Proficiency Badges are established with a view to developing in each lad the taste for hobbies or handicrafts one of which may ultimately give him a career and not leave him hopeless and helpless on going out into the world.
The Badges are merely intended as an encouragement to a boy to take up a hobby or occupation and to make some sort of progress in it, they are assigned to an outsider that he has done so, they are not intended to signify that he is a master in the craft he is tested in. If once we make Scouting into a formal scheme of serious instruction in efficiency, we miss the whole point and value of Scout training and we trench on the work of the schools without the trained experts for carrying it out.
We want to get ALL our boys along through cheery self-development from within and not through the imposition of formal instruction from without. But the object of the Badge System in Scouting is also to give the Scout Master an instrument by which he can stimulate keenness on the part of every and any boy to take up hobbies that can be helpful in forming his character or developing his skill.
-B. P
Keywords: Proficiency Badges, Scouting, Baden-Powell, personal development, hobbies, skills, character building, self-discovery
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