Costa Rica Rainforest Outward Bound School History

In September 1991, Jim Rowe traveled by land from Colorado, where he had been working as an instructor for Colorado Outward Bound School (COBS), to Costa Rica. The first year in Costa Rica he focused on learning first-hand indigenous culture, rainforest ecology, and Costa Rican geography. He returned the second year with a monolithic raft and some scuba diving equipment and began his operation, using the same boat to run scuba and river trips.

The third year brought more equipment and more of a river rafting and mountaineering focus. The Quepos area where he was located had three rivers ideal for rafting and no organized companies who had tried such trips. Running day trips on the river helped him build the needed capital and marketing funds to establish a school that would run trips more consistent with Jim's philosophical approach to instructing. Rather than running quick commercial trips, Jim started leading trips whose objectives were principle-based learning through adventure experiences. He founded Save the Rainforest Expeditions and School (STRES) to provide an avenue to work with youth applying the same philosophies Jim used while at COBS. STRES was committed to instilling self-reliance, leadership, compassion, and service in a Costa Rican context. That is, students discovered Outward Bound principles through their adventures and course service projects were geared toward rainforest conservation and working with people who live within the rainforest.

One year later, Jim applied for and received a provisional charter, i.e. a charter that would become a permanent charter after three years should CRROBS maintain Outward Bound International (OBI) policies and procedures. The mission of CRROBS is to promote personal, cultural, and environmental integrity through Outward Bound principle-based adventure. Application of the mission involves an endeavor to instill, through CRROBS courses, twelve specific character traits:

(1) active curiosity;
(2) tenacity and pursuit;
(3) undefeatable spirit;
(4) sensible self-denial;
(5) compassion;
(6) sense of community and holism;
(7) physical fitness;
(8) dynamic leadership;
(9) open and effective communication;
(10) inter-cultural understanding;
(11) knowledge and respect for the natural environment;
(12) self-respect.

In September 1997, CRROBS received a full charter from Outward Bound International.

Outward Bound History

"Outward Bound" was originally a term, used to describe the moment a ship left its moorings and committed itself and its crew to the open sea... bound for the unknown with all its hazards and adventures. Cutting people loose from the safe moorings of home, family, and familiar routines to experience the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the difficult, and the adventurous is an integral part of Outward Bound courses. Outward Bound asks people to face tasks that may seem impossible. Confronting these tasks, participants must call upon individual reserves of strength and perseverance they might not think exist. At other times they might find that success requires the help of companions and reliance upon the overall strengths represented within a group.

The inspiration behind Outward Bound came from the German born educator, Dr. Kurt Hahn, who was instrumental in creating the first Outward Bound school at Aberdovey in Wales. Prior to that he had refined his views on education at Salem and Gordonstoun schools. His prime interest was in the kind of people his schools would produce, rather than the academic accomplishments of his pupils. Accordingly, Hahn set out to challenge his pupils in three other directions aside from academics: Physical performance in athletic events, the exercise of patience in a task of craftsmanship, and cooperation and endurance in an expedition on land or water. Hahn is quoted saying, "There are three evils facing modern youth: the decay of physical fitness, the decay of skill, and the decay of compassion." We believe this is as true now as it was at the end of World War II.

Hahn was born to German parents of Jewish descent in 1886. He was raised in the Jewish tradition in a prosperous middle class home. He was educated at the Wilhelm gymnasium in Berlin and later studied at Christ Church College in Oxford University, England, and in the Universities of Berlin, Heidelburg, Freiburg, and Gottingen.

In World War I, he was assigned to the German Foreign Office and at the end of the war became private secretary to Prince Max of Baden, heir to the Grand Duchy of Baden. Kurt Hahn had an ally in Prince Max in his educational aims: their hope was that the rising generation might take their civic responsibilities more seriously than their predecessors. In 1920, Prince Max made a wing of his castle, Schloss Salem, available for a school. As in all his educational ventures, Hahn was less concerned with the academic achievement of his students than with their attitudes, ambitions, and perceptions. He perceived youth to be surrounded by the decay of care and skill, the lack of enterprise and adventure, and the loss of compassion. In addition to academics, his pupils were challenged by the physical stresses of athletics, by the exercise of patience in the task of craftsmanship, and by an expedition on land or water.

In 1932 Hahn came out publicly against Hitler as a result of the Potempa incident, where a young Communist was kicked to death by storm troopers who later received Hitler's congratulations. In March of 1933, Hahn was arrested and imprisoned but was released that same year through the influence of British Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald who was familiar with Hahn's educational vision and methods.

