in the Netherlands, scouts are released, without reference points, into the wild

This practice should allow children to learn through experience and take responsibility.

Groups of children left alone in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night, with the mission of organizing themselves to find their way without the help of adults: this is “dropping”, a usual game of Dutch Scouts, told by Slate, which picks up with the return of spring.

Gathered in small groups, the young Dutch Scouts are only warned a few days in advance, then taken by the guides to their starting point, blindfolded for optimal loss of bearings. Once in the middle of the forest, the objective is to define roles in the group to coordinate and find the way out of the woods. A game that can also be played on the water, with two people in a kayak, with only a flashlight, a map and the Moon to orient yourself.

Even the youngest, the Welpen, or Cub Scouts in French, who are between 7 and 11 years old, are entitled to this extreme orienteering race, but they remain under the supervision of adults.

A reverse pedagogy

Popularized by the Scouts, the largest youth organization in the Netherlands with nearly 120,000 members, the practice has also extended to the school domain, where “droppings” are organized from primary school. Far from wanting to be a traumatic experience, the idea is precisely to let children get lost in order to learn not to be afraid of it.

This “resourcefulness” school also allows children to take responsibility, since they must not lose any friends along the way and to create links within the group. A way of learning through experience, therefore, rather than through parental warning.