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SCOUTING IN EDUCATIONAL
PERSPECTIVE
J. S. MEHTA State Chief Commissioner, Bharat Scouts & Guide, Rajasthan and International Commissioner, India
The Scout/Guide movement is an international movement and despite the political, social and cultural heterogeneity of nations, its devotees, irrespective of national differences, are bound by a homogeneity of purpose all over the world. Besides, its international character, the movement has steadfastly adhered to its cherished principles and practices which the passage of time have not been able to erode.
An organisation which expands both in space and time is likely to evolve a stable code -of norms of conduct to which its members are obligatorily required to conform. The new entr
ants in the organisation try to cling tenaciously to its accepted mores and modes of behaviour lest they should be dubbed as infidels. The older ones who run the organisation by sheer force of repetitive behaviour are stiffened into the role of sticklers and conformists. With a view to maintaining and perpetuating the noble tradition of the organisation they scruplously observe the rituals of the organisation. New ideas or innovations are generally resented and than opposed by them for fear of polluting the sanctity of the conventional wisdom. All forward-looking institutions, as and when they fall into the hands of static sticklers, begin to recede into anachronism and finally sink into discredit or at least oblivion.
Any organisation devoid of dynamism, is, therefore, likely to wither away. Such organisations draw their sustenance from the hoary past. They soon become non-functional, if not extinct.
Each organisation needs reorganisation of its (programmes and modes of working for its very survival. An organisation cannot subsist only on its past practices or its past glory. It must, have confrontation with the needs of present reality. It has to seek and work for its transformation in terms of the pressing needs of the living present. Baden Powell, founder of the Scout movement, could foresee all eventualities of the movement and in order to save the Scout/Guide movement from the march of static ritualism, he sounded a note of warning tinged with optimism-scouting divorced from reality is an impossibility.'
The Scout/Guide movement, II am happy to remark, has not stuck into a quagmire as
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