Today is the anniversary of the birth of the world wide Boy Scouting movement back in 1908 in England by Sir Robert Baden-Powell. In honor of the day, here is a reprint of a piece we wrote several years ago about scouting....
The Boy Scouts of America was founded in February of 1910, and just celebrated the 100th anniversary of it's birth. But the Boy Scouts were actually founded a few years earlier than that, back in 1906 in England by Lord Baden Powell.
Anyone who has gone through the scouting program in almost any way, whether as a boy or a parent, can tell you that the iconography of the organization is rife with influences from two places. From it's very beginnings with Lord Powell, right down to the modern organization today, scouting has always drawn heavily from the images, characters and stories in The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. But from those same early beginnings the movement has also borrowed much from the culture of the Native American tribes.
Now every one of us who has gone through scouting can also tell you that every year there is an event in the world of scouting that is of great importance -The Blue and Gold Banquet! It is here, when boys celebrate the end of their Cub Scout lives and the beginning of their journey as Boy Scouts. It is a joyous and also solemn evening or afternoon filled with ceremony and meaning. Once again, the prescribed methodology for this event is filled with words, and meanings drawn from the world of the Native Americans.
The evening, hosted as a Pack Meeting by the Cub Scout pack, is usually composed of a meal and recognition of all the various awards earned by the boys in the preceding months. It culminates with a very special ceremony symbolizing the boys "crossing the bridge" from Cub to Scout or from boy to young man. And then comes the "entertainment".
We have written before about the pros and cons of using a magician, clown or ventriloquist for such an event. We have, no surprise, always come down on the side of using the entertainment portion of the evening to introduce the boys to an equally entertaining but far more beneficial diversion, such as a science assembly or a visit from a historical character. Well, we have now discovered the perfect school assembly program for entertaining at a Blue and Gold Banquet.
Piankeshaw Trails is a new program that introduces children and adults to the culture, history and world of Native Americans in a wonderfully entertaining fashion. Hosted by a trained anthropologist who is not only extremely well versed in this world but also very funny, this school assembly is a delightful 45 minute examination of the early Americans, complete with museum quality artifacts and a lot of hands on interaction. What could be more perfect for an organization and an evening revolving around images from the woodland tribes than to entertain the audience with a marvelous program that specifically deals with this world in such an entertaining fashion?
But if you are charged with locating the entertainment for your Blue and Gold Banquet, don't wait too long! Dates will fill in for various events and you don't want to be left out. And keep in mind, this program is only available in the Midwest. Oh, and just to be clear ... this is also a great assembly program for schools!
Geoff Beauchamp is the Regional Manager of Mobile Ed Productions where "Education Through Entertainment" has been the guiding principal since 1979. Mobile Ed Productions produces and markets quality educational school assembly programs in the fields of science, history, writing, astronomy, natural science, mathematics, character issues and a variety of other curriculum based areas. In addition, Mr. Beauchamp is a professional actor with 30 years of experience in film, television and on stage. He created and still performs occasionally in Mobile Ed's THE LIVING LINCOLN.