Educational Work of the Boy ScoutsBarclay, Lorne W. (Lorne Webster)
General
Educational Work of the Boy Scouts
Barclay, Lorne W. (Lorne Webster)
Boy Scouts -- United States
Scout leaders take the utmost pains to see that scout activities do not
in any way interfere with school duties, and troop meetings are
regularly held on Friday evening for that reason. The best results have
been obtained not by formalizing scouting, but by supplementing and
vitalizing the book work by the practical activities of the scout
program. Through scouting many a boy's healthy curiosity to know has
been whetted, so that he comes for perhaps the first time in his life to
see "sense" in books. As one school man has said, "Scouting has done
what no other system yet devised has done--made the boy _want to
learn_."
The National Education Association, meeting in Chicago in 1919, had a
special scouting section which was particularly helpful, interesting,
and conducive to closer cooperation between the scout movement and the
public schools.
The department of education of the National Council is at present
engaged in working out the development of a national policy governing
the relations between scouting and the schools, for important and
successful as the work has hitherto been, it is believed that only the
very outskirts of the possible fields of mutual helpfulness have yet
been reached.
SCOUTING AND CITIZENSHIP.
The making of good citizens is one of the chief aims of the scout
movement. Everything in its program contributes directly and indirectly
to this end. Every boy who associates himself with the movement is
impressed with a sense of personal responsibility. If he sees a heap of
rubbish that might cause a fire or collect disease-carrying germs, he is
taught to report these traps to the proper authorities without delay. He
is enlisted in every movement for community betterment and good health.
Scouts are organized for service and have participated in hundreds of
city-clean-up and city-beautiful, and "walk-rite" campaigns. They fight
flies and mosquitoes and fever-carrying rats. They assist forest wardens
and park commissioners in preserving and protecting trees and planting
new ones. They help the police in handling traffic in crowded
conditions, as in parades, fairs, etc., and work with fire departments
in spreading public information as to fire prevention, as well as
actively participating in cooperation with fire brigades.
All this means the making of an intelligent, alert, responsible
citizenry, dedicated to being helpful to all people at all times, to
keep themselves physically strong, mentally awake, morally straight, to
do their duty to God and country.
THE PIONEER SCOUT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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