I believe it is important that we all understand the goal of Scouting and our role in accomplishing that goal. In the day to day effort associated with Scouting activities, it is easy to lose sight of why we are all here. We should not be here to Produce Eagle Scouts and we should not be here to develop leaders. Those are not the Aims of the Boy Scouting movement. Both of those things are nice to have but are in fact a side effect of what we are all really here to do. Our real goal is to guide boys to be good citizens, to be of good character and to be active mentally and physically. When he founded the Scouting movement over 100 years ago that was Sir Robert Baden Powel’s aim and it is mine today.
Along with those three primary aims of Scouting, there are eight central methods in the program:
· Ideals – Oath and Law
· Patrols
· Outdoors
· Advancement
· Adult Association
· Personal Growth
· Leadership Development
· Uniform
Sir Robert Baden Powel was ahead of his time 100 years ago when he developed the Scouting Program with the Patrol Method at its core. He felt very strongly that "The patrol system is not one method in which Scouting for boys can be carried on. It is the only method." Often this is generically defined as Boy lead and I believe that is misleading unless you understand the layers and complexities of Boy Lead as a concept and the specifics of how that idea applies to the Patrol and Troop you are connecting it to.
When you break it down to its most fundamental elements there is one part of Boy Lead that is most often hard for people to understand. Boy lead, properly applied is intentionally frustrating and invites failure. While that is often hard for people to comprehend, it is critical that we not only let that be the case but that we use it as a measure of success. If we are successful in enabling Boy Lead to bring all the benefits that it has to offer to our scouts then we have to accept that it should equal frustration and failure sometimes.
If a Scout is not frustrated or does not occasionally fail then he is not daring to push himself to his full potential and we as adults will have few opportunities to coach him in a way that is meaningful to him. We should want every opportunity possible to coach a Scout toward his full potential in becoming a good citizen, to be of good character and to be active mentally and physically and to take his own path to those things. We should want this because that journey and the destination will be more meaningful to him if it is really his instead of someone else’s idea of what it should be.
So when it comes to your son, his Patrol and the Troop we will not only let him bite off more than he can chew, we will encourage it. We will do this because their success and failures when they push themselves is where real and meaningful learning and development happens. Sometimes they will succeed and sometimes they will fail. When they succeed, we will celebrate those successes and congratulate them. When they fail we will help them understand how they might do it differently in the future. We will help them paint their picture of success and we will enable them to make it their reality.
Your job is to understand that there are layers and layers of learning going on, to see these frustrations and unsuccessful attempts at specific skills and activities not as failures but as opportunities for learning and for you to support us in our efforts to coach them toward the aims of the Scouting program. Often this will mean standing on the sidelines watching it all happen and refraining from inserting yourself into the process. I know that can be very hard to do. If you have questions or concerns please let me or an Assistant Scoutmaster know. If you take only one thing from this, let it be that Boy Lead should equal frustration and failure sometimes and that is when Scouts can challenge themselves and adult leaders have the opportunity to coach and guide Scouts.
Yours in Scouting,
Gary Bazzell
Scoutmaster
Troop 114
Everett, WA.
(425) 314-8733
lifelongscouter@gmail.com