willray

Is it possible, following the rank advancement criteria that all other scouts are held to, for a scout to have legitimately earned First Class rank within 40 days of joining Scouts BSA? Is it possible, following the rank advancement criteria that all other scouts are held to, for a scout to have legitimately earned Life rank, within a month of joining Scouts BSA? I think it's completely expected that we'll see many hard-chargers amongst the first crop of girls coming into BSA, as many of them have been right there beside their brothers and are chomping at the bit to start earning ranks for what they have already learned to do. That however puts First Class, a minimum of 86 days out from the date of joining, Star and Life somewhat further due to time-in-position requirements. If you can explain any legitimate process that is available to all scouts, for short-changing those time periods, then nobody has any cause to raise eyebrows. If, however, there is no legitimate mechanism available to all scouts that would enable them to be Life, the month they join, then it does not require personal knowledge of what shortcuts were taken, to be aware that something was permitted, that is not permitted to other scouts. That's called a shortcut.

I guess I'll keep playing - Here's desert, from the same weekend from one of our Boys' Troop patrols - Nobody in the patrol with less than a year in the troop, most 2 or 3 years, most 2nd-class, PL pushing star. They consider this to be their best effort with a dutch oven to-date, and a great success for the meal. It really did taste better than it looks. (ah, and the greenish cast is not their fault - that's mood-lighting courtesy of the green dining fly)

I am certain it's necessary to keep the patrols single-gender, and I'm reasonably convinced that it's necessary to keep the troops single gender. I do think that we will discover opportunities for opposite-gender units and patrols to cross paths and interact in fashions that are at a minimum non-damaging to traditional program, and that we will probably find ways to play them off of each-other such that it enhances program in manners that were not previously possible. Of course, I'm also concerned that we will screw it up... The collaboration bit however, I think is interestingly diagnostic. You will hear the girls gloating over the other patrol for burning their pancakes, and in the next breath offer them spare whipped cream that they know the other patrol forgot. The Boys just don't do this - they press advantages and if anything we're usually hoping that maybe they won't go quite so far rubbing it in. We are not going to be able to use the same challenges and levers on the girls, as have developed over the years as go-to solutions for motivating and advancing the boys, and we are almost certainly going to discover that the places the girls need to grow, and the experiences that they need to do it, are different. This, in my opinion, is the largest reason to strive to maintain the current separate-troops model. I'm far less worried about the "oh my, boys and girls together in the woods!" potential problems, than I am with the fact that I can't imagine how a good PL or SPL for a Boys' Troop, would also be a good PL or SPL for a Girls' Troop, and vice versa. I got in on the ground-floor of this Girls' Troop business because I knew it was going to be hard, but I'm convinced that it's possible to offer the benefits of BSA program to both boys and girls, without diminishing either. As the most stubborn person I know, I can't stand by and let someone else do less, so here I am... Sadly, I am equally concerned about the dilution of the pool of Scouters who "get" scouting and the patrol method. Of course, there seem to be plenty of adults (even ones who experienced scouting themselves) involved with the Boys' Troops, who don't get it, and a depressingly large number of "paper eagles", so I don't think that problem is exclusively induced by the admittance of girls to the program. I don't know what to do about it, other than to keep pushing back as hard as I can.

I consider myself a rather traditional scouter, and I am near-violently opposed to program modifications that dilute, or significantly change “my” scouting program. As a result I’m opposed to mixing the genders in ways that dilute my ability to provide “traditional” program/program incentives/levers to the Boys. That being said, professionally I work with a lot of just-post-scouting-age youth, and have, let’s say ‘a few’ years of experience in mentoring teams of youth researchers with an assortment of mixes of genders in my lab, and I think I have a reasonable perspective on how to support girls pursuing the BSA program, without losing what matters for the boys, and without diluting the program for the girls. I’m worried that National will find some way to screw it up, but at the moment I believe we have the opportunity to do this well enough that we don’t break the traditional Boys program, and simultaneously give girls the opportunity to gain experiences that they are traditionally denied. Based on my observations, within scouting and in my lab, I’m pretty sure we’re going to need to learn new things to make scouting work optimally for the girls, but at the same time we need to remember that those new things are probably girl-specific and won’t transfer back to the boys. I’m going to do my damnedest to make this work!

