{"id":5238,"date":"2017-11-06T14:00:06","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T14:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ayf.com\/?p=5238"},"modified":"2017-11-06T14:00:06","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T14:00:06","slug":"look-back-best-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ayf.com\/look-back-best-self\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Back at Best Self"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the unabridged version of the article originally published in the 2017 Founder Fire, released in November.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Samme Orwig<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019ve attended camp for one season or twenty, you have gained some idea of how four-fold growth fits into your life and the steps you might take to achieve it. In fact, guided four-fold goal-setting has always been central to the American Youth Foundation\u2019s program. It originated in the four-fold questionnaire, which was intentionally paired with an interview \u2013 a scheduled time with a camp leader who listened to a camper\u2019s aspirations, offered paths toward achieving them, discussed ways to work through obstacles, and, most importantly of all, gave encouragement to the camper.<\/p>\n

\u201cBOOSTS count,\u201d wrote AYF associate director R.A. Waite in the weeks leading up to the first Miniwanca and Merrowvista camps. \u201cSympathetic encouragement has ever been a factor to success. The camp-questionnaire is a real effort to boost.\u201d[1]\n

This was no quick personality assessment, nor was it a test to gauge one\u2019s vocational interests. It was its own, singular tool for helping campers better understand their own four-fold growth. The entire operation was known as the Questionnaire Department of the American Youth Foundation. In the two-week leadership conferences known as Older Girls and Older Boys camps, each camper filled out a questionnaire, usually over the course of two or more days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Even in the earliest days of Founder camping, the AYF was keenly aware of the flaws and failings often associated with surveys. It assessed both the individual questions and the survey procedures regularly to keep the questionnaire program relevant. \u201cThough fully realizing that the history of personality-tests is strewn with the wrecks of many odysseys on the sea of measurement, the American Youth Foundation continues to look upon its procedure as worthy of perpetuating,\u201d explained founding director John L. Alexander. [2] He revealed the purpose of this unusual but central component of the\u00a0AYF experience: to \u201corganize a working balance of these all-essential forces through their quickening to a fresh awareness of the heights that may be reached and the depths that may be plumbed in the attaining of the measure of the stature of full-grown manhood and womanhood.\u201d[3] He was equally clear about the positive, deeply personal insights to be gained from questionnaire: \u201cNever, however, is the attempt made to reduce young people to a dead level in characterful living. Not stagnancy, but stability in their forward-moving experiences is the grand objective.\u201d[4]\n

After all, central to the AYF\u2019s program was the sense of competition with the self \u2013 that urging to better oneself all the time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Brief History<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Front page of ISSA survey<\/p><\/div>\n

The AYF\u2019s questionnaire most likely grew out of John Alexander\u2019s experience with YMCA vocational questionnaires and other surveys being rolled out in the early 1900s. He continued to formulate surveys along the line of four-fold development, arriving at the example shown here, which was used in one of the International Sunday School Camp-Conferences (1914 \u2013 1923). Even before the days of Miniwanca and Merrowvista, there was a four-fold Questionnaire Department totaling the scores of earnest campers who found inspiration in these new self-assessment tools.<\/p>\n

With the founding of the AYF in 1924, new questionnaires were developed for the 1925 camp season \u2013 and were reviewed and revised thereafter, probably on a yearly basis. At its heart, the questionnaire was meant to help campers \u201clocate points of strength and weakness, discover unused capacity, and plan a constructive program of fourfold living.\u201d[5] The instructions for all staff administering the questionnaire program included a five-point statement of objectives [6] found in materials dating from the late 1920s through the late 1940s. Our contemporary perspectives may quibble with the point about a societal ideal in item 3, or we may find item 5 all but impossible, yet the central themes hold true today:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The discovery of both used and unused capacities for fourfold living.<\/li>\n
  2. The evaluating of balance in expression of these capacities.<\/li>\n
  3. The choosing of the balanced fourfold program of living as the ideal both for the individual and for society.<\/li>\n
  4. The validating in experience of this idea of balanced fourfold living.<\/li>\n
  5. The habituating of this ideal in all relationships.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Everything rested on the rounding out of the individual. The questionnaire results would say, for instance, that a skilled athlete should not pursue a \u201cP\u201d at the expense of the M, S, or R. The shy person was encouraged to develop the \u201cS\u201d \u2013 and was coached in ways to do this through an individualized \u201cprescription\u201d of actions to be taken in the coming year, thus contributing to each camper\u2019s goal-setting.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The Process<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>

