From SIr Robert Baden-Powell's 1920 book Scoutmastership:
Two simple yet powerful aids to boy training exist ready to hand in
(i) the wonderful enthusiasm inherent in the boy;
(2) the trainer's own experience of life.
One Scoutmaster has told me that he takes my weekly remarks in the Scout as his text for his week's work with his boys. His conclusion after reading a good many of these weekly paragraphs is that "I want to make the boy happy." Well I am glad that he has realized this, because it is really the aim of our training. We want to show the boys how to be happy, how to enjoy life, both first in the present and second in the future.
We are not a Cadet Corps or Brigade, nor are we a Council School ; with all respect to these institutions their aims and methods are not exactly the same as ours ; we want to make the boys happy for ultimate good citizenship. It is true that incidentally in doing so we give them the benefits that can be got from these other societies, for Scouting also develops Discipline and Health and Knowledge, but at the same time it directly aims to make its followers better citizens through Happiness and Service, which is outside the sphere of the others. The smile and the good turn are our specialty.
In helping the boy to be happy in the present we do so by utilizing and encouraging his impulses and activities, by edging them into the right direction and control. In preparing him for happiness ultimately in his life we can each of us do much by looking at our own experiences and steering him clear of rocks on which we in our time have very nearly come to grief ourselves.
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