On Certification

Balancing bushcraft practice with the complexities of being intertwined with the modern world can be difficult. It gets particularly difficult for those who try to make their living teaching others bushcraft. How does one demonstrate their competence in bushcraft to new clients? What is a reliable way to summarize experience practicing a diverse breadth of vaguely connected skills? I've had a number of discussions about the role of certification in bushcraft training and my views on it have changed somewhat over time.

I think the central argument against certification is the ease with which it is abused. A piece of paper does not say much about your skill and experience level unless the distributing body is harsh and rigorous. This is true for university degrees and many other certifications but I think we see it most clearly in martial arts.

The martial arts world and the bushcraft world have a great many parallels. Both seek provide students with self sufficiency skills that can be challenging to self teach. Both require experience in the environment of intention (practice against resisting opponents (sparring) or practice in the actual bush (dirt time)). And in both cases it is dangerous to have or project an overestimation of your skills. The internet overflows with debate and examples of  certificate (or belt or sash, etc) granting bodies where the piece of paper means very little because the individuals involved are not required to demonstrate consistent competence against resisting opponents. The certification is devalued and approaches meaninglessness.

Against the difficulty of quality control with certifications, the portfolio approach seems to make a lot of sense (a portfolio is a major reason I made this blog in the first place). You keep a publicly accessible record of what you have actually done. That way there is less concern about translating your experiences through the lens of some certification body and hoping what comes out the other side is accurate. Potential clients or other interested parties can just go check what you done without relying on a summary certificate. They can see you have built X bow drill fires, spent Y nights in a given shelter, and so on. They know you can perform a given task because they can see you have completed that task a significant number of times.

My original position was strongly pro-portfolio and I still maintain that it is a better way to learn what someone knows how to do. My position has changed somewhat to occupy one of those annoying cop-out "why not both?" spaces.

I think there are a couple of problems with the portfolio-only approach that make a combination of the two superior. Firstly, a lot of people are not experienced enough to judge a portfolio. Without a frame of reference, a new bushcrafter can't necessarily judge whether 200 hand drill fires is a lot or a little. Secondly, it can take a lot of time to properly explore someone's portfolio. If the bushcrafter in question has been at it for a decade there will be a lot of material to go through (beyond summary statistics). A certification process does a good job of addressing both of these problems, if the certifying body is rigorous in its testing/awarding and develops a reputation for skill and reliability. A new bushcrafter can check that their new teacher has certificate A and be confident in its meaning.

A smaller and more subjective benefit is having clearer goals and progression for students. Bushcraft is huge. As it is huge, it can be difficult for students to orient themselves and set clear goals for improving. A certification process is not necessary for this kind of direction but it can certainly help.

The "for example" of certification being done well is Brazilian jiu-jitsu's (bjj) belt system. At a time where most formal martial arts certifications are looked at with scorn or ambivalence, bjj has maintained a reputation for clear and accurate correspondence between rank and ability.  They have made sure that (almost) no one gets a certain belt level unless they demonstrate a consistent and sufficient level of skill against resisting opponents (analogous to getting plenty of dirt time and not being restricted to getting friction coals in your living room).

I have a hard time imagining any sort of certificate granting consensus arising amongst bushcraft teachers but I think working towards a commonly accepted certificate (or group of certificates) would be beneficial.

JMB Spring Term Day 35

Date: May 25, 2009
Location: JMB, Masardis, Maine

I started floor tillering and basically spent the whole day doing that. (most exciting log entry ever)

Accomplishments and Observations:
1) Started floor tillering

Initial Reflections:
I'm still not getting much bend. I think I'm going to have to take the thickness down further to really get a good bend.

