Section 8-The life scout who successfully passes five additional merit badge tests in addition to the five he passes in order to quality as a life scout, will be designated as a STAR SCOUT. Section 9-The first class scout who passes to the satisfaction of the local court of honor merit badge tests in First Aid, Life Saving, Personal Health, Public Health, Cooking, Camping, Civics, Bird Study, Pathfinding, Pioneering, Athletics Physical Development, with ten additional tests, will be designated as an EAGLE SCOUT. or Scouting offers these boys the mysteries of companionship with other boys and with worthy men with all the incident opportunities for team-play, initiative and leadership. It offers them the long-deferred opportunity for "helpful" participation in the adult life of the community, a chance for community service. It offers them attractive interest-gripping, individually-useful and socially-purposeful things to do things within their reach, to be done at their own gait, yet with degrees of progress challenging their abilities and providing suitable recognitions. It affords them opportunities for health of body and of spirit, for self-mastery; it reveals to them hitherto unknown abilities; it makes them intimate with stars and trees, with animals and flowers, and it enables them to "Be Prepared" to meet any emergencies as well as routine life. Its merit badge work opens doors of trial into over sixty vocations helping the Scout to find his place in life.* Its Oath and Law provide the lads a dynamic, a working code of morals,reverent, tolerant of others. This Oath and Law operates from within their group-it is the code of the boy group not imposed from without. Its "Good Turn" puts the real social spirit into practice. The fundamental tone of its mental growth is activity learning through doing, citizenship through service readiness for emergencies through "being prepared" in advance. In a word Scouting teaches boys to live by living and by living with them. *See Merit Badge Library, B. S. of A. 67 pamphlets. TWELVE THINGS · TO REMEMBER The Value of Time The Success of Perseverance EN who have achieved greatly in this world have kept were guided. When published these principles have always been found impressive and of universal usefulness and application. The above "Twelve Things to Remember" were the guiding rule of the late Marshall Field, of Chicago. Printed by Norman T. A. Munder & Company, Baltimore, especially for distribution at the opening of The UT A School of Printing, Indianapolis, October 15, 1920. CHAPTER II THE EXECUTIVE HIMSELF Scouting As a Profession Is Scouting a Profession? There were in 1920 over 350 Scout Executives with the number increasing at the rate of about one hundred annually. Paralleling this growth there has been the growing introduction of scout courses in Normal Schools, Colleges and Universities. Do these make scouting a profession? Webster says a profession is― "A calling in which one professes to have acquired some special knowledge used by way either of instructing, guiding or advising others, or of serving them in some art." Scouting is a profession for the Scout Executive, because of the vital social quality of the work of serving the community, through the art of character building, companionship and leadership of its boyhood. Scouting is fundamentally concerned, as are home, or church or school, (indeed is used by them) in that socially greatest task of creating in boys right ideals and habits. Habits must be builded through exercise, through doing. The experience of the race, its ideals, its relationships, its literature, its science, its worship, its faithall of the socially determining things of civilization must be transmitted to the boys by adults. This may be called social heredity. No child inherits from its parents by physical heredity, the ability to read― no, he must learn it. Experiments by Mitchell* and Kidd† indicate even that among animals and birds-many of the fears NOTE The Childhood of Animals."-Mitchell. "The Science of Power."-Kidd. and social habits hitherto regarded as instinctive are in reality taught by the furred or feathered parents. Among men, the gains of civilization, of higher ideals, of social progress can alone be transmitted to a child by some one's help. How vital this is is indicated by the following quotation († P. 19) "Since man became a social creature, the winning variations upon which power has rested in his evolution have been to an ever-increasing degree neither variations in the structure of his body, nor in the size of his brain, but variations in the type of social culture to which he is being submitted." Japan and Germany are the two outstanding examples of how a nation collectively submitting to a certain type of training and ideals can in a single generation achieve almost any desired end, be it worthy or unworthy. Character development and citizenship in the boyhood of America, then can only be realized as a social inheritance which must somehow, somewhere, by someone be transmitted to the boy. The work of the Scout Executive and of the scoutmasters therefore, potentially take rank in that supreme task of passing to the lad the race's social inheritance. While potentially a profession, in its vital relation to our associate life, yet it remains for the individual Scout Executive by his doing, to determine whether he shall and can bring his work up to a real professional level. At the very outset the Executive will be clearly conscious of the fact that he is engaged in no transient job of social service, but in an expert, vital task of leadership whose values and outcomes are eternal and whose men and boy problems demand consecration and professional fitness as well as exceptional vision and tact. No man should assume such serious responsibilities without the most careful inquiry both by himself and by others to determine whether he possesses the qualities needed. No man merits consideration who does not have a positive religious tone and recognizedly high moral quality on which the other needed qualities of leadership are to be builded. Only he can hope to train a child in the way to go-who goes that way himself. The moral quality of the profession is therefore basic and imperative. Leading Volunteers The Supreme task of the Scout Executive is to serve boyhood and enrich its life, through a volunteer leadership. The operation of a technical program, the maintenance of standards, the checking of results, and— the grave responsibilities of a character building program-involve, with a volunteer leadership, unique obligations for the Scout Executive which sharply distinguish him from executives in other fields. The Executive in a factory or in a retail establishment has under him workers, responsible to him for their wage; the Scout Executive, however seeks to head a group of busy men who are giving some of their leisure time because of the altruistic motive of serving boys. Important as is morale in industry and commerce, it is so much more important in the Scout Executive's work that it actually conditions his ability to do anything. Leadership "Morale-inducing" leadership therefore is not merely desirable but is absolutely essential. All leadership is basically a problem of Human Relations. is a problem of dealing with others. It A) Leadership of Volunteers, therefore must be based upon Consent, upon the willing cooperation and enthusiasm of those led. The Scout Executive is not a leader ex-officio-he is a leader by acceptance. While he must be an affirmative, a strong personality, yet here as elsewhere real strength involves consideration and is not attempted domina |