Dialogue on Scouting: Pedagogy and Organization

By Eduardo Missoni and Dominique Bénard

The volume comes into our hands as a dialogue between two "old boys", veretan Scouts - as if sitting around the perennial campfire. They echange ideas in their most precious roles as educators, leaders, and heads of the Movement. They share with us the various dimensions of the vision of Scouting that still percolate throughout the Movement, noting how this vision continues to provide aventures for constructive world engagement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9781446141953

Book preview

FOREWORD

Many enjoy the honorable distinction of a lifetime’s dedication to Scouting, but few have the experience of service to the World Scout Movement as do this volume’s authors: former Secretary General of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) Eduardo Missoni and former WOSM Deputy Secretary General Dominique Bénard. The two now offer us this remarkable book.

Eduardo has been a Scout since the mid 1960s, whereas Dominique since the early 1950s. Both engaged personally as Scout leaders at various levels in their respective countries, Italy and France. In the early 2000s, they met at the World Scout Bureau (WSB), the secretariat of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM). Since then, and to the premature end of Eduardo’s mandate as Secretary General, they run a dynamic Geneva WSB headquarters and its six Regional offices. They pointed the Scout movement toward more engagement with developing areas. In this book, they present a rich, action-oriented mix of insights and ideas on Scouting, grounded in experience and an undeniable moral vision: one that likely cost them the support of powerful interests just before the fateful 2007 Geneva encounter of Scouts from around the world, during the first World Scientific Congress on Scouting.

On that occasion, regrettably, Eduardo would endure an unceremonious removal from the world movement’s leadership, largely at the instigation of the soon-to-be disgraced and bankrupt Boy Scouts of America (BSA). The BSA entertained a far more conservative vision for Scouting. Eduardo’s progressive outlook, embrace of a changing world, and a Scouting-based way to deal with it, I believe, proved his undoing. Yet Eduardo and Dominique’s experience and ideas, derived from rich experience, shine through. This book serves as their collective memoir, evaluation of, and, above all, the opportunity to reflect upon their vision of Scouting and its future.

The volume comes into our hands as a dialogue between two old boys, veteran Scouts – as if sitting around the perennial campfire. They exchange ideas on their most precious roles as educators, leaders, and heads of the Movement. They share with us the various dimensions of the vision of Scouting that still percolate throughout the Movement, noting how this vision continues to provide avenues for constructive world engagement. On one hand, they remind us of the familiar pathways to individual accomplishment that Scouting provides: from taking the Scout Promise to the milestone personal accomplishments (that garner badges) to the last phase of the Scout progression, the Rover section. On the other hand, they elaborate on their efforts to add an articulated dimension to the paradigm of personal morality/accomplishment that, rightly, remains central to Scouting.

The two identify ways that Scouting might seriously contemplate and, indeed, endeavor to do something about the great problems that we face today. Eduardo has a background as an accomplished doctor. While serving as a leader in his Scout group, he completed his medical training and then worked in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution’s early days. In impoverished areas, he attended ordinary campesinos, engaging with them on healthcare and the relationship between good (or bad) health and the historical superstructures of social class, patterns of governmental control, and collective moral orders. Later, he translated that experience into almost two decades of management in international development cooperation. Beginning his career before Eduardo, Dominique studied psychology and education. He worked for years in small town southern France before dedicating his skills to building Scouting at WOSM. There, he organized Scouting in the newly opened up post-Soviet areas of Eastern Europe and around the world. Dominique traveled tirelessly, while promoting, with skill, the global Scout education program in Geneva, leaving an indelible personal mark on World Scouting.

After stepping down from their Scout leadership roles, the authors remained active. Eduardo remains a international public health physician, as well as a professor at Milan’s Bocconi University and other important academic institutions, dividing his time between Italy and his home in central Mexico. Meanwhile, Dominique has added a later phase to his career, bringing his educational and organizational expertise to work on projects in Afghanistan and francophone Africa, while making his home outside of Geneva.

Now, they have given us this extraordinary book in which they record their dialogue. Like ‘brothers in Scouting,’ they respectfully spar and counter each other’s points throughout. Together they offer an important and spirited recollection of the evolution of world Scouting since its beginning, as well as considering where Scouting can offer new contributions. Scouting, as most people would agree, reflects the famous and contradictory nature of its extraordinary founder: Robert Baden-Powell. Hence, world Scouting’s ability to attract national audiences from places as distinct as Iceland and Saudi Arabia. When I first attended a world gathering of Scouts, as chairperson of the World Scientific Congress on Scouting’s Scientific Committee, I learned, to my surprise, that more countries engage with the Scout movement than with the United Nations.

