I. How to Train the Boy

To an outsider Scouting must at first sight appear to be a very complex matter, and many a man is probably put off from becoming a Scoutmaster because of the enormous number and variety of things that he thinks he would have to know in order to teach his boys. But it need not be so, if the man will only realise the following points:

1. The aim of Scouting is quite a simple one.
2. The Scoutmaster gives to the boy the ambition and desire to learn for himself.
3. That this is done by suggesting to him activities which attract him and which then teach him by failing to work, till he, by experience, does them alright.
4. The numerous branches and details given in Scouting for Boys merely suggest activities from which he may select those likely to catch the different kinds of boys.

This form of educating is very much on the principle of Dr. Montessori’s system. She recently asked how her system would be applied to children when they had grown out of the infant stage after six or seven years of age. And she replied, “You in England have the Boy Scouts, and their training is the natural continuation of that which I give to the children.” It is the line that eventually education will take when it comes to be set upon a right footing.

The Failure of Education

In judging of education as in other questions, we have to go by results and not by methods in estimating its success.

The aim of education presumably is to produce God-fearing healthy, prosperous, and therefore happy citizens. Have we got these?

We may have a percentage of them, but the qualities largely representative among our nation are the following:—

Irreligion.—In spite of eight millions subscribed annually to the Church of England we cannot say that we are ahead of other forms or beliefs, including the Mohammedans, in having a religion which really holds the masses of the population.

Physically Defective.—Our average men are not, as a rule, well developed types nor are they sound in health. A million unfit for the army, and 36 per cent. C3 men is one of the exposures of the war. The number of hours of work lost through ill-health throughout the year amount up to an appalling total of millions; eye-sight and hearing are both defective among a large percentage of our rising generation, and sound teeth are the exception; yet all these elements of physical in-efficiency, which mean defective work for themselves and for the nation, are preventable with a certain amount of care and education. Infant mortality is almost as heavy as it was thirty or forty years ago, and will be, until parents understand their duties better, or until the State intervenes and takes charge of infants.

Want of Skill and Thrift.—The school training of our citizens only goes so far as to teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic, up to the important age when they can begin to use their intelligence and really develop their minds, and, at this point, it drops them altogether and leaves them to make their own character for life. Continuation classes and technical schools of the best kind exist, it is try, but only for the best lads, and, even then, till the Fisher Act is in working order, those who are employed have to attend them when their day’s work is done and when their powers are at their lowest, so that the best value is not got out of these schools.

The want of thrift amongst all classes is shown by the fact that our banking of savings is lower than that of most other countries, and compulsory insurance only seems to promote less thift. Blind-alley occupations seem to take something like 50 per cent. are allowed to drift into them, resulting in much unemployedness and unemployableness as these boys grow up to man’s age. This means numbers of poor and disheartened men - the easy prey for political demagogues, without any sense of fair play or even of their own best interests. This wastage is not so much the fault of the men as of the system which permits it. For, as Mr. John Burns himself has said, there is work for all and money for all in the country if all were fit to have them, but so few were qualified and so few are thrifty. Here is our national balance-sheet before the war, and which has since gone up adversely:—

Spent on educating to be good citizens .. £28,000,000

Spent on remedying failures in good citizenship by prisons, police, poor relief, etc. £38,000,000

Until the balance is on the other side of the ledger education cannot well be called a complete success.

The Remedy

The remedy which is now generally being suggested for the improvement of the efficiency of our nations is that instruction which has hitherto passed as education should be done away with as out-of-date, and education proper established in its place. As a first subject character training should be introduced into primary and secondary schools, since it is the essential quality for a man in making his career, as well as for a nation in maintaining its place in the competition in commerce and prosperity.

Secondly, that handicrafts should be introduced into day schools, not merely with the sole idea of making the child into a good workman - which seems to have been the limit of view of education in the past - but as the invention, design, and other properties which go to develop the mind, and intelligence, character and thrift; and also of showing to the teacher the natural bent of each individual pupil.

Thirdly, education in civics, contemporary history, and commercial geography would all raise the level of thought and work among the rising generation.

