting and Parenting

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SM_SPL_2001Frank Maynard is a troop committee chairman writes the blog Bobwhite Blather.

In a recent article Frank discusses three things that Scouters should never do for their Scouts;

As Scouters, though, we really need to put… parenting instincts aside in order to make sure that we not only deliver the Scouting program as promised, but also to help our kids do their best by not helping them directly.

Don’t teach Scout skills – If adults take over the teaching of Scout skills, such as knot tying, first aid, plant identification or compass skills, the skills will get taught – and probably very well – but we miss a golden opportunity for the Scouts to teach these skills themselves. They might not do as good a job as an adult would, but teaching of the skills is less important than the Scouts learning to teach, thus reinforcing their own proficiency. It’s also a way of involving young people in interactive situations. Likewise, parents who overly involve themselves in their children’s advancement take away that opportunity for their sons to learn from one another.

Don’t interrupt them at troop meetings – Troop meetings are for the boys, led by the boys, involving only the boys. They are not an adult-led teaching session. If troop meetings don’t meet your standards, maybe your standards are wrong! The object of a troop meeting is not to follow an orderly agenda and start and end on time. It’s to give young people learning experience in leadership and managing their own affairs. If we hover over them, jumping in when we feel things aren’t going as we’d like them to be, we destroy their confidence and take away their chance to lead for real. Scouts become puppets of the adults, much like in most other youth activities. Any corrections to their meeting plans should be made before or after the meeting, as the Scoutmaster reviews plans with the senior patrol leader. Once the meeting starts, though, adults should get out of the way and let the boys run their troop. All adults – I mean it, even the Scoutmaster. Just go sit in the back and watch. Make notes on what goes on so you can talk to the SPL after the meeting, not during the meeting.

Don’t manipulate youth leader selection or patrol makeup – You can’t choose their friends for them, and patrols are basically groupings of friends. You also can’t choose who you feel is the best leader and put him in charge of his patrol or the troop. Leaders are elected and selected by the boys. Like it or not, as Scoutmaster, your job is to work with whoever the boys elect, give him your best effort, and give him the skills he needs to lead. Likewise, let the boys choose their own patrols. Don’t make up rules for adult convenience. If the boys want to reorganize or rename patrols, give them a chance to do it. If a boy wants to move to a different patrol, he should do so as long as it’s OK with the patrol leaders. Let him be with his friends! He’ll be more enthusiastic and engaged if he’s happy.

Scouting is more about good ideas than absolute rules, so it’s difficult to say ‘never’, but in this instance I agree with Frank’s rules.

Of course saying ‘never’  immediately invites exceptions to the rule. Making these sort of statements also invites a search through Scouting literature to try to find things that support or unravel the idea behind the statement.

If we accept the premise that Scouting is something that Scouts create, manage and do for themselves rather than something adults present to them the rules start to make sense. Instead of looking for exceptions perhaps it would be more interesting to think of how things would change if we imposed these rules on our troop. What would happen?

via Three things you should never do 

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Comments

    • Nope, not even close, NYLT is a best a start. Sending Scouts to NYLT is not a bad idea, but it won’t make things any better if the adults they are working with don’t apply the program well.

  2. Mr. Green,
    I absolutely LOVE your posts and everything about your web site here! It is a great tool for me and as well as others to use. Although, I do not always understand or accept your ideas, I do seem to lean that way as time goes on!
    So, as “Don’t teach Scout skills” go…. I don’t get it? I was taught how to use a compass when I went through my Cavalry Scout training at Fort Knox! How can I put a compass in a dozen soon to be Boy Scouts hands and tell them to teach one another?
    Do you think a Basic introduction to orienteering is too much? I really don’t see a problem with teaching some basic rules of the map and compass and let them go at it from there! I think I understand the… fail-learn concept.
    Shouldn’t one be told what to do with a wolf before they are thrown out to one?
    The consequences could be disastrous!

    • The idea is if you are going to take part of a troop meeting and instruct things yourself you are taking an opportunity away from a Scout who could be doing that instructing.
      So that begs the question, how do Scouts learn anything if leaders aren’t teaching them? We instruct the instructors, we show them the skill and help them hone their own skills as an instructor, then they go share that with the Scouts.

      What happens is, after a few years of doing this, a lot of the skills become self-perpetuating as older Scouts instruct younger Scouts who grow into older Scouts who instruct younger Scouts.

      • This is all my personal opinion, take it as you will

        To elaborate on this some more, the point that they’re trying to make is that you don’t interfere directly. Yes, someone needs to teach the initial batch, but how often does it happen that the unit consists entirely of scouts who know nothing about the area in question? Any unit that has been around for a reasonable amount of time and has a decent amount of Scouts will have some who are attracted to a given area (e.g. knot tying). Rather than having an adult leader teaching that area, instead have the Scout do so. Thus the Scout gets more value from teaching it. If you happen to be an expert on knots, or whatever the subject is, by all means sit in on his discussion and offer tips (better yet, sit down with him and let him tell you how he plans on teaching it, and offer tips at that stage). Only if no Scout is particularly competent in a given area should you step in and teach. Your primary goal as a leader should be to teach leadership, not camping skills.