Eduardo and Dominique have spent decades thinking about and actively engaging in confronting our collective, existential world problems: nuclear proliferation, pollution and climate change, poverty and inequality, the sixth mass extinction, rising authoritarianism, and the recrudescence of intolerance. I believe that the Boy Scouts of America and their allies removed Eduardo from WOSM’s leadership because the Secretary General and his closest collaborator, Dominique, were actively finding ways that Scouting might help address these existential crises. Hence, the two organized the 2007 conference to create an action-oriented dialogue, bringing together the world’s academic community and youth leaders. As always, they endeavored to do something based on careful collective, analyses, not just on their own viewpoints. We know that it is easy to remove men from institutional roles, even men as talented as Eduardo and Dominique. As for their vital ideas: This book reminds us that these do not go quietly.

This dialogue, then, offers a spirited historical analysis of contemporary Scouting since the 1950s. It remarks on its moral strengths and guiding vision dating from the early days of its founder, analyzing where we might identify some of its organizational flaws and how they might be alleviated. Indeed, the passages that Eduardo and Dominique offer on democratic and collective governance belong among the better works of contemporary political science. Few men have their experience in leading a truly international, worldwide organization. The authors always embrace the term Glocal – global and local – regarding such existential issues.

This dialogue, then, ‘takes place around the community campfire’ where we remain through the night, warming ourselves in solidarity, debating our ideas, thinking together and planning our individual and collective actions: constructively reflecting on Scouting’s future.

Biorn Maybury-Lewis, Ph.D.

Former Executive Director, Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin

American Studies

Former Chairperson of the Academic Committee of the World Scientific Congress on Education and the Scout Movement

Somerville, Massachusetts

December 31, 2023

INTRODUCTION

As two experienced professionals, we met at the World Scout Bureau (WSB), the secretariat of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM). Eduardo had just been appointed Secretary General following approximately 25 years of experience as an educator in Scouting. Since 2000, Dominique served, then, as the Director of the educational program, after a long and diverse career in the Scout Movement and the Organization. This was in 2004. Working together, we became good friends, sharing our vision, experience, and the challenge of leading World Scouting into its second century. Dominique retired in 2006, and Eduardo had to leave his position in 2007 because of an internal conflict that deeply hurt and frustrated him.

Since then, we have maintained contact and created and developed innovative educational projects together. Dominique is still involved in development projects, mainly in adult training; he started and coordinated the publication of the multilingual magazine, Cooperative Approaches. Eduardo continues to teach global health, development, and management of international organizations at various universities and higher educational institutions in Italy, Switzerland, and Mexico.

During a hike in the Chablais Alps, near where Dominique lives in the French Alps, we discussed the limited reference to the Scout Method in pedagogy books and the relative lack of knowledge of and interaction with other pedagogical methods in Scouting. Starting from that conversation and further reflections on the organizational setting of Scouting and how organizations can better serve their mission and the values on which they were established, we engaged in a written dialogue about our Scouting experience as well as its impact on our personal and professional development. We later decided to organize these reflections in a book.

Scouting marked us both deeply. We both joined the Boy Scouts in our teens. Through Scouting, we discovered our path in life: Dominique by going into psychology and pedagogy, Eduardo by choosing to become a barefoot doctor in Nicaragua, and then to work in international cooperation.

Scouting is education through experience, cooperation, and dialogue. How can we talk about Scouting without direct experience? This book has four parts, all based on personal experience.

In the first part, we talk about our teenage memories in Scouting, in the 1950s-1960s, as experienced in France and Italy. This is an opportunity for us to reflect on the essential elements of Scouting’s pedagogy.

In the second part, we talk about how our experience in Scouting allowed us to build our life projects, first through assuming the responsibility of educators within Scouting and then by choosing professional careers and adults, with our commitment based on the values we had already discovered and embraced in Scouting. We testify and affirm that one of the essential strengths of Scouting is to help young people make the difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood.

In the third part, we reflect on how to manage a National Scout Organization (NSO). For the most part, founded at the beginning of the 20th century, Scout associations adopted the pyramidal organization, the only one known at the time. Today, with the emergence of digital social networks and new cooperative managerial methods, new forms of organization are appearing that can powerfully inspire volunteer organizations and allow for a more agile and participative operation.

Finally, in the fourth part, we discuss our shared experience of leading the largest youth and educational organization, the WOSM, from its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. In this concluding part, Eduardo expresses his commitment, his wonder, and the frustrations which he felt while leading the Organization. Dominique reminded him and our readers of the successes achieved. Together, we reflect on organizing the World Scout Movement to remain faithful to its core vocation and relevant in the 21st century.