Also, there is a large opportunity amongst the enormous proportion of physically defective children in our midst, who are at present merely taken into “Homes” and made as comfortable as possible during the remainder of their unhappy existence, whereas much might be done by education to draw them out to have hopes and ambitions, and to develop a certain amount of energy that would lead them out of themselves, and enable a fair percentage to be, if not self-supporting, at least self-sufficient.

The aim of education general has been well summarised in that excellent paper The Child, in these words:-

“No man can be called educated who has not a willingness and a desire, as well as a trained ability, to do his part in the world’s work.” And this is the main road to happiness and prosperity for all.

What the Boy Scout Training is doing in the Meantime

Whatever may come of the various idea put forward for improvement of the general education of the nation, the Scout training, together with that of other organisations of boys, such as the Boys’ Brigade, the Y.M.C.A., the C.L.B., and others, is already doing much in the required direction of making the boys disciplined, self-respecting citizens. In our training we have perhaps gone a step further than other organisations in taking up the following five branches which have so far been left out of the school curriculum, and yet are essential in building up good citizens, and we inculcate them from within instead of from without.

Character.—Which we teach through Scout lore, woodcraft, responsibility to the Patrol Leader, and the resourcefulness involved in camp work.

Hobbies and handicrafts.—Through pioneering, bridge-building, camp expedients, which all tend to make efficient workmen.

Health and bodily development.—Through games, exercises, and knowledge of personal hygiene and diet.

Happiness.—Includes how to enjoy the pleasure of lives that are offered in the study of nature whether animate or inanimate; biology with its natural processes giving a natural understanding of the sex question, the realization of God the Creator through his works; the appreciation of beauty in Nature; self-expression through the arts and through the love of plants or animals with whom the life has made one familiar.

Service for others.—The carrying into daily life of the practice of religion by “good turns,” dealing with accidents, life-saving, etc.

The Scout training attracts boys of all classes, high and low, rich and poor, and even catches the physically defective, deaf mutes, and blind. It inspires the desire to learn. It gives a good start in technical training through badges for proficiency in various kinds of hobbies and handicrafts. The object of offering so many as we do at an elementary standard is to draw out the boys of every type to try their hands at various kinds of work, and the watchful Scout-master can very quickly recognise the particular bent of each boy and encourage it accordingly. And that is the best road towards expanding his individual character and starting a boy on a successful career.

Moreover, Scout training holds the boy after the age of fourteen, and can be further used when he gives up school to continue his education and to give him the benefit of high ideals and friendly advice at the critical period of his life when he most needs them. The effects of the training on physically defective boys has been reported upon by doctors and superintendents in most hopeful terms.

The Scoutmaster’s Share

The principles of Scouting are all in the right direction. The success in their application depends on the Scoutmaster and how he applies them. The object of this course of training is to endeavour to help the Scoutmaster in this particular. First, by showing the object of the Scout training; secondly, by suggesting methods by which it may be carried out. Many a Scoutmaster would probably desire I should give him all particulars in detail. But this would in reality be an impossibility, because what suits one particular Troop or one kind of boy, in one kind of place, will not suit another within a mile of it, much less those scattered over the world and existing under totally different conditions. But one can give a certain amount of general suggestion, and Scoutmasters in applying this can judge for themselves far best which details are most likely to bring about success in their own particular Troops. I can only, therefore, recommend fresh study of Scouting for Boys, especially Chapter X., and that section of it which is include under the heading “Be Prepared.”

I would add that undoubtedly it is through sport that you an best get a hold of a boy. Many of our working-class lads have never known what it was to play any regular game with strict rules. This, in itself, is an education. When you have your boys running round in a spiral rally you will notice few of them are light and active runners; probably they have never done much running. Nor do boys of that kind usually have discipline, sense of fair play, of keenness for winning simply for the honour of the thing without thought of prizes or rewards. All these come very quickly with a little organised play in competition with other Patrols or Troops. I prefer football, basket ball, hockey, and rounders as being the best games, since they are played by teams in which each player plays in his place under good discipline, where pluck, determination, unselfishness, and good temper are developed. I read recently in the Boys’ Brigade Gazette the following excellent thought in that connection:—

“Take football seriously. If you do, it may prove to be one of the roads leading to the Kingdom of Heaven. Football is almost as important a part of the company’s training as drill and—my meaning will not be mistaken—as the Bible-class. It should be in the regular programme of every company, only it must be football, and not merely playing at playing football.”