        The most important thing is to respect the structure of a unit. The senior patrol leaders and patrol leaders should be the decision makers, and the primary organizers. Rather then tell everyone what to do, talk with the SPL and guide him into leading the unit in the right direction. Every thing that you take into your hands is a learning experience that a scout is being deprived of in some way, shape, or form. There will be times when the best course of action is to teach something directly, but those should be few and far between.

        Regarding the third point in the article, this is one area that I disagree. There is almost always at least one kid whom the others will almost unanimously dislike. Letting scouts freely choose patrols will leave that kid left out.

        So in summary, my humble opinion is that adult leaders should really be referred to as adult mentors, and only really step directly in if something that cannot be rectified through the normal chain of command comes up (e.g. harassment, dangerous activity, etc). But, every situation is a judgement call.

        Granted I am an Eagle Scout who hasn’t really done any adult leadership yet, so some of this may very well be idealized.

        • I can see your point if it is to have less direct interference from adults, but to I disagree with the original post that you should sacrifice knowledge of skills for “knowledge” of leadership/teaching. It doesn’t do anyone any favors.

          I also come from a troop that is over a decade old, but is made up of mostly younger scouts. So perhaps from my perspective, I see kids the same age (but higher ranks) trying to teach other kids things, and they (maybe) got the information from the internet, or they were taught at summer camp 2 years ago – and it’s just crazy. These boys needs adult leadership and guidance to TEACH them how to lead each other.

          If you applied the blog post above to the troop I come from, it would be a “Lord of the Flies” experience!

          I also agree with what you said about point three, and I think that was what I was (perhaps not as well) saying about kids treating other kids like they did when they were all 11 and crossed over from Webelos (even worse, if they’ve known the other boys since age 7…). That left-out kid never gets a chance to lead, or be recognized for growing up.

          • You’ve missed the point, no one is sacrificing anything. It’s all about who does what when.

            I guarantee if you applied these three principles to any troop that things would start to work better for the Scouts.

            Here’s something to think about – the skills are secondary at best, they are not our aim. How well they are learned or practiced is, on it’s own, not an indication that the Scouting process is at work. If I was concerned about the skills themselves I would teach them because I am the best teacher in the troop. I’d test rigorously and I’d have a bunch of Scouts that could run circles around any other bunch. But that’s a limited vision, and it’s not the point of Scouting. The point is what is experienced and learned in the process, not expert skill demonstrations.

            We can say the same thing about orderly well-planned troop meetings and perfectly balanced patrols. If those things were the point of Scouting than, buy all means, adults should be running and doing everything because they would do it better than Scouts.

            To go even further we can say the same thing about leadership or being an Eagle Scout. They are only indicators that the aim is being reached, not the aim itself. So what’s the aim? The process of becoming a contributing member of society, that’s it – the rest is window-dressing.

        • I’d differ in the idea that adults should be doing anything other than observing silently as a Scout is instructing (ideally there are no adults listening in at all). It’s just way to temping to step in and correct or add to the instruction. Let the Scouts instruct, then ask them how they did. Maybe even ask one of their pupils how they thought things went – that’s a better process to my mind.

          In reply to your concern about one Scout being left out when patrols are being chosen. The culture of the troop and the patrol leader’s council are supposed to be in accordance with the Scout law, and if they are this won’t happen. We all live in the real world, though, so we know that this won’t always be the case right? So we have a couple of choices – we adults can legislate things to make sure there’s no possibility that this happens, or we can train and mentor our youth leaders in a way that makes them aware of things like this and they see that it doesn’t happen.

          I’d agree that the term ‘adult leaders’ ought to be replaced because we aren’t really leading much of anything – I like “Scouters”.

  3. I disagree with your THREE THINGS. At least 50% of what you say.
    Why not pass along the knowledge and wisdom of Scout leaders? As a 70 year old Eagle Scout, I still remember the great Scoutmaster I had and how he lead us through the Scout Book, showed us how to do things the best way, one time, and THEN stood back and let us make the mistakes that made us not only good Scouts but better leaders.

    I can’t even imagine giving a bag of camping items, and maybe a Scout Book to a young boy and saying “Go for it”. What a good way to kill enthusiasm.

    • I can’t even imagine giving a bag of camping items, and maybe a Scout Book to a young boy and saying “Go for it”

      Give it a try! We do this all the time, not only doesn’t it kill enthusiasm it makes them even more enthusiastic! They learn pretty fast, they have a blast doing it and we are there with our wisdom and experience if they need to ask us.

      Like I said it’s difficult to talk about absolute rules when it comes to these things because there are degrees of application to them. Should Scout leaders share their wisdom and knowledge? Sure! But we are doing our best when we are making the whole process on of discovery possible and helping our Scouts develop their own instructing skills.

      The idea is that a Scout leader who instructs Scouts is taking away the opportunity for a Scout to instruct Scouts. The wisdom and knowledge goes into instructing the instructors who then have the opportunity to instruct the Scouts.