It's probably worth mentioning somewhere, that we're seeing some really interesting differences between the psychology of the patrols in the Boys' Troop and the Girls' Troop. While I staunchly believe that anyone deserves every opportunity to try to be successful at anything they want, and that it's abhorrent to try to define for a person what they should be interested in, or want to do based on their sex, I am also absolutely not one of the idiots who insists that there is absolutely no difference between the sexes. I'll be one of the ones that the feminists put up against the wall and shoot, for refusing to accept that boys and girls are identical. If that bothers you, stop reading. Fundamental observation: While the girls have adopted rather fierce patrol loyalty already, the do not see success as a zero-sum game. The Girls' Patrols collaborate, in a way that I have never seen the Boys' Patrols collaborate. Even when they're competing against each-other, the girls are perfectly happy to reach over and help the girls in the other patrol with things. I suspect that this is going to make competition and the utility/use of competition in Girls' Troops, play out quite differently than what we're used to from a century of Boys' Troop experience. It's going to be interesting...

Sure, why not 🙂 Competition is good, and probably more importantly, an informed notion of what various people and units might think are reasonable expectations, wouldn't be a bad thing. I'll start. Our Girls' Troop first campout was last month, and they wanted to focus on outdoor cooking skills, so we threw them an assortment of interpatrol cooking challenges. Now before you say "they're girls, of course they're good at cooking!", I'd like to point out that A) My son, at 10-12, on pure skills, could probably cook circles around any of the girls in our Girls' Troop, indoors or outdoors. But, if it's not a prime cut of meat, something bizarre that he thinks is amusing to cook with, or something with exotic spices, he just can't be bothered. His patrol will probably be eating dry oatmeal out of packets and walking-tacos at their troop's upcoming competition campout. And B) a large fraction of the girls in our troop have never cooked with anything other than a microwave. The girls got a practice session during one troop meeting a couple weeks before the campout, where some of our Boys' Troop scouts showed them how to set up a stove, light charcoal and use a dutch oven, etc. I didn't get photos of all the meals, but here's a sampling of what they did (and no, the adults present didn't help them at all with any of this. @Kudu would be proud, we had 100-yard separation between the patrols, and the adults stayed out of their campsites except when they needed emergency help with things like putting out flaming frying pans they forgot on the stove 🙂 Best use of the color Red in a meal: Lunch was a Mystery Meal, based on a surprise bag of ingredients including Lettuce, Tomatoes, Bread, Cheese, Ham, Potatoes, Mushrooms, Celery, and a few optional "pick 2 out of the pantry" ingredients: That was a bit traditional - the other patrol... Broke the bread up and toasted it in a pan to made croutons, cubed and cooked the ham and potatoes, then melted the cheese in left-over milk from breakfast and made freakin cheesy-ham-and-potato soup, and a salad bar... For dinner, one of the patrols made crescent-roll calzones: I unfortunately didn't get a photo of what the other patrol did for dinner, or remember what it was, but I do know that the girls invited the PLC from our Boys' Troop (which was also camping at the same council camp that weekend) to judge their dinners, and after the dinner the Boys' SPL went back to their scoutmaster and, if I'm quoting him correctly, told the SM "We went over expecting to judge some hobo stew or something, and they served us an appetizer, and an entre, and a main dish, and a side salad, and a dessert! Now I understand why we suck". So, I'll stand by my belief that they did a decent job too. So... Who else wants to show off what their cross-over patrol(s) do for cooking, with no senior scouts or adult help, on their first campout, and first time cooking outdoors?

By the way - they actually do say "drat!", and "oh, shoot!" They're like 1960s comic-book super-hero sidekicks. I'm sure it'll wear off, but at the moment it's hilarious.

Actually, I said we were doing everything possible to put advancement opportunities in front of them. They are learning the skills - solidly, and at what I think is a completely reasonable and believable rate for the skills to stick. Of the dozen girls in our girls' troop, I am pretty sure that 3 or maybe 4 of them are going to make tenderfoot by our court of honor at the beginning of June. And absolutely, they're being tested - more rigorously than the boys in our boys troop, because the SM of our boys troop lets any first-class scout sign off on requirements, and I am only letting people who I know are competent with a skill, sign off on anything for our girls. And yes, I know competent. You might be surprised - I've seen far fewer instances of the girls asking for a sign-off on something where they're "iffy" than I see amongst the boys. A boy who manages to accidentally get a square-knot right once in 30 minutes of trying, thinks he's earned a sign-off on that requirement. Our girls screw it up and say "drat, I thought I had that! Let me practice more and come back next week".