Drill on military lines has its good points, but to the boy it has no visible object, and is, therefore, apt to pall upon him. Far preferable is the drill in fire brigade, rocket apparatus, trek cart, lifeboat launching, bridge building, and other sets of exercises. These demand equal smartness, activity, and discipline, but the point is that each boy is using his head in doing his own particular share of the work for the success of the whole team. Moreover, competitions in these drills are of highest interest to the boys as well as to the onlookers. An ulterior point is that they can breed morale, esprit de corps, and fair play. It should be “the thing” for the boys never to bear envy or to mention unfairness of defeated, and whatever disappointment they may feel they should only show cordial praise for the other side. This means true self-discipline and unselfishness, and it promotes that good feeling all round which is so much needed for breaking down class prejudice in our people.

Once more let me repeat, do not be appalled by any imaginary magnitude of the task. It will disappear when once you see the aim. You have then only to keep that always before you and adapt the details to suit the end. As in Peveril of the Peak: “It matters not much whether we actually achieve our highest ideals so be it that they are high.”

The Boy

The first step towards success in training your boy is to know something about boys in general and then about this boy in particular.

Dr. Saleeby, in an address to the Ethical Society in London, said:

Public opinion is to-day realising that the views expressed by Walt Whitman, George Fox, Spencer and Riskin are correct, viz. that the first requisite for a successful teacher is knowledge of the nature of the boy. The boy or girl is not a small edition of a man or woman, not a piece of blank paper on which the teacher should write, but every child has his own peculiar curiosity, his inexperience, a normal mysterious frame of mind which needs to be tactfully helped, encouraged and moulded or modified or even suppressed.

It is well to recall, so far as possible, what your ideas were when a boy yourself, and you can then much better understand his feelings and desires. It has been truly said that “there is no such things as the ordinary working boy; each of them is quite out of the common, with abilities and weaknesses of his own.” The Rev. H. S. Pelham, in his book, The Training of the Working Boy, enumerates the following qualities which have to be taken into consideration:—

Humour.—It must be remembered that a boy is naturally full of humour; it may be on the shallow side, but he can always appreciate a joke and see the funny side of things. And this at once gives the worker with boys a pleasant and bright side to his work and enables him to become the cheery companion, instead of the taskmaster, if he only joins in the fun of it.

Courage.—The poorer boy, who has a life of hardship, generally manages to have pluck as well. (Jack Cornwell, like many other hero of the war, was a boy Scout belonging to a poor city Troop.) He is not by nature a grumbler, though later on he may become one, when his self-respect has died out of him and when he has been much in the company of “grousers.”

Confidence.—A boy is generally supremely confident in his own powers. Therefore, he is rather adverse from being treated as a child and being told to do things or how to do them. He would much rather try for himself, even though it may lead him into blunders, but it is just by making mistakes that a boy gains experience and makes his character.

Sharpness.—The town boy is generally as sharp as a needle. I know in the Army how easy it was to train a town recruit as compared with one from the country, in matters appertaining to observation and noticing things and deducing their meaning.

Love of Excitement.—The town boy is generally more unsettled than his country brothers by the excitements of the town, whether they are “an arrest, or a passing fire engine, or a good fight between two of his neighbours—especially if one is a woman.” Cricket is too dull for him, he demands football or a gambling game, and he cannot stick at a job for more than a month or two because he wants change.

Responsiveness.—The poorer boy, as a rule, gets very little attention at home, so that when he finds somebody who takes an interest in him he responds and follows where he is led, and it is here that hero-worship comes in as a great force for helping the Scoutmaster.

Loyalty.—This is a feature in a boy’s character that must inspire boundless hope. The poor are loyal friends to each other, and thus friendliness comes almost naturally to a street boy. It is the one duty that he understands. He may appear selfish outwardly, but, as a general rule, he is very willing under the surface to be helpful to others, and that is where our Scout training finds good soil to work upon.

“One hears people condemning the exaggerations of working men who are Socialist, while Labour members are treated with distrust and are accused of a lack of statesmanship and foresight. One seldom finds these critics willing to take the trouble to go and train the future Labour member and, by personal contact and mutual understanding, to give him a wider outlook and healthier motive.”

