In order to help young people to develop through extracting what is personally significant from what they experience, Scouting must provide young people with opportunities for potentially  meaningful experiences. A way of checking whether learning by doing is being used to its full potential would be to consider the educational objectives for the age section as a whole (knowledge, skills and attitudes in each of the development areas) and examine to what extent young people really do have opportunities to progress towards the objectives through first-hand experience. For example:
  • • If an educational objective concerns, say, the development of a sense of interdependence, one  could examine whether:
  1. The way in which the young people operate together during their activities really provides  opportunities for them to contribute different talents, take on useful responsibilities, experience the benefits of mutual support, etc;
  2. There is room for improvement in the kind of contact that young people have with their local community so as to foster this sense of interdependence.
  • Examining learning by doing from the perspective of educational objectives can help when seeking to help young people to cope with issues likely to affect them - unemployment, drug abuse, etc. The first, automatic response by associations is often to provide information and develop interesting activities to help young people to learn about the issue. 

At the same time, Scouting can do much more to help young people to cope effectively! For example, how are young people being helped to develop a positive approach to life, to adapt to new situations, to use existing resources in a creative way, to take initiative, to develop constructive contact with others, etc?