As I mentioned previously, I would never challenge a girl who achieves first class this month (or any scout who achieves it 90-ish days after joining) regarding the integrity of their advancement. A bit unlike @SSF, I expect the girls, at least initially, to be more motivated and focused than the boys usually are, and to move through requirements in a more purposeful way. My problem, and the blow to the girls in my troop, were girls elevated to "trainer" positions at a council JLOW course, wearing First Class patches, a month after scouting opened to females. In my opinion, these were the antithesis of role models. Now, while I won't question the integrity of, and will do everything in my power to support a girl who wants to rocket through advancement, I do have to wonder about the wisdom of it. I understand the drive, and I appreciate the passion, but I've always thought that even the "first class first year" push was putting the cart before the horse. Yes, I realize that historically it was possible to do First Class even faster, but the rank requirements aren't _really_ about the literal skills, they're about giving the scouts the opportunity to have certain growth experiences that learning the skills hopefully guide them into. I'll admit - I was a scout who came into scouting already having all of the first-class skills under my belt. I grew up in the woods, 5 miles from the next closest kid. Camping, rope work, knives, axes, fires, cooking, hiking, swimming - none of that was new, that's just what you did every day when you got home from school. So I breezed through the skills-based requirements. This really hurt me when it came to the more interpersonal/leadership aspects of scouting. I never had to learn the skills with the other scouts in my troop, so I never was exposed to the opportunity to learn the other stuff that you're supposed to have to learn, to learn the skills. When I see people blazing through the early ranks - girls or boys - I'm worried that we're failing them by letting them breeze by the actually important stuff, just because they know the shape of a knot.

I have quite a lot of respect for your thinking and opinions, and while I've only recently registered on this site I've learned a lot from reading your postings over the years. However, I think here, you might be bringing a bit more maturity to the analysis than what a 10-year-old AOL crossover comes with 🙂 I think we'll get them there - if we don't, we're not doing our jobs - but at the same time, they were clearly hurt, and hurt in a way that I haven't seen the boys in our boys' troop hurt by suspicions that others were "cheating".

I am utterly loathe to call BS on what is possible. If we had a girl who was interested in accomplishing this, our unit would find a way to make it possible. At the same time, I know it's uncharitable of me, but I cannot see my way to saying "you go girl!" to those who claim to have accomplished that collection of requirements in 28 days. What I think concerns me more in the long run, is the number of people who don't see red flags in "girls units are probably focussed heavily on advancement, so it's not surprising that their knocking out requirements really quickly". We will bend over backwards to make opportunities available for our scouts, and we do - our girls troop is focused on advancement, we're doing everything possible to put advancement opportunities in front of them, and with that focus, we've got probably 40% of them pushing Tenderfoot at this point. I'll grant that there are undoubtedly units out there that make us look like utter bums, and girls out there who are fanatically driven, but sadly, based on the real progress our scouts are making, I'd bet dollars to donuts that many "girls units that are focussed heavily on advancement", are really functioning as adult-led cub-packs, rather than scout-led BSA troops. That cheats the girls of exactly the growth opportunities that the rank requirements were supposed to help them experience.

One's worse in the moment, and the other's worse after some time, maturity and reflection. Obviously, I opt for the momentary pain and the belief that they'll eventually understand and appreciate the value of the whole process. That doesn't make it any less demoralizing in the moment, for the girls (or any scouts) be forced to work/participate with other scouts who have obviously taken liberties with requirements and who are being rewarded for it.

As much as it pains me to say this, at the moment, it's more problematic, even if not more prevalent, with the females than with the males. Scouts cheating themselves out of program is never a good thing, but with the defined start date of the Girls' troops, there are fairly clear boundaries about what's possible/believable/etc. It's a serious problem for morale when you've got to explain to the girls in your troop why you're not going to let them short-change themselves just so that they can keep up with the girls they've seen in another troop that is playing a bit faster-and-looser with adherence to the rules.

Depressingly, it's also not unheard of that the rank requirements were not exactly adhered to. We had female scouts with first-class patches on their uniforms at the beginning of March 2019.

This may be one of the key differences in views on what's possible - our troop is almost completely lacking in senior scouts above the patrol-leader level. Once they've been patrol leader, they either go on to be one of two ASPLs, SPL, or they wander off and disengage from the troop. We have some former scouts registered as JASMs, but I don't think they've attended a single meeting since being appointed to the role. If we had senior scouts who could keep an eye on things, I think I'd feel differently about the wisdom of having adults in that role. As it is, our troop actually does not use ASMs in the role where I'm suggesting they're useful, and as a result, we do occasionally have disasters that would have been better avoided than experienced.

