Scouting, Volume 60, Number 3, March-April 1972 Page: 4
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Sloan: " Vie are trying to cause each boy to reach
his potential, especially for creativity."
• helping a Scout gain confidence in
himself by acquiring positive val-
ues and the requisite skills to make
life worthwhile
• showing respect for others and for
the concept of law and justice
• finding ways to use his imagination
and initiative in a creative way
For Personal Fitness we define
goals such as:
• helping a boy learn and practice
good health rules and personal
habits
• developing ingenuity and accuracy
in solving problems
• learning to use and retain knowl-
edge
There were, of course, many more
such specific goals identified by our
4 committee. From them came the raw
material from which to reshape the
Scouting program to include these
elements:
• The involvement of a boy in his
own personal growth development
• Teaching a boy to make decisions
and providing him the opportuni-
ties to make them
• Optional routes through the ad-
vancement program
• An older boy program in the troop,
called the leadership corps.
John Sloan and Vittz-James Rams-
dell will fill you in on these items.
John K. Sloan . . .
As we consider improvements in
the Scout program, I think we have
to go back to fundamentals and re-
affirm what the program is really
about. It is an experience in educa-
tion for a young man at a critical time
in his life. As leaders, we are suc-
cessful to the extent that we help a
young man find himself, and then
cause him to lose himself in things
that are greater than himself.
In today's world we have a kind of
holy grail called security. Unfortu-
nately we have identified security too
much with material things. The ulti-
mate security in life does not relate
to materialism, but relates instead to
the development of a personal kind
of strength that causes a young man
to feel that he is a person at work, an
important person. I think every boy
wants to assume responsibility. Every
boy has ambition. And the greatest
stimulation to ambition is to put be-
fore him something that is reason-
able for him to achieve. The Scouting
way is to put him beside a group of
adult leaders, particularly a Scout-
master whom he emulates, hopefully
a man he'd like to be like when he
grows up.
One of the important improve-
ments we will be making is the per-
sonal growth agreement. Here the
young man is encouraged to sit down
with his Scoutmaster, assistant
Scoutmaster or other well-qualified
member of the troop committee to
discuss what he plans to do by way
of activities and personal achieve-
ments in the weeks and months
ahead. In this way Scouting becomes
inter-related with every part of the
young man's life—the home, the
family, the church, the school, in fact,
the entire environment in which the
young man lives—or the program
really doesn't achieve its objectives.
We must never forget that we are
in the business of trying to cause
each boy to reach his potential and
especially his potential for creativity.
The personal growth agreement may
be the first time a boy ever really
thinks about such a thing.
Many people run away from reality
in life, perhaps through alcohol or
narcotics or things like that. So often,
these people have been too hard on
themselves; they have set objectives
for themselves that are totally unreal-
istic. The personal growth agreement
can help a boy see himself as he
really is.
I also think that sometimes it is as
important to allow him to "fail suc-
cessfully" as it is to have him always
achieve easy objectives. Sometimes
it's important to let him shoot too
high and fail so that he realizes that
this can happen, and that to fail is
not always a catastrophe.
Someone once said that ideals are
like the stars were to the ancient mari-
ners—we never reach them, but we
chart our courses by them. I think the
personal growth agreement of a
young man may encompass ideals
which will be his always but possibly
never totally met.
Another major revision in the Scout
program is providing greater boy in-
volvement in making decisions. I
think most of us would agree that al-
most any skill we develop in life
comes about by exercising that skill.
Decision-making is one of the funda-
mental skills of a successful life.
As originally conceived by Lord
Baden-Powell, the patrol method was
one of boys getting together, electing
their own leaders, making their own
plans for adventures and carrying out
those plans, making decisions as
they go along. The troop leaders'
council, formerly called the patrol
leaders' council, amends this original
concept by putting more responsi-
bility on boys as they grow older.
Under the revisions in Scouting,
we will assign the board of review
functions (to be called a progress re-
view) for the first three advance-
ments— Tenderfoot, Second Class,
First Class—to the troop leaders'
council. After all our study and re-
search, we don't think this is letting
down the bars. We think boys will be
rougher on their peers than will
adults. For Star, Life and Eagle the
boy will still appear for a troop com-
mittee progress review, but only after
his application to appear has been
approved by the troop leaders'
council.
There's another important factor
here—Scout Spirit. It's still one of the
basics in the program. I've always
thought that Scout Spirit should be
reviewed by the boys rather than the
adults. Scouts know a great deal
more about how a boy is living the
Spirit than adults do. So under the
new procedure, the boy leaders re-
view this area directly for the first
three advancements and indirectly
for the last three.
In summary, I hope that we recog-
nize that the Scout years are when
a boy tests the environment in which
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 60, Number 3, March-April 1972, periodical, March 1972; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353588/m1/8/: accessed May 22, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.