Cambridgeskip

I think there's two different issues here. First the origins of scouting. Much of the early days of scouting had a bigger emphasis on preparing boys for military service. And in that context we need to think about the UK's place in the world in 1907. We were a super power, at the peak of our international influence, an empire that spanned the world. For a man, serving one's country mean joining the army to protect and expand the ever growing empire. A great and glorious adventure! Meanwhile for women it meant basically staying at home, and very little else. Hence the starting off as a boys organisation and the almost surprise that girls even wanted to do it. All that was blown away by the First World War in the carnage of the Somme and Ypres. In terms of that choice I certainly agree that there is a strong argument for having a mix of both single sex and coed provision. In an ideal world I agree that that is probably what we would have. Remember the joke though about a man asking a farmer for directions and the farmer answering "Well I wouldn't start from here." Well it applies to where single sex and coed provision is in many parts of the world. And in this case the here I am talking about is not so much the here and now as getting there from the general history of how women have been treated over many centuries. Remember what women have had to struggle for over the years. The right to vote, for equal pay, to not be raped by their husbands. The list goes on. There is a very long history of women having to fight to get what men have already got. Scouting is no exception. Guiding began because a group of girls turned up a rally and were told to go away again. They were told no you can't have this. You can't do this. From that place it becomes difficult to get to that ideal position rather than having the position that currently exists. In addition there is still the problem of what is often called every day sexism. Legally near enough every sexist law that discriminated against women in the UK has gone (only exception I'm aware of is military service) but there is still a problem with attitudes. I have never been asked by a salesman if I need to check with my wife before spending money. Mrs Cambridgeskip has been asked what her husband thinks. I have never had my bum groped in a bar or been wolf whistled in the street. Mrs Cambridgeskip has. She's sick to death of putting her credit card on the dish to pay the bill in a restaurant and the waiter turns to me for my PIN. She's been told that she's under mining my masculinity for running her own business. There is still a big pay gap at all levels. Women are massively underrepresented in Parliament, on the boards of companies, in the legal profession. Women still get blamed for being raped. While that drip feed of sexism exists, while there are still these glass ceilings you are going to have a hard time of convincing many women that reaching for what men have while continuing to keep what they already have. Not going to happen. If in 1908, as the scout movement had formed, a decision had been made to have girls troops, boys troops and mixed troops you would probably still have that today. Can't get there from here though. At least not directly, no matter how good an idea it looks.

You might be surprised to learn that I have certain sympathy with your argument. To me it doesn't really matter whether scouting anywhere is coed or exists in male and female variations and I can see sensible arguments for both. (I can also see some of the concerns about going coed that were voiced here as well that turned out to be unfounded) My point has merely been in response to your comments above about why did BP start it as separate.

Stosh, you misunderstand me. I don't know whether society in USA is ready for teenagers to camp together in the woods with minimal adult supervision. You know the USA far better than I do. What is simple is two things. Firstly that the scout and guide movements started separately because the UK in 1907, the place and time where they began, was not ready for teenage boys and girls to camp together and be seen as having equal standing in society. They were not equal and it took the carnage of two world wars and plenty more to fully change that. Second the private schools in this country were and mostly still are single sex because it worked for the purposes for which they were founded and once you have big institutions steeped in money and tradition and mostly patronised by those with serious money it takes an awful lot to change them. The answer to whether BSA should be coed lies in the USA in the 21st century, not in scouting's origins in the early 20th century in north west Europe.

What you refer to there is the heavily supervised world that was the basic schooling that most boys and girls got. Typically run by a church in a one room school. Pre First world war maybe till you were 14 at best. In most cases younger. A very different proposition to what scouting was suggesting. Small groups in the outdoors with minimal adult supervision. It just would not have happened. And in those school rooms they were educated as to what to expect of life. Boys to go onto typically working class jobs in steel mills, coal mines and the like. Women to be their wives. If they had a job they may have gone into domestic service or taken in laundry. The idea that they would be educated to be the main bread winner was unthinkable. And the idea that those aged 13, 14 , 15 and above would hang around with the opposite sex? Unthinkable. That was how the UK was. In terms of the separate boys and girls schools, you need to see these in terms of class. Basically the more expensive the school, the more likely to be single sex. These were the public (ie private) schools were originally there to educate the sons and daughters of the upper middle and upper classes. The boys schools were there, in he case of the middle classes, to produce future army officers, surgeons, ;lawyers, engineers. In the case of the upper classes to produce army and navy officers Prime Ministers and the landed gentry. For girls, they were there to produce the wives of those previously mentioned. At best become a primary school teacher or a nurse, until such time as they were married. Then they had to stop work. Yes you can find the pioneering women who got into medicine and the like but few and far between. The vast majority though were there to look pretty and serve their husbands. Ever watched Downton Abbey? (I understand it's been lapped up in the USA!) 90% of it is nonsense but the roles of women compared to men pre First World War? Spot on. Those schools have mainly remained the domain of those with serious money and stayed single sex out of tradition more than anything else. Simple as that. And with all that the idea that you could start sending groups of boys and girls off into the woods to camp together? Utterly preposterous. In 1907 Britain it would not have happened.

