Outward Bound

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Outward Bound (OB) is an international, non-profit, independent educational organization with approximately 40 schools around the world and 200,000 participants per year. Outward Bound programs aim to foster the personal growth and social skills of participants by using challenging expeditions in the outdoors.

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[edit] History

The Blue Peter nautical flag
The Blue Peter nautical flag

The first Outward Bound School was opened in Aberdovey, Wales in 1941 by Lawrence Holt and Kurt Hahn. Its founding mission was to give young seamen the ability to survive harsh conditions at sea by teaching confidence and tenacity. The name Outward Bound came from the nautical expression that refers to the moment a ship leaves the pier. This is signified by Outward Bound's use of the nautical flag, the Blue Peter (a white rectangle inside a blue rectangle).

Outward Bound has evolved into an organization which teaches inter-personal skills, wilderness survival skills, and leadership skills through courses ranging from one week to one semester. Outward Bound has a huge range of programs, from urban programs that seek to help troubled youth to family programs that seek to improve familial communication. Today Outward Bound has 44 schools all over the world and reports serving 100,000 students each year.

[edit] Course specifics

An Outward Bound excursion at Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada
An Outward Bound excursion at Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada

In a typical modern class, attendees are divided into small patrols under the guidance of two or more trained OB instructors. The first few days at a base camp are spent in various forms of training for the activity or activities that the course will contain and in the philosophy of Outward Bound, a form of compassionate self-reliance combined with care for others. Activity choices include: backpacking, canoeing, canyoneering/desert backpacking, dogsledding, mountaineering, multi-activity, rafting, rock climbing, sailing, sea kayaking, and snow and ice.

The "patrol" or "group" then heads off under the guidance of the instructors to perform initial confidence-building challenges. As the wilderness skills and spirit of the students increase, the instructors ask the team to make decisions as a group. During an Outward Bound instructors often aim to impart sufficient wilderness skills to assure that everyone can take part in a tradition called "solo". The wilderness instructors will take each student to a location on the course which is near enough to the group to be safe, but far enough away to allow reflective time alone. At the end of the course the instructors present a final challenge to the student group. The final challenge typically shows students just how strong they have become physically and emotionally.

Many television viewers may confuse Outward Bound with "reality" programs like Survivor and it appears these programs have taken some ideas from Outward Bound. A significant difference is the way Survivor encourages cliques, power struggles and the elimination of "losers", something completely opposed to Outward Bound philosophy.

Outward Bound offers a variety of courses of different lengths year-round for ages 12-plus. Teenagers and young adults benefit tremendously from developing self confidence and leadership skills. Many adults and companies use Outward Bound strategically for team building and to return to their daily lives re-energized. Prospective attendees are generally encouraged to work before their arrival on their physical fitness. Attendees are advised that smoking, alcohol, drugs and sex are all reasons for dismissal from the expedition.

Outward Bound also runs special courses for youth at risk. The instructors on these courses are specially trained to help this population start to make better choices in life and to better understand themselves and others.

[edit] Outward Bound USA

In 1961, Joshua L. Miner, the first president of Outward Bound USA (OBUSA) and the man responsible for bringing the innovative ideas of Kurt Hahn to the United States, inspired United States legislation approving a training and development model to prepare Peace Corps volunteers in Puerto Rico. This first camp, and then the more famous Colorado school, became OBUSA's first presence in the USA. NOLS founder Paul Petzoldt was an early OB USA instructor. Currently, OBUSA operates "Schools" under the Outward Bound Wilderness division focusing on expeditions and travel and "Centers" which are based-in large cities and provide similar expedition and educational services to the public school systems of their respective cities. In May of 2005 four legacy Outward Bound Schools were combined into a new division of Outward Bound called Outward Bound Wilderness (Outward Bound Wilderness.) The four legacy schools known as Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, Outward Bound West, and Voyageur Outward Bound School are now operated under one central office, but still offer the same programs and expeditions as they have for decades. There are five Outward Bound Schools and Centers: [1] NCOBS (North Carolina Outward Bound School), POBC (Philadelphia), BOBC (Baltimore), TIOBC (Thompson Island, Boston) and NYCOBC (New York City). From their respective beginnings, each of the schools and centers operated individually and were audited by OBUSA for safety and international policy standards. During 2005, OBUSA unified several of these schools into one larger OBUSA, sharing all resources alike.