If one considers and studies these different attributes in the boy one is in a far better position for adapting the training to suit his different propensities. Such study is the first step to making a success of the training. I had the pleasure, during one single week, of coming across three boys in different centres who were pointed out to me as having been incorrigible young blackguards and hooligans until they came under the influence of Scouting. Their respective Scoutmasters had, in each case, found out the good points which underlay the bad ones in them, and having seized upon these had put the boys on to jobs which suited their peculiar temperaments; and there are now these three, fine hulking lads, each of them doing splendid work, entirely transformed in character from their old selves. It was worth the trouble of having organised the Troops just to have had these single successes.

Mr. Casson, writing in the magazine Teachers’ World, 25th December, 1928, thus describes that complicated work of understanding the Nature of the boy:—

“Judging from my own experience, I would say that boys have a world of their own—a world that they make for themselves; and neither the teacher nor the lessons are admitted to this world. A boy’s world has its own events and standards and code and gossip and public opinion.

“In spite of teachers and parents, boys remain loyal to their own world. They obey their own code, although it is quite a different code to the one that is taught to them at home and in the schoolroom. They gladly suffer martyrdom at the hands of uncomprehending adults, rather than be false to their own code.

“The code of the teacher, for instance, is in favour of silence and safety and decorum. The code of the boys is diametrically opposite. It is in favour of noise and risk and excitement.

“Fun, fighting, and feeding! These are the three indispensable elements of the boy’s world. These are basic. They are what boys are in earnest about; and they are not associated with teachers nor schoolbooks.

“According to public opinion in Boydom, to sit for four hours a day at a desk indoors is a wretched waste of time and daylight. Did anyone ever know a boy—a normal healthy boy, who begged his father to buy him a desk? Or did anyone ever know a boy, who was running about outdoors, go and plead with his mother to be allowed to sit down in the drawing room?

“Certainly not. A boy is not a desk animal. He is not a sitting-down animal. Neither is he a pacifist nor a believer in safety first; nor a book-worm, nor a philosopher.

“He is a boy—God bless him—full to the brim of fun and fight and hunger and daring mischief and noise and observation and excitement. If he is not, he is abnormal.

“Let the battle go on between the code of the teachers and the code of the boys. The boys will win in the future as they have in the past. A few will surrender and win the scholarships, but the vast majority will persist in rebellion and grow up to be the ablest and noblest men in the nation.

“Is it not true, as a matter of history, that Edison, the inventor of a thousand patents, was sent home by his school teacher with a note saying he was ‘too stupid to be taught’?

“Is it not true that both Newton and Darwin, founders of the scientific method, were both regarded as blockheads by their school teachers?

“Are there not hundreds of such instances, in which the duffer of the classroom became useful and eminent in later life? And doesn’t this prove that our present methods fail in developing the aptitudes of boys?

“Is it not possible to treat boys as boys? Can we not adapt grammar and history and geography and arithmetic to the requirements of the boy’s world? Can we not interpret our adult wisdom into the language of boyhood?

“Is not the boy right, after all, in maintaining his own code of justice and achievement and adventure?

“Is he not putting action before learning, as he ought to do? Is he not really an amazing little worker, doing things on his own, for lack of intelligent leadership?

“Would it not be vastly more to the point if the teachers were, for a time, to become the students and to study the marvelous boy-life which they are at present trying vainly to curb and repress?

“Why push against the stream, when the stream, after all, is running in the right direction?

“Is it not time for us to adapt our futile methods and to bring them into harmony with the facts? Why should we persist in saying dolefully, boys will be boys,’ instead of rejoicing in the marvelous energy and courage and initiative of boyhood? And what task can be nobler and more congenial to a true teacher than to guide the wild forces of boy nature cheerily along into paths of social service?”