I should absolutely caveat that all of my thoughts, are in the context of ASMs who are well-trained, and "on board" with the idea of a youth-led organization. There are absolutely more adult-induced failure points in the system, if there are more adults in the system! Our Boys' troop has an abundance of quite well-behaved adult leaders who "get" the culture of youth-led troops, and who largely self-police in terms of keeping out of the way as much as possible. With this troop, I think we fail the scouts more by the extent to which we keep the adults away from them, than by the extent that our adults meddle. Our Girls' troop has exactly the problems that you're describing, with adults who simply cannot keep their fingers out of the pie. To a large extent, I place this on a necessity to have a SM who is skillful at both managing both scouts and adults.

In general, I'd say our troop (well, at least our Boys' troop - the Girls' troop is coming along but our adults on that side still need to learn to sit on their hands) does fairly well at being scout-led. It's not unusual for them to get an hour or more into a troop meeting before noticing that the SM is absent that week, and we were well into the second day of the annual planning/ILST campout before any of the adults even spoke to any of the scouts. That being the case, we still have issues where, for example our SM is trying to mentor our SPL to be a little less hands-on with the individual scouts and to push more responsibility down to the patrol leaders, and while that's happening, a patrol goes sideways in a fashion that probably could have been anticipated and diverted, if any specific trained individual had actually been given the responsibility of paying attention. And lest someone say "things going sideways are great learning opportunities, you shouldn't try to divert them!", I'm with you - up to somewhere before the point that things go so far sideways you've got scouts deciding that their only choice is to leave the program to draw attention to the problem. There is a balancing act to be done between too much adult involvement and too little adult involvement, and one of the almost guaranteed results of too-little involvement is an overreaction in the too-much direction. In my experience, it requires quite a lot of focused dedication to walk the "just this side of too little" line, and if you have the dedicated adults available, it's a lot easier to have ASMs concentrate on walking that line for individual patrols, than for one person to try to balance there for every patrol simultaneously.

In my opinion, and I'm aware that this is not necessarily shared by others, it's useful to place ASMs at the patrol level, so that the SM can concentrate on the SPL/ASPLs/other troop-level youth positions-of-responsibility and overall troop guidance. It requires quite a lot of focused attention to really understand each patrol's (potential) issues and to ask the right questions/apply the least-invasive nudges to provide appropriate mentorship. Someone with too many irons in the fire, as many SMs would be if they were trying to actually mentor everyone themselves, is more likely to come at situations with blunt-instrument solutions, compared to what might be done by an ASM who is conscientiously focused on the patrol and on trying to stay, as much as possible, out of its way.

Would that all patrols were capable of this level of autonomy. While it's absolutely true that having an ASM perpetually "in the scouts' business" is a sure route to the adults taking over, it's equally true that some patrols/patrol-leaders can get into behaviors and situations that are destructive to the mission of Scouting if they operate in a vacuum of mentorship. The "perfect troop" is only possible if all of the scouts are perfect scouts, and I'd guess that very few of us have been gifted with a full hand of those...

It's certainly not going to happen often, but if it's possible, it'll happen eventually. In the case of our troop, even with 8-10 crossovers coming in each year, we've had a few near misses on this situation in recent memory. The usual cause is a lightly-attended campout with someone getting sick and leaving, or unexpectedly dropping out at the last minute. Our overall troop roster probably has 11-12 as the largest age group, but on most campouts we're probably heaviest in the 13-15yo range. It's not too unusual for only a couple-three of the crossovers to attend the early campouts (this is possibly the fault of an activities-planning process that doesn't put much thought into "easing" the crossovers into things, and inconsistent crossover timing from our common feeder packs. We've had out-of-state semi-high-adventure campouts the weekend after the crossover ceremony), and it's only dumb luck that random drop-outs from some of these haven't landed us in exactly my described scenario.

My big worry is when we get the lone, just-crossed-over 10 year old scout on his or her first campout, ineligible to tent with any of the other attendees, alone and terrified in a tent in a thunderstorm. I don't know what we're going to do when that happens - plans and first-contact and all that make it not worth trying to strategize much before we get there - but National can show me to the door any time they like, if they think I'm making that scout sit alone and cry all night.