[edit] Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound

Additionally, a third version of Outward Bound in the United States is Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (ELOB), created in 1993. A not-for-profit comprehensive school reform organization which is part of Outward Bound USA, ELOB works with over 129 urban and rural schools across the United States including Puerto Rico. Its pedagogy emphasizes high achievement through active learning, character growth, and teamwork at elementary, middle, and high school levels.

The ELOB endeavor transforms schools into centers of Expeditionary Learning by working with schools to design and implement expeditionary curricula, models of student assessment, new forms of school organization, programs for staff development and systems of evaluation, replication and dissemination.

ELOB has a national headquarters located in Garrison, New York as well as eight regional offices which are based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York City; Annapolis, Maryland; Palm Harbor, Florida; Puerto Rico; Dubuque, Iowa; Boise, Idaho; and Yakima, Washington.

[edit] Outward Bound Discovery

Outward Bound Discovery is a largely Florida-based branch of OBUSA that specifically deals with at-risk or adjudicated youth. They primarily run three types of courses: Short Term Expedition Program (STEP), Families In Need of Services (FINS), and Intercept. Originally known as Southern Programs, it began as a branch of Hurricane Island Outward Bound School in 1975 with STEP in Yulee, Florida.

[edit] Short Term Expedition Programs

Short Term Expedition Program (STEP) courses are based out of Yulee, Florda (located near Jacksonville) and are a highly successfully alternative to incarceration for non-violent juvenile offenders. These courses last approximately 30 days in the wilderness. They are funded by Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice and approximately 30 courses are conducted per year with 8-10 students in each course.

[edit] Families In Need of Services programs

Families In Need of Services (FINS) courses are designed to help students who are struggling at school and at home, with a focus on helping the entire family to adopt practices to increase freedoms as students demonstrate responsibility and create clear consequences for the students actions on which the student can then based their decisions upon. FINS courses involve a 20-day wilderness phase with the students, during which the parent have phone conversation and meetings with the office based staff members about their child's individual performance and struggles for dealing with their child's disruptive behaviors. There is then a follow-up phase during with the instructors and a program coordinator visit the student and their families at their homes to help mediate conversations and create concrete plans for improving their behavior. The educational coordinator and the instructors also meet with the students, their parents, and school teachers or counselors during the follow-up phase to discuss what the student learned on the course and how this learning can be applied to their school environment. Successful graduation from a FINS course is contingent on both the student's and their parents' full involvement in both phases of course. FINS courses are funded by local county education departments. The Key Largo, Florida base serves Monroe and Miami-Dade counties. The Scottsmoor, Florida base serves the Cape Canaveral area and the Orlando area. Additionally there is a base near Charleston, South Carolina and one recently started in Alabama, that runs an assortment of courses including both Intercept and FINS.

[edit] Intercept programs

Intercept courses are run by both OB Wilderness and OB Discovery, with the recent addition of 18-20 year old Intercept to the standard 13-17 age range courses.

[edit] See also

[edit] Books

  • Outward Bound USA: Crew Not Passengers (2nd edition) by Joshua Miner and Joe Boldt, published by The Mountaineers Books

[edit] External links

[edit] Official sites

[edit] Resources

Outward Bound is also the name of an acclaimed and once very popular play by Sutton Vane, in which a group of passengers find themselves on a ship. They gradually realize that they are dead and that the ship is taking them to Heaven or Hell. It has been filmed two times: first in 1930 and again in 1944 as "Between Two Worlds" updated to include references to the current war.

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