Environment

As I have said, the first step to success is to know your boy, but the second step is to know his home. It is only when you know what his environment is when he is away from the Scouts that you can really tell what influences to bring to bear upon him that may counteract the evil ones which assail him directly he is out of your sight: and that is where the schoolmaster has his main difficulty educating his boys. He can only teach inside the school walls a modicum of the three R’s in the same proportion to every boy according to his age, but he knows very little of the outside environment of the lad, and it is really upon this that depends so much of his character; and it is, therefore, beyond the powers of the schoolmaster really to develop his education in his particular. In school the boys are only taught collectively in class, there can be but very little individual drawing out, which is really education. Their only test is examination in knowledge and not the display of character or skill. Examination in itself may be bad for a boy. For finding out the minimum of knowledge is useful enough, but if it is to be the aim of his training then it is, as has been described by Professor Sandiford, of Toronto University, “cramping and degrading.” The marvel is that schoolmasters succeed so well considering their difficulties, and it is here that the Schoolmaster can, by co-operating with them, do so very much for them and for their pupils.

In addition to evil surroundings in many a home, there are the following temptations to the bad which the instructor of the boy must also be ready to contend with. But, if he is forewarned, he can probably devise his methods so that the temptations fail to exercise an evil influence on his lads; and in that way their character is developed on the best lines.

Boyish Vices.—One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable. The point, rather, is how to utilise it to the best advantage for our ends. To stop it one would have to provide some counter-attraction, and to do this would be by no means easy. On the principle of meeting any difficulty by siding with it and edging it in one’s own direction, we should endeavour to see what there is of value in the cinema and what possibilities lie before it, and should then utilise it for the purpose of training the boy. No doubt it can be a powerful instrument for evil by suggestion, if not properly supervised; but steps have been taken in the chief cities to insure a proper censorship, and perhaps the best way of doing this is where the citizens themselves are asked to report any films which they do not consider desirable for children to see and where three such complaints made against a picture palace, if properly founded, will endanger its licence. But, as it can be a power for evil, so it can just as well be made a power for good. There are excellent films now on Natural History and Nature Study, which give a child a far better idea of the processes of Nature than its own observation can do, and certainly far better than any amount of lessons on the subject. History can be taught through the eye as is already being done by such films as Queen Victoria’s Sixty Years of a Queen, The Life of Charles I., and many others of the kind. There are dramas of the pathetic or heroic kind, and others of genuine fun, humour, and laughter. Many of them bring what is bad into condemnation and ridicule. There is no doubt that this teaching through the eye can be adapted so as to have a wonderfully good effect through the children’s own inclination and interest in the cinema palace.

Juvenile smoking and its destruction to health; gambling on football and races, and all the dishonesty that it brings it its train; the evils of drink; of loafing with girls; uncleanness, etc., can only be corrected by the Scoutmaster who knows the usual environment of his lads.

It cannot be done by forbidding or punishment, but by substituting something at least equally attractive but good in its effects.

Juvenile crime is not naturally born in the boy, but is largely due either to the spirit of adventure that is in him, to his own stupidity, or to his lack of discipline, according to the nature of the individual.

Natural lying is another very prevalent fault amongst lads; it does not come entirely from the idea of evading punishment, but almost as a habit, for when a slum boy is asked a question his first impulse is to tell a lie, possibly to find out what you are driving at by asking the question. This is unfortunately a prevailing disease all over the world. You meet it particularly amongst uncivilized tribes, as well as in the civilized countries of Europe, and perhaps it is a distinguishing characteristic about the Englishman that he, of all nations, is less prone to this habit and may be most easily cured of it, if only it is taken in time. Truth speaking, and its consequent elevation of a man into being a reliable authority, makes all the difference in his character and in the character of the nation. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to do all we can to raise the tone of honor and truth speaking amongst the lads.

Club and Camp

The main antidote to a bad environment is naturally the substitution of a good one, and this is best done through the clubroom and the cam for Boy Scouts. By clubroom I do not mean half-an-hour’s drill once a week in a big schoolroom lent for the occasion - which has so often appeared to be the aim of those dealing with boys - but a real place which the boys feel is their own, even though it may be a cellar or an attic; some place to which they can resort every evening, if need be, and find congenial work and amusement, plenty of varied activity and a bright and happy atmosphere. If a Scoutmaster can only arrange this, he will have done a very good work in providing the right environment for some of his lads which will be the best antidote for the poison that otherwise would creep into their minds and characters.

At the same time, one of our most experienced Boys’ Club men, the late C. E. Russell, was not in favour of them unless they were run by exceptional men, and on lines that gave the members plenty of strenuous and varied activity.