Quite simple on that one. Scouting for Boys was written and the Scout and Guide movements started in Edwardian England. The idea that men and women would have the same rights, the same lives, the same social position as each other was unthinkable. The idea that men and women could have purely pleutonic relationships was also unthinkable, boys and girls mixing together would have been considered immoral. It was only a few years after the death of Queen Victoria and before the First World War swept away pretty much every social norm this country previously had. I don't know want it did to the USA but it is difficult to under estimate the effect of the First World War on the UK and Europe. Forget the changes to national borders, I'm talking about the social changes. It led directly to votes for women, to women having jobs beyond the menial, to better education standards, to vastly better housing for the working classes, to the questioning by the ordinary man and woman of those considered their better. And the job the First World War started was finished off spectacularly by the Second World War. As suggested by others, the separation of boys and girls in the early days of scouting simply represented societal norms of 110 years ago.

Personally it doesn’t matter to me whether BSA stays single sex or goes coed. I don’t see keeping things like BSA and GSUSA as equal but separate as any kind of moral issue. Just a case if they chose to they do and if they don’t they don’t. I do think though that it’s worth pausing for thought about why women constantly want in on male only organisations and it doesn’t happen the other way around. Here’s a few key dates for you in the UK. I don’t know what the equivalents are in the USA but you might want to look them up. 1918 Women over 30 first allowed to vote (in the life time of all my grandparents) 1928 All women allowed to vote 1929 First woman government minister 1970 Women get equal pay (in the life time and indeed working life time of my parents. It was legal to pay my mum less than my dad had they done the same job) 1971 Women allowed to play football (soccer) 1979 First woman Prime Minister 1991 Marital rape criminalised (in my life time it was legal for a man to rape his wife. Frankly I shudder in shame that it took till the 90s for my country to criminalise this) 1994 Anglican church ordains first women priests 2012 Women given equal standing in line to the throne. If having an hereditary head of state wasn’t archaic enough we actually stopped women becoming head of state if they had a younger brother. 2015 First women Bishops 2015 First woman achieves a “stared†rank in the military (Brigadier/Commodore/Air Commodore) Even now women can’t join the infantry, Royal Armoured Corps, any airborne unit or the RAF regiment. Those are just the headlines. There are dozens more things that could go in that women have had to fight for decades and even centuries for. It’s not a case of being against men or conservatives or religion. I don’t want to speak for women but the list above may give you an idea of what it is all about.

It may be a problem but I doubt it's the whole problem. When an organisation is losing members when historically it has been popular I would be very wary of picking out one issue, pointing at it and saying that that is the problem. It may be part of it but unlikely to the be the whole thing. If you look at scouts in the UK in the late 90s you could have put the coolest person in the world up front as a spokesman and it wouldn't have done any good. That's not to say it didn't need a good front man, it badly did, but there were too many other issues. One issue I have seen with some scout websites, in many different countries, is that when I have seen their website the first picture you often see is of some kind of award ceremony with smartly uniformed youth or adults getting some kind of award indoors. Now that's all very well for the person receiving the award. They've worked hard and deserve some kind or recognition. But its preaching to the converted. In the 21st century if you want to recruit then the first thing a non member should see is a message for them. Do McDonalds use their employee of the month on any of its adverts? Of course not. They show people enjoying their product. Same thing needs to happen with scout websites. Show people enjoying the product. Kids climbing, canoeing, burning things. This is one of my favourite photos that I've taken of a scout event. The look on the face of the kid in the middle. Magic! And that's what the kids sign up for. Again though don't assume because I've spotted something that it's the whole answer. It won't be. But it might be part of it.

