Scouting continues to enjoy the cordial indorsement of school men
everywhere all over the country. More and more those interested are
coming to see the enormous possibilities of cooperation between the
scout movement and the schools. Many schools now give credit for scout
work done outside of the schools. Many more are in hearty sympathy with
the program as an extraschool activity.
In 1919 there were organized in connection with public schools 1,942
troops and 170 in connection with private schools. The records also show
that for the same year 1,623 scoutmasters were also school-teachers.
Many troops have their meetings in the school buildings and in turn
render good service by taking charge of fire drills, first aid and
safety first instruction, yard clean ups, flag drills, etc.
Scout leaders take the utmost pains to see that scout activities do not
in any way interfere with school duties, and troop meetings are
regularly held on Friday evening for that reason. The best results have
been obtained not by formalizing scouting, but by supplementing and
vitalizing the book work by the practical activities of the scout
program. Through scouting many a boy's healthy curiosity to know has
been whetted, so that he comes for perhaps the first time in his life to
see "sense" in books. As one school man has said, "Scouting has done
what no other system yet devised has done--made the boy _want to
learn_."
The National Education Association, meeting in Chicago in 1919, had a
special scouting section which was particularly helpful, interesting,
and conducive to closer cooperation between the scout movement and the
public schools.
The department of education of the National Council is at present
engaged in working out the development of a national policy governing
the relations between scouting and the schools, for important and
successful as the work has hitherto been, it is believed that only the
very outskirts of the possible fields of mutual helpfulness have yet
been reached.