Then the occasional camp (and this should be as frequent as possibly can be managed) is a still further and even more potent antidote than the clubroom. The open and breezy atmosphere and the comradeship of continued association under canvas, in the field, and round the camp fire, breathes the very best of spirit amongst the lads, and gives the Scoutmaster a far better opportunity than any other of getting hold of his boys and of impressing his personality upon them.

The Scoutmaster’s Duty

Success in training the boy, as I have said before, largely depends upon the Scoutmaster’s own personal example. It is easy to become the hero as well as the elder brother of the boy. We are apt, as we grow up, to forget what a store of hero worship is in the boy. Personally, I happen to remember it is by the fact that when at school I had a fight with another boy because I did not share his everlasting hero worship of Henry Irving. It was not on the question of his ability as an actor that we differed, but as regards his physical perfection down to his finger-tips. It was actually on the question as to whether he had taper fingers or not that we quarreled.

The Scoutmaster who is a hero to his boys holds a powerful lever to their development, but at the same time brings a great responsibility on himself. They are quick enough to see the smallest characteristic about him, whether it be a virtue or a vice. His mannerisms become theirs, the amount of courtesy he shows, his irritations, his sunny happiness, or his impatient glower, his willing self-discipline or his occasional moral lapses - all are not only noticed, but adopted by his followers.

Therefore, to get them to carry out the Scout Law and all that underlies it, the Scoutmaster himself should scrupulously carry out its professions in every detail of his life. With scarcely a word of instruction his boys will follow him.

Loyalty to the Movement

Let him remember that in addition to his duty to his boys the Scoutmaster has a duty also to the Movement as a whole. Our aim in making boys into good citizens is partly for the benefit of the country, that it may have a virile trusty race of citizens whose amity and sense of “playing the game” will keep it united internally and at peace with its neighbours abroad. Just now we have before us, as an object lesson, the danger of internal dissension, where exaggeration of party politics and disregard of the wants of others are making for social disruption, and thus causing commercial depression and financial panics to the weakening of the nation in its progress and prosperity.

Charged with the duty of teaching self-abnegation and discipline by their own practice of it, Commissioners and Scoutmasters must necessarily be above petty personal feeling, and must be large-minded enough to subject their own personal views to the higher policy of the whole. Theirs is to teach their boys to “play the game,” each in his place like bricks in a wall, by doing the same themselves. Each has his allotted sphere of work, and the better he devotes himself to that, the better his Scouts will respond to his training. Then it is only by looking to the higher aims of the Movement, or to the effects of measures ten years hence that one can see details of today in their proper proportion. Where a man cannot conscientiously take the line required, his one manly course is to put it straight to his Commissioner or to Headquarters, and if we cannot meet his views, then to leave the work. He goes into it in the first place with his eyes open, and it is scarcely fair if afterwards, because he finds the details do not suit him, he complains that it is the fault of the Executive. Fortunately, in our Movement, by decentralisation and giving a free hand to the local authorities, we avoid much of the red tape which has been the cause of irritation and complaint in so many other organisations. We are also fortunate in having a body of Scoutmasters who are large-minded in their outlook and in their loyalty to the Movement as a whole. This feature has been very abundantly proved at recent conferences, and has given me a new feeling of confidence and hope towards tackling the great future which lies before our Movement.

A man dared to tell me once that he was the happiest man in the world! I had to tell him of one who was still happier. You need not suppose that either of us in attaining this happiness had never had difficulties to contend with. Just the opposite. It is the satisfaction of having successfully faced difficulties and borne pin-pricks that gives completeness to the pleasure of having overcome them. Don’t expect your life to be a bed of roses; there would be no fun in it if it were. So, in dealing with the Scouts, you are bound to meet with disappointments and setbacks. Be patient: more people ruin their work or careers through want of patience than do so through drink or other vices. You will have to bear patiently with irritating criticisms and red tape bonds to some extent but your reward will come. The satisfaction which comes of having tried to do one’s duty at the cost of self-denial, and of having developed characters in the boys which will give them a different status for life, brings such a reward as cannot well be set down in writing. The fact of having worked to prevent the recurrence of those evils which, if allowed to run on, would soon be rotting our youth, gives a man the solid comfort that he has done something, at any rate, for his country, however humble may be his position.

Programme for Study Patrol

Subject I.—How to Train the Boy