Talent Scouting in the Twenty First Century

nick cowen, 1 August 2007

Passing a lesser-known London park this morning, it was pleasing to see a neat phalanx of young men raising the Union Jack – writes Peter Smith. Rather than joining their peers for a ‘night on the tiles’ to mark the end of school, these young men – teenage boys, if you will – are members of the Scouting movement. At 8 am today, thousands of Scouts from across the world celebrated the one hundredth birthday of an organisation that has instilled civic virtues in tens of millions of young men.
One wonders what Robert Baden-Powell would make of the Scout Association today. Its beginnings were austere: a handful of boys taken on a week-long ‘experimental camp’ at Brownsea Island, Dorset, followed by the re-publication of field craft books originally written for soldiers in the Boer War. But Baden-Powell was (as marketing strategists say) ‘on to a good thing’ and the organisation stands as it does today, with 28 million members today.
What’s the secret to the Scout Movement’s success? Many famous leaders in politics, science, exploration and culture are proud to be still associated with one of their childhood pastimes. In a word, its values. Scouts are taught to become self-reliant, responsible, caring and committed members of society; in other words, they become adults. Baden-Powell mixed working class and public schooled children to promote integration and team work across social divides. The formation of young minds according to a common syllabus but with plenty of scope for individual challenge and creativity provides a keen template to educationalists, social commentators and politicians today. It remains a showcase for how entrepreneurial people can better the lives of many others without the interference of central government. Scouts everywhere, happy birthday, and here’s to another hundred years.