Despite our vast international experience, we are conscious of the limitations deriving from our European culture and the proximity to experiences within French and Italian Scouting.  Nevertheless, based on our personal experiences and analyses of the Scout method and its implementation in Scout organizations, this book may offer insight into Scouting for teachers, social and organizational scientists, managers, social workers, and parents. At the same time, and possibly more importantly, we hope that our book will pass on to the new generations of Scout educators and leaders a renewed vision of the strengths of the Scout Movement at the local, national, and world levels, suggesting possible improvements to overcome its weaknesses. Our overall goal in writing this book is to facilitate the continuation of the astonishing adventure of Scouting, the world largest educational youth movement, a monumental project which Robert Baden-Powell founded over a century ago.

TEENAGE MEMORIES

Dominique

I joined the Scout Movement when I was 12 years old. At the time, I was a 5th-grade student at school in Menton, on the French-Italian border. I just wanted to join my best friends who were already Scouts. In 1954, Scouting had a large membership in France. The French Scouting Federation had five male and two female associations. The male associations were Eclaireurs de France, a secular, non-denominational association; Scouts de France, a Catholic association; Eclaireurs Unionistes de France, a Protestant association; and Eclaireurs Israélites de France, a Jewish association. The female associations were the Guides de France, a Catholic association, and the Fédération Française des Eclaireuses, an original association in the French context since it brought together three sections in the same association: a secular section, a Protestant section, and a Jewish section. In Menton, a small town of barely 15,000 inhabitants, there was a groups of Guides de France, Scouts de France, Eclaireurs de France, and Eclaireurs Unionistes. Altogether, there were probably more than 400 members, making Scouting the largest youth organization in the city.

When I asked my father to join my friends in the Scouts de France, he refused because he didn’t want me to join a clerical association. I then had the idea of proposing to him to join the Eclaireurs Unionistes, the Protestant association to which my best friend, Gérard Buscarlet, belonged.

From the outset, I was confronted with the fragmentation of French Scouting, divided into several organizations along denominational lines. However, at the time, this fragmentation did not seem to be a danger, as there was a great deal of fraternity between the various associations. They frequently organized joint activities - including the Saint George’s campfire, held every year in one of the town squares. During this festive annual event, we wore the same uniform and carried out similar activities.

So I joined the Eclaireurs Unionistes, which had a meeting place located in an outbuilding of the Protestant church. Everybody knew I was a Catholic, but no one paid any attention to it. The pastor occasionally gave us a talk on the gospel, but religion was not a very important part of our Scouting activities. Our activities were mainly oriented towards hikes and camping in free nature. 

For me, the first important step was to wear the Scout uniform. One had to go to Nice, the neighboring big city, 30 km away, to buy the uniform and badges on sale in a department store. My mother accompanied me, and at the next Scout meeting, I came back very proud with my 4-bump hat, khaki shirt, blue shorts, scarf, and big regulation 1m80 high stick. I received amused comments from my comrades, whose uniforms were much less shiny, and the Scout Leader decided to pay tribute to my outfit by sending me to stand guard at the church door. Of course, after 15 minutes, I was picked up again and realized I had been gently mocked for my tenderfoot uniform. They called the newcomers this name. Everyone else was proud of their hats that had lost shape and color due to the weather, as well as their faded shirts and their mended shorts. What mattered was to be a tough guy able to face the mountains, the sun, the wind, the rain, and to cope with the elements and all circumstances.  

Indianism – inspired by the concepts of Ernest Thompson Seton¹, an American founder of Scouting – still had a significant influence. I remember one of my patrol members who had decided to adopt the Indian way of life. He wore his hair long and went to high school in moccasins that he had made himself. His favorite food was pemmican, the recipe for which he had found in a book on Indians. He prepared it himself. I looked at him with a certain admiration but secretly thought he was a gentle lunatic!

I still remember with amazement the strong integration of Scouting into society. For example, an 18-year-old boy who was a senior in high school, when I was in 5th grade, led our Troop. In Scouting, he had been totemized² Reindeer, and well, everyone called him by his totem, even the high school teachers! Unfortunately, this explains why I don’t remember his real name. For me, he remains Reindeer, a model who marked my adolescence. 

