The Patrol Method

By Bill Hillcourt

"The Patrol Method is not ONE method in which Scouting can be carried on. It is the ONLY method!" -Roland Phillips

TAKE any thirty boys, turn them loose in a closed street, a playground, or in a sports field--and you know what happens.

Shortly something will be under way. A clatter of many eager voices raised in discussion--and out of the large group will evolve a number of smaller groups, in gangs, ready for game or mischief.

Such are boys. The impulse of forming gangs is natural to them. They cannot help themselves.

What Constitutes a "Gang"?

In its simplest form the gang is merely a group of boys who habitually play together after school or after work. Accidents of various sorts--age, neighborhood, similarity of interests--bring together a somewhat random group. Immediately the boys react on one another. One or more leaders come to the fore. They take their Positions naturally, with little form or ceremony.

The gang organizes itself, finds or makes its meeting place, begins to do things. Usually it has some particular objective in which it is interested, such as baseball, football, going on trips, or--in bad gangs--stealing. Gang spirit is strengthened by this common pursuit and gang honor and gang loyalty thrive. The gang develops a collective mind, and sets forth as a unit to carry out schemes and activities which would hardly so much as enter the head of one boy alone.

The gang is, in short, a little social organism, with a life of its own, reaching beyond the sum of the lives of its several members.

The Gang becomes the Patrol

This gang, this natural unit of boys for boy activities, is the all-important unit in Scouting. It changes its name, it is true, from gang to Patrol, but it is a "gang" just the same, a small, permanent group of boys allied by similar interests, working together under the responsible leadership of one of its number--the Patrol Leader.

However, the Scout Patrol is far more than the casual gang of the street corner, the fly-by-night, strong one day, gone the -- next. It is made permanent and effective through the guidance of an understanding adult. Its activities are laid out according to a plan, full of variety and boy--interest. It is strengthened through adherence to a man--made but boy--accepted code o f honor. It is stimulated through association with other similar groups. And yet, throughout, it is fundamentally a boys' gang.

One, two, three, four, or even five Patrols, each under its own boy leader, form the Troop. The Patrols are the working units in Scouting, while the Troop organization provides supervision and coordination, and establishes loyalty and opportunities for service. In other words, a Troop is not divided into Patrols. A Troop is the sum total of its Patrols.

The strength of the Boy Scout Program is its ability to satisfy the boy's own wants and at the same time to direct those wants into social channels. The strength of its organization is its fidelity to the boy's own way of organizing. But the reason for our using the Patrol Method in Scouting is not alone because it fits in with the boy's nature and his desires. The remarkable thing is that it fits equally well with the adult leader's aims and purposes.

>> Continued

[Thanks to Lew Gardner for providing this article. Original emphasis and grammar used throughout.]