Green Bar - the Philosophy…

The Patrol is the fundamental unit of Boy Scouting. It is large enough to accomplish real goals and small enough that every member has a job and a voice in the progress of the Patrol. The Patrol is also the fundamental unit in Green Bar Training. The Patrol is much more than an administrative convenience, it is a laboratory for many of the concepts of leadership we are teaching in this course.

Adult Leaders need to learn more than what it is to be a member of a patrol. Green Bar Training emphasizes the special position for adults within the Patrol organization over the experience of being a member in a patrol. It is our job to teach them to view themselves as assistants to the Patrol Leader. It is position of the Green Bar course that the responsibility of an adult is to support the Patrol Leader, but in a different and much more demanding way than the youth Assistant Patrol Leader does. The adult should be there to mentor and support the Patrol Leader, but should do it as privately and inconspicuously as possible. The adult is a shadow leader. An adult is a role model in both character and observance of the rules. S/He is a councilor and active ear when the Patrol Leader faces a problem in management of the Patrol. S/He is a resource and aid when the boys are short of solutions or when a transfusion of skills is required. S/He is the first to recognize success and pass on accolades to the Patrol Leader. But s/he does as many of these things in the shadow cast by the Patrol Leader.

It is the focus of the Green Bar Training to give adults the knowledge, tools and desire to occupy either Adult Assistant Patrol Leader positions, or to be a special leader, the Adult Assistant Senior Patrol Leader (aka, the Scoutmaster). That is the focus of Green Bar training and the origin of the course symbol - the single green bar of the assistant patrol leader. The goal of Green Bar training is to produce adults who understand it is their calling to assistant the patrol leaders and other youth leaders of their home troops to be better leaders and Scouts.