In 1954, at the age of 12, I made my Scout Promise. I was really happy in my Unionist Scout Troop. We practiced a joyful Scouting, free from any ideological pressure. We were organized into patrols of 6 to 8 members. That organization proved to be the most critical educational element. Of course, the Troop Leader, Reindeer, made all the decisions, but in consultation with the Patrol Leaders. The patrols were the setting for most of our activities. This gave us a great deal of autonomy: the freedom to organize ourselves and to take on concrete responsibilities. This is the most essential element of the Scouting pedagogy: peer education. The adult leaders did not intervene directly; they organized a framework of activities but remained somewhat distant. What I enjoyed and remember most about my Scouting experience during this period was the patrol life: essentially, a group of friends who met at the high school and shared all the moments of their lives. We exchanged ideas on everything: studies, relations with parents and teachers, current events (France was at that time stuck in senseless colonial wars; the one in Indochina ended with a resounding defeat, but the one in Algeria was beginning), the values that we considered important in life, and especially the way we reacted to each other in Scouting activities. We educated each other.

It is because of this experience that, today, that I am struck by the truth and depth of this quote from Paulo Freire: «No one educates anyone: No one educates himself alone; men educate themselves together through the world.»(1)

We were educating ourselves together through the world we were perceiving. Every weekend, we would go backpacking in the mountains above the French Riviera, pitching our tent, lighting a campfire, cooking our food, playing scarf games or approach games, exploring the forts of the last world war... Above all, it was an opportunity to share our lives, our relationships with our families, our teachers, our difficulties, our hopes, our dreams, and news from around the world in endless discussions that would go on late into the night in the Patrol tent. What mattered most was our interactions and the friendship that bound us together.

The educational objectives of our leaders were rather sketchy. Of course, guidelines published by the Scout Association told us which skills we had to acquire. The guidelines classified the skills into three levels: Aspirant, 2nd class, and 1st class. They were inspired by the original proposals of Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, and detailed in a book that only the leader had: the Manuel de l’éclaireur (the Scout’s Manual). I found a copy some 40 years later in the library of the WSB. From time to time, we were allowed to pass from hand to hand this book of more than 600 pages, which was somehow our Bible, to leaf through it. Published in 1948 by the Swiss publisher Delachaux et Niesté, a specialist in nature activities and Scouting, this book presented everything a Scout should know with many illustrations. Its content is interesting because it expresses well the ambition of Scouting at that time.

That ambition, reflected in the Scout’s Manual was to constitute an updated version of Scouting for Boys, written in 1907 by Baden-Powell. It focuses on Scouting activities, but - as it is the case in many Scouting associations even today - it makes no reference to the other book written by Baden-Powell in 1919, Aids to Scoutmastership, where for the first time (more than 10 years after Scouting’s founding) he explained in detail what his educational objectives were.

The content of this book expresses well the characteristics of the association of the Unionist Scouts of the time: sympathetic but a bit heterogenous, conveying the mainstream opinions of the society, but without insisting on a particular ideology. One can note in this respect the absence of any religious content. It is only a catalog of what Scouts should learn. Yet, at the same time, nothing is said about the Scouting movement itself on either a national or international level. Nor does it offer remarks on the Scouting method, the team system, the Promise and the Law, personal progression, certificates of competence, etc.

The Scouting we practiced at the time talked about values - being loyal, generous, courageous, clean, resourceful, useful, good citizenship - but almost never about educational objectives. It offered young people activities that were supposed to teach them skills and competencies, but often without clear educational objectives in mind. It was an essentially practical education: Learning by doing³.

Paulo Freire teaches us that active learning uses not only action but also reflection. He does not speak of practice but of praxis: the learning cycle based on experience and reflection to develop new concepts and competencies.(1)

We participated in activities but few of them led us to reflect on our experiences and learn from them. These activities were very repetitive and stereotypical: camping, nature outings, war games, rescue games, songs and campfire skits... Our Scouting took place in a world closed in on itself. The leaders would never have dared to talk about the dramas that were shaking French society at the time: strikes and demonstrations against low wages, colonial wars... I had a Vietnamese friend in high school. It was with him that I spoke about the war in Indochina. These discussions allow me to discover the colonized peoples’ desire for independence. I shared these discussions with the members of my patrol, one day, when one of us had evoked the defeat of Dien Bien Phu. But we had never discussed this type of subject with our adult leaders. 

The result of all this was that we had no idea what to prepare for in our future when joining adult society.

When Reindeer graduated from high school, he left Menton to enter the University. The small Troop of Eclaireurs Unionistes found itself without a leader. After considering several options, my Patrol Leader, Gerard Buscarlet, and I decided to join the Catholic Scouts de France. Although he was a Protestant, he was accepted without any problem. However, I was reprimanded by the Troop chaplain because I had spent two years with the Protestant Scouts!

The Scouts de France Troop functioned in much the same way as the Unionist Scouts Troop. But the ideological pressure was much stronger: attendance at mass every Sunday was mandatory. 

I was also forced to redo my Promise, because a Promise made with the Protestant Scouts was not considered