Scoutcraft - Happiness

So that if we want our boys to gain happiness in life we must put into them the practice of doing good to their neighbours, and in addition, the appreciation of the beautiful in Nature.

Scoutcraft - If I Were King

"If I were King.''' — Alexandre Dumas fils has written:

"If I were King of France I wouldn't allow any child of under twelve years to come into a town. Till then the youngsters would have to live in the open — out in the sun, in the fields, in
the woods, in company with dogs and horses, face to face with nature, which strengthens the bodies, lends intelligence to the understanding, gives poetry to the soul, and rouses in them a curiosity which is more valuable to education than all the grammar books in the world. 

"They would understand the noises as well as the silences of the night ; they would have the best of religions — that which God himself reveals in the glorious sight of His daily wonders.
"And at twelve years of age, strong, high-minded, and full of understanding they would be
capable of receiving the methodical instruction which it would then be right to give them, and
whose inculcation would then be easily accomplished in four or five years. 

"Unfortunately for the youngsters, though happily for France, I don't happen to be King.

Scoutcraft - Oxygen for Ox's Strength

Oxygen for Oxs Strength. — I saw some very smart physical drills by a Scout Troop quite recently in their club headquarters. 

It was very fresh and good, but, my wig, the air was not! It was, to say the least, "niffy." There was no ventilation. The boys were working like engines, but actually undoing their work all the time by sucking in poison instead of strengthening their blood. 

Fresh air is half the battle towards producing results in physical exercises, and it may advantageously be taken through the skin as well as through the nose when possible. 

Yes — that open air is the secret of success. It is what scouting is for, viz., to develop the out-of- doors habit as much as possible. 

I asked a Scoutmaster not long ago, in a great city, how he managed his Saturday hikes, whether in the park or in the country? 

He did not have them at all. Why not? Because his boys did not care about them. They preferred to come into the clubrooms on Saturday afternoons ! 

Of course they preferred it, poor little beggars; they are accustomed to being indoors. But that is what we are out to prevent in the Scouts — our object is to wean them from indoors and to make the outdoors attractive to them.

Scoutcraft - Great Aim

Our great aim is to show the lad the best way of developing his strength and health, and what errors he should avoid, and to teach him to be Personally Responsible to Himself for His Health.

Scoutcraft - How To Live

"We want to teach our boys not merely how to get a living, but how to live." - Sam Harrison in Scout Headquarters Gazette

Scoutcraft - nor a Sunday School

We are not a brigade — nor a Sunday School — but a school of the woods.

Scoutcraft - Happy

A man dared to tell me the other day that he was the happiest man in the world! I had to tell him of one who is 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 Britons 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 the nation, gives a man the solid comfort that he has done something, at any rate, for his country, however humble may be his position.

Scoutcraft - Giving Them Charge

Once the Scout understands what his honour is and has, by his initiation, been put upon his honour, the Scoutmaster must entirely trust him to do things. You must show him by your action that you consider him a responsible being. Give him charge of something, whether temporary or permanent, and expect him to carry out his charge faithfully. Don't keep prying to see how he does it. Let him do it his own way, let him come a
howler over it if need be, but in any case leave him alone and trust him to do his best. 

Giving responsibility is the key to success with boys, especially with the rowdiest and most difficult boys. 

The object of the Patrol System is mainly to give real responsibility to as many of the boys as possible with a view to developing their character. If the Scoutmaster gives his Patrol Leader real power, expects a great deal from him, and leaves him a free hand in carrying out his work, he will have done more for that boy's character-expansion than any amount of school-training could ever do. And the Court of Honour is a most valuable aid to this same end if fully made use of.

Scoutcraft - Example

There is no teaching to compare with example. If the Scoutmaster himself conspicuously carries out the Scout Law in all his doings, the boys will be quick to follow his lead.

Scoutcraft - The Scoutmaster is a Hero

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 him-self should scrupulously carry out its professions in every detail of his life. With scarcely a word of instruction his boys will follow him.

Scoutcraft - Juvenile Smoking

Juvenile smoking and its destruction to health; gambling on football and races, and all the dis-honesty that it brings in 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.

Scoutcraft - Action/Learning

"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?"

Scoutcraft - Sitting at a Desk

"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 any one 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 and mischief and noise and observation and excitement. If he is not, he is abnormal.

Scoutcraft - Good Points

I had the pleasure, during the past week, in my inspections, 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.

Scoutcraft - Boy Qualities

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 or vulgar 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 Corn well, like many another 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, especially the poorer class of boy, because in many cases he has had to fend for himself without the help of his parents. Therefore, he is rather averse to 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, as Mr. Pelham says, "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.

Scoutcraft - Aim High

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."

Scoutcraft - Scoutmaster Share

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 would add that undoubtedly it is through sport that you can best get 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 how 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, or 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'straining as drill and — my meaning will not be mistaken — as the Bible- class. It should be in the regular program of every company, only it must be football, and not merely playing at playing football."

Scoutcraft - Holding the boy

The object of offering so many [training] as we do at an elementary standard is to draw out the boy of every type to try their hands at various kinds of work and the watchful Scoutmaster can very quickly recognize the particular bent of each boy and encourage it accordingly.  And that is the best road towards expanding their 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.   

Scoutcraft - Essentials to Build Good Citizens

• Character.  

• Hobbies and handicraft.   

• Health and bodily development.   

• Happiness.   

• Service to others. 

Scoutcraft - Happiness

"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.