    Example of a completed questionnaire from the 1914 \u2013 1923 era. This individual\u2019s accomplishments and activities were so extensive that additional pages were needed to fully answer the questions. Clipped to the right is a list of books the person had recently read.<\/p><\/div>\n

    Briefly put, the many steps of the questionnaire program came together in this way:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe analysis is made on a questionnaire-interview basis. Each camper fills out a questionnaire which is later mechanically scored by a member of the staff. An interview then takes place, in which the staff interviewer discusses with the camper the \u2018longs and shorts\u2019 in the camper\u2019s fourfold development and program, as revealed by the questionnaire, and together they discuss briefly how that program of living may be improved. Following the interview the staff member records any changes or additions in [the] questionnaire score, summarizing the combined findings of mechanical evaluation and interview. …For the areas of living which are too low to be in balance,…the interviewer prescribes activities for the balancing of the program, in accordance with the camper\u2019s revealed needs.\u201d[7]\n

     <\/p>\n

    Preparation<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Even before a camp season started, an assessment of the survey questions had been made, with multiple people refining questions, refreshing wording, and reshaping the questionnaire topics.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>

    A page of questions in the Mental and Social categories, 1920s.<\/p><\/div>\n

    To better equip new campers for successful outcomes, first-year campers attended classes on the four-fold philosophy before working on the questionnaire. \u201cOnly after a week of class-instruction dealing specifically with the principles of the Fourfold life, with a full explanation of the questionnaire itself, do the first-timers fill out the blanks.\u201d[8] No one could breeze through the exercise. All campers were expected to complete their questionnaires thoughtfully, usually in their regularly scheduled classes, over the course of a couple of days. Questions were grouped in the four basic categories of physical, mental, religious, and social.<\/p>\n

    The questions themselves were written in a particular and engaging way. According to Preston Orwig, one of the AYF\u2019s founding directors, the approach yielded \u201can expressional rather than an attitude questionnaire. The material is confined primarily to the realms of knowledge and skill rather than attitude. This is not to minimize the importance of young peoples\u2019 attitudes, nor to assert that knowledge and skill are logic-tight compartments entirely unrelated to attitude. For practice purposes and for accuracy of analysis, however, the questionnaire concerns itself with the fourfold expressional activities of young people…\u201d[9]\n

    Once all the campers finished, the Questionnaire Department members spent hours tabulating each camper\u2019s results and arriving at personalized scores for mental, physical, religious, and social development. (Bear in mind that by the 1950s, the Questionnaire Department was handling upwards of 500 questionnaires each summer for the Older Girls conference alone.) At this point, the scoring was the product of each camper\u2019s self-assessment.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The Interview<\/strong><\/p>\n

    But the process did not stop there. Early in the camp season, leaders specially chosen to serve as interviewers were being trained to meet with campers in a one-on-one setting. Orwig defined the AYF\u2019s personal counseling program as one of the camp\u2019s most distinctive features. \u201cIt should be noted here that every American Youth Foundation camper, in both Senior and Junior Camps, is scheduled for at least one personal interview during his stay in camp.\u201d[10]\n

    Serious attention went into the interview preparations. Each summer, camp leaders would be trained in the nuances of asking questions, listening, and gently encouraging campers to identify their strengths, work on solutions for weaknesses, and strive toward balance in the four areas. Here, for example, are some of the instructions given to the interviewers in an Older Girls training class:[11]\n