We all want Scouts to reflect, and to use the product of reflection to grow and develop as useful people.

Scouts are action oriented, their capacity for reflection is developing, and you have to align your expectations to their level of development.

If you think about it at that age you and I learned more by a repetition of silly mistakes than by power of logic, or accepting what we were told. I haven’t run out of gas in my car for twenty years or more, but I remember, as teenage driver, running out of gas several times. In my mind stopping at the gas station was ‘down time’ that kept me from my immediate goal, so I pressed on. Of course it took a lot longer walking to the gas station and back to my car, but that’s just the way I thought at the time. Thankfully I got smarter, but only after repeating the same miscalculation several times.

As an adult I want to give Scouts the benefit of my experience. I can talk my brains out explaining what I know but it does not work because experience itself not a transferable commodity. I’ll be much more successful if I aim at helping Scouts learn from their experiences using the process of reflection, rather than expecting they will accept my experiences. .

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