Steven Hawking's Tutor
Posts: 5,890 
April 24th, 2008, 11:56 AM
Last year, scouting celebrated its 100th birthday.
It was invented by former British soldier Robert Baden-Powell in 1907 and he held the world's first scouting encampment at Brownsea Island in England. The British then exported it throughout their Empire (another great thing the British Empire gave to the world).
Today, scouting is as strong as ever....
KEITH WATERHOUSE: Dyb dyb dyb, or how Baden-Powell got it right
23rd April 2008
Daily Mail
No, I'm afraid I've forgotten how to tie a fisherman's bend.
Won't a granny knot do in lieu? Light a fire by rubbing two sticks together? But I have a book match. Hay-box cooking? Why bother when there's a Burger King just down the road?
So, taking one camp fire yarn with another, it seems I no longer qualify to become a Scout leader. If I ever did.
Back in the days when we were known as Boy Scouts (or boy sprouts, in the local vernacular) and I was a leading light of the 23rd South-East Leeds troop, my arms fair bristled with Scout proficiency badges.
Going strong: There is now a 32,000 waiting list to join the British scouts. Britain, the country that invented boy scouting and girl guiding, has the sixth largest population of boy scouts and girl guides in the world
You were tested for these badges by a visiting Commissioner. Mapreading. First Aid. Cookery. Semaphore. Stalking a man-eating lion (note: if no man-eating lion is available, your patrol leader's dog, if not too silly, may stand in for one).
Today, the movement has 42 new activity badges, including parascending, snowboarding, motor sports and in-line skating.
With a menu of attempted accomplishments like that, I should still be a tenderfoot.
That's the bad news. The good news is that the Scouts are experiencing a surge in popularity such as they haven't seen since the mid-Eighties, when they launched their junior wing, the Beaver Scouts.
The other bad news is that so many youngsters are clamouring to join that, with the biggest rise in membership for 22 years, they now have a waiting list of 32,000 - the result of a chronic shortage of adult leaders.
This, I imagine, is down to the hassle and form-filling and double-checking attendant upon anyone who wants to work with young people in these suspicious times.
As B-P - the Scouts' revered leader, Robert Baden-Powell - used to put it: "Scouts never grouse at hardships, nor whine at each other, nor grumble when put out, but go on whistling and smiling."
It is amazing that a hundred years after he brought out his handbook, Scouting For Boys, in six fortnightly parts, B-P's little movement, beginning with a group of 20 lads round a campfire on Brownsea Island, should still be flourishing worldwide.
Back in the cynical Sixties, I would have laid bets that the movement would peter out like the last embers of a dying camp fire within a decade or so. So where did B-P go right?
We need go no further than the concrete boulevard of the drab council estate where, under the sign "No ball games. No skateboards. No bicycles", a baseball-capped youth lounges against the wall with nothing to do except go home and play with his broken-down computer or watch the concrete mixers rolling on what used to be the local playing field.
If he could articulate what he wants to say, he would complain that he is being clamped in - by parents who are afraid of his moving out of their sight, by a council that doesn't want him trespassing on their property (including the youth centre, now closed because of lack of resources), by health 'n' safety officers who don't want him climbing anything, by a government that doesn't want him doing anything whatsoever he can't get a ministerial grant for.
What the Scout Association has on offer is freedom - a rare commodity these days. No wonder they're queuing up for it.
When I moved from one housing estate to another and had to transfer my affections from the 23rd S-E Leeds to a school troop, I found to my delight that it owned a cabin in the woods where, not half a mile from home, we could fry eggs and burn sausages until dawn.
Are schools still allowed scout troops? What about the NUT - today on strike? What about those militaristic uniforms, those imperialistic songs?
By the way, I see that one or two commentators, in remarking on the great scouting upsurge, have thought to quote what they describe as the puzzling camp-fire chant: 'Dib dib dib, dob dob dob.'
Puzzling indeed. The correct version, as anyone from the 23rd S-E Leeds could tell them, is 'Dyb dyb dyb' - meaning 'Do your best' - to which the response is 'We'll dob dob dob' - 'We'll do our best'.
Not a lot of people know that. Yet.
TOP 10 COUNTRIES WITH THE MOST BOY SCOUTS AND GIRL GUIDES (The first number in brackets is the year in which boy scouting was introduced to that country and the second number in brackets is the year in which girl guiding was introduced to that country)
1) United States - 9,500,000 (1910) (1912)
2) Indonesia - 8,100,000 (1912) (1912)
3) India - 3,700,000 (1909) (1911)
4) Phillipines - 2,600,000 (1910) (1918 )
5) Thailand - 1,400,000 (1911) (1957)
6) Britain - 1,000,000 (1907) (1909)
7) Bangladesh - 950,000 (1920) (1928 )
8 ) Pakistan - 570,000 (1909) (1911)
9) Kenya - 420,000 (1910) (1920)
10) Korea - 280,000 (1922) (1946)
dailymail.co.uk
Last year, scouting celebrated its 100th birthday.
