The Patrol Method

Look carefully at this one. This is another of those non-required elements that I personally believe should be required. It goes hand-in-hand with the "Planned Program" item. If you have a planned program, someone must have planned it. Hopefully, it was your Patrol Leaders' Council. Hopefully, the Patrol Leaders that make up that body have been trained to do the job. Hopefully they represent real patrols, not just a group of names on a piece of paper.

As I've said elsewhere, the patrol is the basic unit of Scouting. Baden-Powell intended it as such. Many Scouters, though, have a tendency to divide their troops into patrols and not fully implement the Patrol Method. The National Quality Unit Award standard provides only for training junior leaders, and holding Patrol Leaders' Council meetings. That's not a bad standard because if both of those things are done, and done properly, you're a step closer to having real patrols than the troop that doesn't.

There's a whole section of this web site devoted to using the Patrol Method, so I won't go into it in detail here. Suffice it to say, a quality unit in the Boy Scouts of America uses the Patrol Method - even if they only have one patrol. Properly used, the Patrol Method creates opportunities to use many of the other methods of Scouting.

Now, by properly used I mean letting the Scouts form their patrols naturally, select their own leaders, and determine their own troop and patrol program. Leadership training is just a lot of hot air if the person being trained isn't given a chance to practice what he's learned. Holding monthly PLC meetings is wasted time if the members of the council can't make decisions or discuss anything important to them in Scouting.

If your goal is to have real patrols, then you'll set this criterion as a personal requirement for the award. If you already have real patrols, meeting this criterion should be a snap.