Exiled from his native Germany and within a year of his arrival, Hahn had founded Gordonstoun School in Scotland which became one of Britian's most distinguished progressive schools and served as a model for similar schools in other countries. Henry Brereton, who worked with him, outlines the school's ideas, which were later to be translated into Outward Bound practice:

Action and thought would not be divided into two hostel camps; steps would be taken to build the imagination of the student of decision and the will power of the dreamer so that wise men of action would have the vision to see the consequences of their decisions; and that no boy should be compelled into opinions; but it was criminal negligence not to impel them into experience.

At Gordonstoun, Hahn added seamanship to the curriculum because he felt it necessary to introduce youth to danger and adventure, to create a learning environment that would provide what William James called the "moral equivalent of war." From the use of the sea and the increasing interest in the mountains for sport and relaxation, the concept of training for resourcefulness became a part of the Gordonstoun ideal. Hahn never advocated adventure for its own sake, but rather as a training vehicle through which youth would mature. It was vital for adventure to be tied together with the concept of resourcefulness and service to the community. Through unselfish action in dramatic rescue situations, youth would also learn compassion, a quality Hahn thought lacking in post-war society.

Hahn employed challenge and outdoor adventure to teach perseverance, skill, teamwork, leadership, and compassionate service. Although the students in Gordonstoun were primarily from privileged backgrounds, Hahn extended the program of outdoor activity to include other children from poor families living nearby. He created a sense of moral community and values by demanding personal commitments to such things as fitness, craftsmanship, and service.

With Gordonstoun established and accepted among British educational elite, Hahn sought to extend his ideas to other educational institutions. He was mainly interested in promoting the concept of regular physical training and development of simple athletic skills, combined with an expedition that would test basic knowledge about map reading and mountaineering, and require stamina and determination. To accomplish this, he developed a syllabus of activities to lead to an award called the Moray Badge.

After the start of the war, in the summer of 1940, the Gordonstoun School was moved to Wales. Here Hahn met Jim Hogan, a young history teacher with an interest in youth work, who was to become the Warden of the first Outward Bound School. During 1941, Hahn and Hogan tried to drum up support for the Country Badge scheme, which they hoped would be incorporated into schools and youth organizations. Hahn also proposed that Hogan become the Warden of a training center which would demonstrate the scheme and make it more understandable. Hahn found a suitable site at Aberdovey, a small harbor where he brought the schooner "Prince Louis" and some small boats that had been used at Gordonstoun. He then contacted Lawrence Holt, the owner of a large shipping firm called the Blue Funnel Line, for financial support.

Holt was concerned about the high casualty rate among younger seamen whose ships were torpedoed in the North Atlantic. Holt felt that those seamen, though highly skilled in other ways, had not been trained in dealing with hazards of the Battle of the North Atlantic. When their ships were sunk, they were often unable, or unprepared, to survive the ordeal of living in open boats until they were picked up. The younger, technically trained but less experienced seamen were perishing at an alarming rate, while the older and less fit, those trained by direct experience in open boats, were surviving. It was felt that the younger men succumbed where older and feebler men endured and survived. Hogan says of Holt:

He deeply regretted the passing of the square rigged ships in which earlier generations of seamen had received their basic training. He believed that, denied engines and complex instruments, men had developed a sense of wind and weather, a reliance on their own resources, physical, nervous and technical, and an almost spiritual sense of fellowship and interdependence.

Certainly such a philosophy continues to be relevant today.

Hahn was backed by Holt to impart his learning philosophies and designed a 21-day survival program which would instill spiritual tenacity and the will to survive to the young seamen. The program became Outward Bound, now a respected educational program with 58 schools in 33 countries on five continents.

The term "Outward Bound" is from the days of tall ships - it referred to the moment a ship lifted anchor and headed for the open sea, leaving the safety of it's harbor.

Outward Bound began as a "survival school," but its underlying principles have grown beyond that original concept. Today Outward Bound seeks to awaken in people an awareness of their inner strengths and to make people aware of their potential. This purpose cannot be achieved by the transmission of knowledge alone. Therefore the Outward Bound experience additionally involves the development of leadership and character. As a part of the adventure and excitement of self-discovery, Outward Bound also seeks to develop skills, as well as to instill such inner strengths as self-confidence, responsibility, for oneself and concern for others, an awareness of the interdependence of people, and compassion through service. Since Outward Bound courses are most often conducted in the wilderness, the program acquaints people with their relationship with and need for care for the environment.

Since its founding in 1941, Outward Bound has been the leader in adventure based outdoor education.