Woodcraft (youth movement)
The Woodcraft movement was developed by Ernest Thompson Seton in the early 20th century education movement, which is based on the life in tent camps, nature and craft activities. In his concept Seton integrated numerous elements that he owed or attributed to the North American Indians. In 1902 he founded the Woodcraft Indians, which grew in numbers rapidly and aufgingen from 1910 with Seton's consent and participation in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA).
In the U.S., Seton's ideas in there, of 1910 Scouting (Boy Scouts of America, BSA) were used, along with the enthusiastic outdoor education and youth-friendly " Indianertum " numerous organizations in other countries. In the UK, the Quaker and pacifist Ernest Westlake in 1916 founded the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry as a splinter group of the Scout Association. A little later, the scoutmaster John Hargrave Seton continued to develop ideas and founded in 1920 the Kindred of Kibbo Kift. After Seton's separation of the Scout Movement, the Woodcraft League of America was shot in 1915 in the U.S. under his leadership, which numbered 5,000 members after a short time.
Even the Boy Scouts movement in Germany, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Czechoslovakia took over elements and methods of Woodcraft in their work. These are the Fédération Nationale des Éclaireurs Éclaireuses et du Luxembourg, the Assault Squad Scout, a German forest chivalry and the Neupfadfinder in Germany, which introduced around 1925 by Woodcraft -inspired concept of tribal education in the German Scouting.
In the interwar period in Europe originated multiple Woodcraft groups. Greatest attention should also help the Czech Woodcraft League ( League Lesní Moudrost ), which was founded in 1912 by educators Miloš Prague Seifert. Although it was banned more than half a century, first by the Nazis and later the Communists, they could survive in secret. After the fall of communism it was publicly active again. Today it is a small, energetic organization with members in all ages.
Except in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is also available in Poland small organizations which attribute to the Woodcraft movement in Germany in the lower Rhine. Today's Forest School Camps ( FSC) in the United States and Great Britain are listed as heritage of Seton's Woodcraft pedagogy.
The Woodcraft Folk in the UK, however, is the youth wing of the British co-operative movement and works with socialist youth organizations such as the SJD - Die Falken together. It was created in 1924 from a split from Kibbo Kift and called today little more on Hargrave or Seton.
The informed and Ernest Thompson Seton Institute (ETSI ) in the U.S. or Canada conducts research on Seton and Woodcraft. International Youth Meeting called Woodcraft Gatherings and bear the slogan " Blue Skies ".