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WW4BSA > SCOUTS 25.02.24 16:12l 54 Lines 2591 Bytes #289 (0) @ WW
BID : 7240_WW4BSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: B.-P.'S OUTLOOK (PART 8)
Path: IW8PGT<I3XTY<I0OJJ<GB7CIP<KA1VSC<VE3CGR<CX2SA<N3HYM<WW4BSA
Sent: 240225/1402Z 7240@WW4BSA.NEFL.FL.USA.NOAM BPQ6.0.24
Winter Training Programmes
WITH the winter season coming on we now get our opportunity for training or
retraining our boys in handicrafts and efficiency.
Abler men than I, I suppose, can keep their boys busy and progressing in
knowledge without working on any special system; but I confess that I cannot.
The only way by which, personally, I can effect anything is by laying down
definite programmes beforehand and working on them -- a general one for the
winter season, a more particular one for each week, with a detailed one for
each working evening as it comes round.
I don't make them too cut-and-dried, but leave margins and openings for
unforeseen occurrences. In this way a great amount of worry and waste of
time is saved; in fact, it is scarcely exaggeration to say that the results
obtained by a systematic plan of work have four times the value of those
where arrangements have been haphazard. It is good for their "character" to
teach the boys also to plan their work beforehand; and, knowing what they
are aiming for, they become twice as keen.
One or two Scoutmasters tell me that their idea for the winter session is to
take up the training in, say, four handicrafts -- for instance, cooking,
leather working, electricity, and signaling. They get an expert to come
and instruct their Troop either one night a week on each subject or for a
fortnight at one subject, then get another expert in for a fortnight at the
next, and so on. In this way they hope during the winter to get all their
boys trained sufficiently to gain four badges apiece by the end of the winter.
Other Scoutmasters talk of having an exhibition and sale of Scout manufactures
at the end of the winter, using various inducements for getting the boys to
do the work in the clubroom in the evenings by helping with tools, patterns,
storage, etc., and by the reading aloud of adventure books, camp-fire yarns,
etc., while work is going on, with occasional games and singsongs to refresh
the workers.
Any system of this kind is of value, but must necessarily vary according to
local conditions and Scoutmasters' originality, and I am glad to see so many
good ideas being started.
For training boys towards work, and pride in their work, there is nothing
like giving them handiwork to do, but it must be of such a kind as to really
interest them from the first. And it is all the better if it can be the work
of one gang (or Patrol) in competition with another -- i.e. cooperative work.
November, 1910.
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73
Jeff
WW4BSA
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