It was invented by former British soldier Robert Baden-Powell in 1907 and he held the world's first scouting encampment at Brownsea Island in England. The British then exported it throughout their Empire (another great thing the British Empire gave to the world).
Today, scouting is as strong as ever....
KEITH WATERHOUSE: Dyb dyb dyb, or how Baden-Powell got it right
23rd April 2008
Daily Mail
No, I'm afraid I've forgotten how to tie a fisherman's bend.
Won't a granny knot do in lieu? Light a fire by rubbing two sticks together? But I have a book match. Hay-box cooking? Why bother when there's a Burger King just down the road?
So, taking one camp fire yarn with another, it seems I no longer qualify to become a Scout leader. If I ever did.
Back in the days when we were known as Boy Scouts (or boy sprouts, in the local vernacular) and I was a leading light of the 23rd South-East Leeds troop, my arms fair bristled with Scout proficiency badges.
Going strong: There is now a 32,000 waiting list to join the British scouts. Britain, the country that invented boy scouting and girl guiding, has the sixth largest population of boy scouts and girl guides in the world
You were tested for these badges by a visiting Commissioner. Mapreading. First Aid. Cookery. Semaphore. Stalking a man-eating lion (note: if no man-eating lion is available, your patrol leader's dog, if not too silly, may stand in for one).
Today, the movement has 42 new activity badges, including parascending, snowboarding, motor sports and in-line skating.
With a menu of attempted accomplishments like that, I should still be a tenderfoot.
That's the bad news. The good news is that the Scouts are experiencing a surge in popularity such as they haven't seen since the mid-Eighties, when they launched their junior wing, the Beaver Scouts.
The other bad news is that so many youngsters are clamouring to join that, with the biggest rise in membership for 22 years, they now have a waiting list of 32,000 - the result of a chronic shortage of adult leaders.
This, I imagine, is down to the hassle and form-filling and double-checking attendant upon anyone who wants to work with young people in these suspicious times.
As B-P - the Scouts' revered leader, Robert Baden-Powell - used to put it: "Scouts never grouse at hardships, nor whine at each other, nor grumble when put out, but go on whistling and smiling."
It is amazing that a hundred years after he brought out his handbook, Scouting For Boys, in six fortnightly parts, B-P's little movement, beginning with a group of 20 lads round a campfire on Brownsea Island, should still be flourishing worldwide.
Back in the cynical Sixties, I would have laid bets that the movement would peter out like the last embers of a dying camp fire within a decade or so. So where did B-P go right?
We need go no further than the concrete boulevard of the drab council estate where, under the sign "No ball games. No skateboards. No bicycles", a baseball-capped youth lounges against the wall with nothing to do except go home and play with his broken-down computer or watch the concrete mixers rolling on what used to be the local playing field.
If he could articulate what he wants to say, he would complain that he is being clamped in - by parents who are afraid of his moving out of their sight, by a council that doesn't want him trespassing on their property (including the youth centre, now closed because of lack of resources), by health 'n' safety officers who don't want him climbing anything, by a government that doesn't want him doing anything whatsoever he can't get a ministerial grant for.
What the Scout Association has on offer is freedom - a rare commodity these days. No wonder they're queuing up for it.
When I moved from one housing estate to another and had to transfer my affections from the 23rd S-E Leeds to a school troop, I found to my delight that it owned a cabin in the woods where, not half a mile from home, we could fry eggs and burn sausages until dawn.
Are schools still allowed scout troops? What about the NUT - today on strike? What about those militaristic uniforms, those imperialistic songs?
By the way, I see that one or two commentators, in remarking on the great scouting upsurge, have thought to quote what they describe as the puzzling camp-fire chant: 'Dib dib dib, dob dob dob.'
Puzzling indeed. The correct version, as anyone from the 23rd S-E Leeds could tell them, is 'Dyb dyb dyb' - meaning 'Do your best' - to which the response is 'We'll dob dob dob' - 'We'll do our best'.
Not a lot of people know that. Yet.
TOP 10 COUNTRIES WITH THE MOST BOY SCOUTS AND GIRL GUIDES (The first number in brackets is the year in which boy scouting was introduced to that country and the second number in brackets is the year in which girl guiding was introduced to that country)
1) United States - 9,500,000 (1910) (1912)
2) Indonesia - 8,100,000 (1912) (1912)
3) India - 3,700,000 (1909) (1911)
4) Phillipines - 2,600,000 (1910) (1918 )
5) Thailand - 1,400,000 (1911) (1957)
6) Britain - 1,000,000 (1907) (1909)
7) Bangladesh - 950,000 (1920) (1928 )
8 ) Pakistan - 570,000 (1909) (1911)
9) Kenya - 420,000 (1910) (1920)
10) Korea - 280,000 (1922) (1946)
dailymail.co.uk