2016 census was actually 573000! That said.... I would be wary about making much connection between being coed and either the fall in numbers we saw in the late 90s or the rise that we've seen in the 21st century. There were too many other factors in play, particularly image and PR generally. I'm not saying no connection at all but be aware it was a complex picture. As for the history of scout associations in North America and history on making membership changes. Its probably worth pointing out that other than BSA this is a grand total of one. I'm not a trained statistician but I can tell you that you can't draw much correlation from that! Besides, speaking to Canadian scout friends (my group is twinned with a group in.... er..... Cambridge, Ontario) there have been an awful lot of factors in play there other than changes to who can join.

Thanks for the pointers. Alas I doubt I will be going! Its a massive commitment to be a jamboree unit leader. The trip itself is about 3 weeks once you do home hospitality. Throw in the selection process and the training camps and it burns an awful lot of time. Only so much my annual leave I can throw at scouting. I'm sure whoever goes though will have a fantastic time. On the logistics front I imagine everything will be well thought out in advance. After seeing what they did here in 2007, which was something close to a military operation, I doubt it will be down to unit leaders to worry, they will simply be given instructions! No worries Stosh, the joy of technology!

I'm not dumping at all Stosh. It's simply a case of BSA is the WOSM recognised national scout scout organisation, so they are the host organisation. Hence asking about the potential culture clash with BSA. It will definitely be interesting to see where the home hospitality takes place. With Canada and Mexico joint hosting I assume some units will go over the boarders so with that in mind I also assume they'll go all over USA as well. When Netherlands hosted in 1995 it was too small a country to host everyone so some units went to Sweden and UK!

Yes it's pretty standard! Some national contingents also have a pre Jamboree camp to get the whole contingent in one place before hand. In terms of matching I honestly don't know. I know that typically each unit stays in the same locality and normally pairs of scouts go to each family. Two of ours went to Japan, I'll ask how they got matched. The photos towards the bottom of this page are from the home hospitality part of Japan. It's called The Black Magic and the non alcoholic beer it serves is extraordinary. As is the tent itself! Bottom right of this photo from 2007 UK. The big black tent is the place.....

What @@Tampa Turtle said! In 1911 my group turned 100 and we tracked down and invited as many alumni as we could. Ended up with a couple of adult volunteers out of it as well For some that were a bit elderly to come we arranged for cubs and scouts to visit them in their own homes and exchange a few adventure stories. We also did a special edition group t-shirt and hoodie, I still wear mine.

I wasn’t sure whether to put this in Scouting round the World or issues and politics. I’ll go with scouting round the world but won’t mind if the moderators decide otherwise…. I’ve been following the transgender thread with interest, and with the one exception about dealing with periods have held back from commenting, despite being tempted a couple of times. Both on this topic and previous controversies it is clear that the saying about USA and UK being countries divided by a common language still holds true. There are an awful lot of people in the UK who assume that because we share a language we have more in common with the USA than with mainland Europe. Personally I think they are very wrong, we have more in common with the Germans, Dutch, French and in particular the Danes than we often realise. That’s by the by. What I wanted to ask was this. And it’s out of genuine interest and not trying to pick a row. In just over two years time USA will host the World Jamboree, jointly with your neighbours in Canada and Mexico. Part of the Jamboree experience is home hospitality, where scouts from contingents from all round the world are hosted for a few days by the families of scouts from the host nation either before or after the main camp itself. Historically the contingents from Western Europe have been among the biggest and scouting in Western Europe is about as liberal as it gets world wide. I think every European national organisation is coed at least at an umbrella level, all where I have heard one way or the other are entirely open to LGBT members and at least 4 are open to atheist members. With all that in mind how do you envisage home hospitality operating? I will leave that question as open as possible as I am curious. It would be nice if this didn’t turn into a rehash of gay/trans/coed discussions. I’m simply curious as to how you see it panning out.

I haven't read the whole thread, have neither the time nor inclination, but I have scanned through. Various thoughts I don't have time to type right now except one. Periods. From experience. I've had girl cubs and girl scouts on camp. Sanitary towels are on the personal kit list. We also take a pack with us to camp should anyone need them and have forgotten. They're left in the same place as the first aid kit and extra toilet roll. It's never been a problem. Chill out on that one!