Defining Bushcraft

   I recently read a thread on BushCraftUSA discussing how to (and whether to) define bushcraft. The thread ultimately went nowhere but it got me thinking about what the word means to me. Most of my time is spent studying ecology and that experience thoroughly colors my perspective.  Ecology and bushcraft are connected. I think one would be challenged to define or pursue a functional and interactive relationship with the land without including some scientific understanding of ecological systems. This usually takes the form of animal behavior, plant ID, and a myriad of other natural history skills. I personally find it valuable to see bushcraft as existing within ecology or at least defined in ecological terms.
     My definition is based on the idea of the ecological niche. A niche is, technically speaking, an organism's n-dimensional hyper-volume in resource and condition space. What this means is that were you to graph a set of resources (stuff that gets used up ex. prey density) and conditions (stuff that doesn't get used up ex. temperature) the region of the graph that contained values under which a given organism can survive is its niche. It is just like drawing a cube on a 3-dimensional graph except instead of each each axis representing a distance in space they represent some resource or condition like hours of daylight, temperature, or nitrogen levels.
     For many organisms niche is defined by their biology. Plants, for example, have a range of temperatures, nutrient levels, and light levels under which they can function and little can change that. For organisms capable of behavioral adaptation on the individual scale niche can be altered by those behavioral adaptations. If a rural raccoon moves into a suburban neighborhood and learns how to access food in garbage cans, its niche is expanded by this knowledge. I haven't looked into attempts at applying niche theory to humans and I'm sure I'm too ignorant to do the job properly. Thankfully, we aren't doing science here! Regardless of the (probably significant) flaws in explaining humans cleanly with niche theory I find it to be a useful tool for thinking about bushcraft. I see bushcraft as behavioral adaptations to expand my ecological niche in ecosystems where humans are not the principle ecosystem engineer.  My goal is to use bushcraft to expand my n-dimensional hyper-volume as far as I can while excluding the idea of engineering ecosystems.

I'm sure I'll want to refine and change aspects of this in the future but, for now, that is how I see bushcraft.

JMB Spring Term Day 34

Date: May 24, 2009
Location: JMB, Masardis, Maine

Another longbow day. I started work on the belly (thickness) and got the whole bow down to 1". I also switched from a a push knife to a spoke shave to clean out the tool marks and square the sides.

Accomplishments and Observations:
1) Prepared bow for tillering

 Initial Reflections:
Tomorrow I start actual bow making (tillering). I am nervous about messing it up but excited about actually making a bow.

JMB Spring Term Day 33

Date: May 23, 2009
Location: JMB, Masardis, Maine

Most of the day was spent carving my longbow. A lot of material needed to come off to create the proper taper. The carving process is just a matter of sitting down and getting it done (like many things I suppose). We also covered a couple new things. We made ashcakes, which were surprisingly good. We also got an introduction to hand drill friction fire (mullen drill)

Accomplishments and Observations:
1) carved taper into longbow

2) made ashcakes
3) learned basics of handdrill (floating)

Initial Reflections:
Hand drill is neat but I am still a ways off getting a coal. I will just need practice applying consistent pressure.

JMB Spring Term Day 32

Date: May 22, 2009
Location: JMB, Masardis, Maine

Today was full of fail. The weather appeared to be uncooperative in the morning so we decided to check out the museum of natural history in Caribou. The museum's answering machine said summer hours but the door said winter and no one was home. We did a bit of riparian plant ID on the Aroostook but spent most of the day in transit.

Accomplishments and Observations:



1) ID and press:
     -ostrich fern
     -Jerusalem artichoke

Initial Reflections:
I wanted to see that museum so it being closed was a let down. I do find myself feeling like I need greater amounts of down time as the course goes on, so maybe this is what I needed. The mosquitoes hit a level last night that required a 4am move to my tent. I am getting a bug net!

JMB Spring Term Day 31

Date: May 21, 2009
Location: JMB, Masardis, Maine

The earl part of the day was spent on further reducing the red oak stave. The day was very hot but windy enough to keep the black flies at bay. I have the stave carved close to the goal lines. I decided on the dimensions recommended in Primitive Technology II. After lunch we worked on plant ID and I added a number of specimens to my herbarium. Before dinner we identified two sets of tracks along the road.

Accomplishments and Observations:
1) made progress on bow
2) pressed plants
   -Fragaria virginiana
   -Plantago major
   -Viola sp.?
   -Rumex acetosella
   -Sambucus sp.?
   -Amelanchier sp.?
   -Alnus sp.?
   -Taraxacum officinale
   -Populus balsamifera
   -Populus tremuloides
   -Brassicaceae gs? sp?

Initial Reflections:
The family based plant ID is really helping my understand of plants. It gives a great framework for ID and for understanding plant evolution.

Current Reflections:
I am now getting back into proper plant study so its fun to try and access this information from a few years ago. I've also taken a few proper biology courses now so I am curious to see how the classroom work informs my person study and viceversa. I think the raw quantities of information in nature study make it a better fit for self study than classroom work anyway. I don't absorb a whole lot of academic information in the classroom setting, I tent to just take notes and do the actual learning on my own time.
I am surprised to find myself becoming curious about how learning actually happens and how to optimize it. Education is more interesting than I gave it credit for.