The last three interviews I conducted for my problem occurred in the world and were with people who are target demographics. The first interviewee was Ben, the second Kirk, and the last Westby. Ben is an eagle scout and all three have spent time as adult leaders in troops, been on campouts, and taught scouts.
I know Ben from staffing summer camp. He was my boss, but he also had to teach and interact with the kids like I did. When I asked about something all scouts should know he said, “KP,” which stands for kitchen patrol. Kitchen patrol is the job given to the person expected to clean up after a meal has been cooked and eaten. They clean pots, scrub utensils, and manage the waste. When I pressed why, he reminded me about all the scouts we used to take on overnighters who didn’t know how to clean dishes and clean up after themselves – all of that wound up being Ben’s/my job. He wishes that keeping up with yourself is a skill we could teach like we teach so many other things. “They should be taught to give the proper amount of attention and focus to number one; yourself,” he said. I asked why he thought that wasn’t being taught, and he responded that it’s hard to teach. “Morals are harder to teach,” he said, “because there’s no material on it. How do you teach kids to leave no trace in a way that engages them and makes them want to leave no trace?” That is the kind of question that I hope to answer.
Kirk was a scoutmaster of a troop from Georgia. When asked about something all scouts should know, he responded, “fire.” I asked if he meant fire starting or fire safety and again he said, “fire.” He told me that he has, on two separate occasions, seen scouts struggling to light a fire in a damp environment and resorting to putting “a little” white gas on the pile of moist wood to get it started. “Such a dangerous and reckless idea seems good when it’s raining and you can’t remember what you’re supposed to do in that situation,” he said. To make matters worse, one incident was from a scout who was set to earn Eagle within the next month. “How can you make Eagle without knowing how to build a fire?” he asked. I asked why this scout did this, and Kirk said that, when confronted, the scout was embarrassed that he didn’t know what else to do and he was too embarrassed to ask. He wanted to look like the guy who knew things because he was supposed to be the guy who knew things.
Westby is an adult leader in a Georgia troop. He actually put the heart and soul in this idea for me because he asked me these questions before I would ask him the same. A couple years ago I had just turned 18 and, therefore, was officially an adult in the troop. I was hanging out with the adults because our taste in music is closer than mine and the scouts and I find their wisdom better company than the kid’s kerfuffle. We were walking and talking when we came across a clothesline a scout had hung sagging horribly from the weight of the clothes. He stopped, said, “let’s tighten this up,” and proceeded to the knots. The first knot was overhand, which wasn’t bad, but when he went to the other end he was confronted with another overhand knot. “A clothesline without a taut line [hitch],” he lauded. The taut line hitch is a knot that first year scouts learn in order to get through their first few ranks, and yet it was absent from this scout’s clothesline. He called the scout over, made sure he knew the taut line, and let him go. He confided in me how devastated he was that this is acceptable and that kids learn yet don’t retain the information.
From these interviews, I have concluded multiple things. Most importantly, these skills are perishable – if you don’t tie a knot for a while, you forget it. The scouts that lose these skills may never run into a point when they need them again – or, at least, not for a while – and then there’s no scouts who remember these skills to teach and pass on these skills to others. Sometimes, it can be embarrassing to forget (and certainly to admit you forgot) these important, basic skills. If person to person is the only way to pass these skills, it can be hard for the scouts to either want to learn them because they aren’t engaged/properly instructed or relearn them because they’re embarrassed and/or because they forgot these skills existed. Having access to these skills whenever, wherever you need them and without pressure or embarrassment would go a long way to making more capable and more comfortable scouts.
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