Yes, they can certainly get imaginative when let loose. It's one reason why on camp the leaders like to rotate round the patrols for eating, you're always guaranteed to get a wide variety of food! In some ways it helps that as a troop we are very multinational. At the moment we have kids where they or their parents were born in UK (obviously!) France, Egypt, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Estonia, China, Australia, Canada, Hungary. Poland, Columbia, New Zealand, India and Indonesia. In the recent past we've had Italy, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Pakistan, Finland, Argentina. Iran and Chile. Makes for quite a mix!

I'm trying to come up with some kind of comical response but frankly I'm somewhat lost for words! Some things are just bewildering.

Thought it would be something like that. They made burgers from scratch for the main course as well Kingfishers patrol existed before we named the troop. I did suggest they think about their patrol name, Falcons, Kites etc but they were quite happy with Kingfishers so it stayed.

The jelly sweets were basically a load of haribo and by sherbert yes, i do mean the fizzy white powder. You can see it among these piccies Patrol names.... yes we also have Eagles, and Owls and Kingfishers. Patrols here tend to have an existence beyond their immediate members, essentially mini troops. While some troops operate the way you work in most cases you join a troop and join, by one means or another, an existing patrol and as members move onto explorers new members join to replace them. Most commonly patrols are named after animals. We are a bit unusual as a troop in having a theme. I don't know where it started from but as long as anyone can remember we've had bird names. One of my ASLs is 74, he's been with us since he was a scout and it was birds then and birds now, it just stuck. Two years ago the troop got so big we span off a second troop within the group. The new troop decided they wanted a theme as well and went for big cats. So now we have two troops, 12th Cambridge Raptors and 12th Cambridge Wildcats (who have Jaguars, Pumas, Panthers and Leopards)

Work computer doesn't like the uploader, will try from home this evening!

So last night we had an inter patrol cook off. The brief was simple. 50 minutes to produce 2 courses from a country of their choice. At one end of the scale we had some quite impressive classic French cuisine from Kestrels. Steamed asparagus wrapped in parma ham and a ham gillet. And then we had Hawks.... who chose USA. And seriously, I'm not sure what they make of you chaps given their desert... photo attached. They called it chocolate heaven. They melted chocolate, poured in a load of jelly sweets, let it solidify and topped with sherbert flying saucers. Is this a recognised dish from your national cuisine?!?! It tasted pretty good though!

Think you may have put this on the wrong thread......

In most navies a single broad ring on the sleeve is a commodore or equivalent (so equivalent to an army brigadier) but like you say in most countries it's a navy or air force thing. Also brigadier/commodore while a senior rank still seems rather junior to be stood where he is.

My biggest problem was that I switched to Scouts after 12 years running Cubs. And that meant letting go far more than I was used to. I had a bit of an advantage in that I tried to give the cubs as much independence as I could and we camped far more than most cubs did. Nevertheless I remember my first couple of camps with scouts and how hard it was sitting on my hands and letting them make mistakes. Far more used to it now of course, but initially it was tough and I think would have been less so if I hadn't so long with cubs.

Kind of. Most groups are registered charities in their own right that affiliate to The Scout Association and essentially agree to run on TSA rules. Charities are not normally subject to tax except in very specific circumstances. There are a handful of groups that are owned by another body, referred to as "closed groups", typically attached to a school. Again those bodies are not normally subject to tax. The interesting point about the American situation is under UK tax law a company is subject to corporation tax on the profits of trade. Trading is not actually defined in statute law, instead it is a concept that has developed over many years through case law. These have lead to what are referred to as the badges of trade, essentially 6 questions to consider as to whether someone is trading. None of them is in itself definitive, you can hit 5 out of 6 and not be trading. It's all very wooly! One of those questions though is, is there a profit motive? In the case of popcorn selling to support a scout troop it charters I think there is a big question over whether there is or not as any excess is to be used to support the troop rather than pay a dividend to shareholders. If is taxable profit then the next question is whether the spending of those profits on the troop is tax deductable? Is it a charitable donation? Is it effectively marketing? Or does it constitute an application of profit? The whole thing is genuinely interesting to anyone involved in tax! Or maybe I should just get out more Sorry, looks like I digressed there.....

I'm going to follow this.... Over here I work for HM Revenue and Customs, our equivalent of the IRS. The tax law geek in me is quite interested in the answer to this question!