THE WOODCRAFT IDEA
An eminent educator asked me not long ago to tell him, in a sentence, about the Woodcraft League. I answered: “It is a man-making scheme with a blue sky background.”
“That sounds all right,” he said, “but does not explain its methods.”
To which I replied: “It is something to do, something to think about, something to enjoy, something to remember, in the woods, realizing all the time that manhood, not scholarship, is the aim of all true education. It works with a continual recognition of the four ways along which one should develop — the body way, the mind way, the spirit way, and the service way. It is first, last, and all the time, recreation — recreation for old and young, male and female. It stresses out-door life, though it has an alternative program for town life and indoor times.”
Since its foundation in 1902, half a dozen organizations have followed the Woodcraft, more or less imitating its activities, but wholly differing in immediate aims and results.
Thus, one or more. were designed to be feeders for the army by preparing the youth for service, adding the color of adventure to reconcile the rank and file to irksome duties. Another was planned to shed a halo of romance over the ordinary home duties of a girl.
Others — most others, indeed — have encouraged the childish following of trades and professions by giving honors for these, assuming that thereby they are helping a boy to choose his life work.
To these I repeat in reply:
- Woodcraft is recreation, preferably out of doors.
Unlike some other organizations, it does not deal with vocation, but with avocation. Thus, laundry work, plumbing, school teaching, banking, real estate or insurance are perfectly honorable callings; but we ..text pokračuje
