Boy-Scouting

BOY-SCOUTING (from the English boy-scout), one of the forms of the bourgeois children's and youth movement, characterized by the fact that children and adolescents, aged 11 to 18, are organized into a collective living by special laws and rules of morality. The task of this broad children's movement, which has taken the form of an almost military organization, is the formation of citizens capable, both in their physical strength and in their ideology, of becoming active defenders of bourgeois society. Scouting originated in England (1899). Its emergence is connected with the name of the English general Robert Baden-Powell, who formalized all the material on scouting in the book: "Scouting for Boys." Alarmed by military failures during the Transvaal War, the leaders of the English bourgeoisie began to speak about the fact that "a decline in civic consciousness is creeping into English society, which once led to the destruction of the Roman Empire"; that it is necessary to conduct work with the rising generation beyond what the school and family do, along the lines of increasing their devotion to the king and the fatherland, and faith in God; that it is necessary to develop physical strength, practical life skills, endurance, courage, determination, patience, resourcefulness, etc., in the rising generation. It is natural that Boy-Scouting very soon acquired major patrons from the English bourgeois-landowning society, among whom were the King of England, archbishops, lords occupying prominent public and state positions, representatives of large bourgeois circles, and the press. In 1911, by a special royal charter, boy-scout organizations were declared a state institution. Having widely encompassed the child population of England and its colonies (up to two hundred thousand people in 1913), scouting became an important moment in pre-conscription military training. Scouting quickly penetrated other countries of Europe, Asia, and America. The system of scouting is ideologically reactionary, obscuring the class self-consciousness of proletarian children and clouding the heads of the rising generation with mysticism and the deceitfulness of petty-bourgeois morality. At the same time, in the methodology of upbringing, the scout system has very valuable moments that deserve attention: broad children's initiative; great achievements in instilling practical skills in children (in manual labor, orientation in the surrounding terrain, sanitary and hygienic discipline); wide use of natural factors of nature—sun, air, water (especially during the period of camp life); and the systematic development of motor power and agility in the rising generation. The October Revolution, having put forward its own system of upbringing for the rising generation before the proletariat, opposed scouting with pioneer organizations, which are displacing scouting from the midst of proletarian children in bourgeois countries as well.