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Self Education
To stimulate member interest and participation in educational courses and other activities, USPS® provides visible means of recognizing its members for their accomplishments. Recognition falls into two basic areas of accomplishments: educational accomplishments in passing certain core courses of study in boating and navigational topics, and service accomplishments in working to further the goals and objectives of USPS®.
USPS® awards grades to members to indicate how far they have progressed in the continuing education program. Since one of the USPS objectives is boating safety through education, USPS encourages every member to strive to achieve the educational proficiency level as described below.
- Public Courses
- USPS provides basic boating education to the public with no charge for instruction.
- Advanced Grades
- The advanced grades are a series of navigational courses and completion of the highest level course determines a member's "grade". Letter grades and insignia are shown on the Advanced Grades page. Letter grades may appear in print or on a member's uniform.
- Elective Courses
- A wide discipline of courses that cover topics other than navigation are also offered as part of the instructed course curriculum for members. Descriptions of these courses are shown on the Elective Courses page.
- Learning Guides
- A series of short supplemental materials on a wide variety of subjects of interest to boaters are also available; these are known as Learning Guides. They may be taken as home study or instructor lead programs. Learning Guides are available to the public for home study.
You probably think you know your stuff, but do you really? Test your boating knowledge the easy way, on-line or on TV with the United States Power Squadrons' National Safe Boating Test.