I've got to say, I think the people who are going with the "For us, it's just 2 integer years in their declared ages" approach, are going to be in for a world of hurt. 24 months (born within 2 years of each other) is easy. It's once and done. "Yes, Tim, you can tent with Jeff", or "No Tim, Jeff is more than 2 years older than you, so you can't tent with him". Done, finished, forevermore. Two integer years apart in declared age, and suddenly it's "Oh, but Mr. SM, I just turned 12, so for the next 3 weeks I'm within 2 years of Jeff, so we can tent together this campout, right!?!?", and "I'm sorry Jeff, you were 14 on Friday when we set up camp, so you could tent with Tim last night, but today's your birthday, so you have to change tents tonight", and "Really? Your birthday was last week? We completely forgot - that means we don't have enough tents!" You can say "yeah, we're not going to worry about those kinds of stupid minor miscalculations", right up until it happens, and a YPT incident occurs, and lawyers get involved. Personally, I think the rule is asinine, and there are circumstances where I believe I would come down on the side of National can go suck a lemon, but it behooves people to be aware of where "Oh, that's just too complicated" is almost inevitably going to result in flouting of National's rules.

I have not yet persuaded our boys troop SM and SPL to address the fact that we now have a girls troop under the same roof, to the boys troop. (I actually think this is going to end up being a festering source of problems, as the boys are inventing their own dialog regarding the purpose, relationship/etc of the girls troop to the boys troop, and in the echo-chamber of their own fantasies and paranoia, quite a lot of things are "becoming fact" that just ain't so.) Unfortunately I think this is one of those "the perfect is the enemy of the good" situations, and our boys troop SM is cogitating on the best way to have the discussion. I'm a bit more bull-in-a-china-closet myself, but in a support role, I'm limited to lubricating certain paths and periodic nudges. Oh boy do I know it. I personally am in the challenging situation of being the person in the girls troop best equipped to make this stop, but also being the person with the largest need to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Oh woe is me... Meh, we'll figure it out. So far, the girls haven't noticed that there's a problem, and so long as I can keep it that way, we'll do ok in the end.

With the exception of the fact that we've got linked troops, this is the direction we are going - I think, perhaps, unfortunately quickly, and in a fashion that is going to cause us some unnecessary challenges (we have one adult who is, shall we say, exceptionally dedicated to tearing the troops apart as quickly as possible, which I personally believe is completely irresponsible). One of the resources-based challenges to that, is that - and maybe this is actually the crux of the matter - we have a single equipment storage location. As a result, there is "a pile of dutch ovens". If the girls buy additional dutch ovens for their patrols, they're just going to go into the pile, and when the boys use and return them (as they did after this last campout, with 2" of water and leftover food in them), the girls are going to be furious. Maybe as equipment coordinator, I should just start spray-painting everything pink and blue... I've been trying to figure out how to improve several things about our (boy's troop) use of the patrol method, and instituting some way of having distinct/protected patrol resources seems to be one of the unsolved issues that would help. Maybe what this is trying to teach me is that having a "troop supply room" is the wrong approach.

We are running into some complications, but at least at this point everyone seems willing to work through them amicably. I'm expecting the drama to increase as our girls troop ramps up their camping, and inevitable squabbles over patrol equipment/maintenance/etc break out. Scout-led is wonderful, but sometimes, like when the troop quartermaster feels empowered to scavenge all of the patrols' equipment kits to pull together the best equipment to give to his old patrol, we have "interesting" learning moments, and since the girls aren't "part of the gang", I expect they're going to react to this with a bit less charity than the other boys who have known the quartermaster for years. (sadly) doubly so, if it ever goes in the other direction. I'm curious about your "girl troop parents should be obligated" comment - Do you feel this way purely in the context of a "completely independent" girls troop, or do you think that's appropriate for "Linked" troops, which are effectively a legal fiction created by BSA National to avoid having girls and boys in the "same" unit. Would you feel the same way about the "parents of the girls' patrols" if BSA National had instead said "separate girls' patrols and boys' patrols in the same troop"? Serious question - I'm really not sure how I would feel in that case. I'm doubly curious because I'm a member of a Linked Troop committee, and I find it peculiar that we do seem to have an undercurrent of "the girls' parents should help acquire equipment for the girls' needs", but we absolutely do not have this expectation for the parents of the "new boys" patrols. I it interesting, and currently can't explain, why we seem to feel that acquiring equipment for the dozen new boy weblos crossovers is a committee responsibility, while we seem to feel that acquiring equipment for the dozen new girls is a parents' responsibility. (I should also couch this in an understanding that our longstanding boys' troop yearly fundraiser is a gigantic community garage sale, and a large fraction of the girls who joined the girls' troop, have been participating in the garage sale as volunteers beside their brothers for years, so arguably, a big chunk of the boys' troop fundraising effort has historically been donated by our girls)