Using rank as a carrot to get boys to advance within the boy scouting program.
Rank as a privilege should never be used as a punishment within the scouting experience. It’s inappropriate to ask scouts of lower rank to wash all the dishes, as example or haul all the trash. If used properly, the privileges of rank can inspire, not berate boys.
Photo by Tim Graf on Unsplash.
Transcript:
Some boys are motivated by the simple act of achieving and some need a little bit of a push to achieve. One of the ways we have found to motivate the scouts is to award privileges as well as responsibilities for rank.
When all achieving a rank does is give scout responsibilities then they quickly become disenchanted with rank, and seek equity over the less advanced scouts. It’s not all about telling the other scouts what to do. Part of highlighting rank is to inspire the younger boys to want to achieve.
We had one scout who was perfectly happy being a First Class scout. Not that this scout didn’t have the merit badges or time in position to achieve, he more than did. Just to him it wasn’t important. He had fun at the meetings, enjoying the camaraderie with his friends, and enjoyed the camping experience. For him, this was enough.
It wasn’t until some of the younger scouts began passing him that he decided that this was not a good idea. From there he moved up to star and life scout pretty quickly.
One of the things that helped give him a little push was the privileges of rank. In our troop, as I’ve mentioned in videocast seven, scouts can only carry phones once they have achieved first class. But there are other privileges, mostly centered around food.
When we have our holiday or end of the year parties, higher ranks get to eat first. Psychologically, this is a big thing. While we always get more than enough food. There is a big difference from getting on the front of the line and getting in the back.
Another way we introduce rank into the troop is signing off on requirements. For this, it’s not specifically a rank, but the scout that is doing the signing off needs to be 2 ranks higher than the scout they are signing off for.
While this is technically a responsibility, the boys at the higher ranks see this as a privilege, as they remember having to hunt out the older boys to get things signed off themselves. The technical reason we do this however is we don’t want boys who just got stuff signed off on to sign off all their friends, this is a sure fire way of potentially dumbing down the system. But this is what works for us.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.
I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was the privileges of rank.
