Wednesday 26 February 2014

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.



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