Board of Review

[Eagle92]

Oak,

 

I think I can see why there was a difference.

 

In my troop, when you visited, you usually were assigned to specific scout to work with that nite. Hence you were in his patrol. When Webelos dens visited, we would split them up amongst the patrols and assign scouts to work with them for the meeting, and the "wilderness survival weekend" we would do with them as our recruiting gimmick. So again you were working with a patrol. Reason we split them up was not to separate friends and what not, but to make sure everyone had someone to work with. we really used the mentor concept.

 

When they joined the troop, they would decide to join the patrol they worked with.

[Beavah]

Yah, what Eagle92 said, eh?

 

Boys are conservative creatures, and all of the rest of their lives outside of family is age-based. School, sports, whatever. Absent any direction, they'll default to what they know, not because it's better, but because it's what they know. But they're also adaptable and adapt readily to Scouting being like family instead of like school. Yeh develop deeper ties and bonds in family. It's a different kind of friendship that yeh make across different ages.

 

There's nuthin' wrong with age-based patrols. It will have a school-like feel and it's comfortable for cub scouts because it's like cub scouts / webelos. It does push da "everybody advances together" thing in adults' minds, again just like cubs and school. FCFY and all that.

 

Mixed age by contrast feels more like family. There's more a sense of mentoring like Eagle92 describes, and of growin' into responsibility and leadership rather than being elected into it. More a sense of being part of something long-lasting. Also a bit better behavior and safety-wise.

 

Good folks can make either approach work, eh? But in terms of da sort of kid outcomes I care about, mixed-age has always seemed a bit stronger and more natural.

 

I read somewhere once that one-room schoolhouses often did better than our modern same-age factory schools. Can anyone who actually knows about that sort of thing confirm that?

 

Beavah

[Lisabob]

I've read that about one-room schools too, Beavah, but there are a bunch of confounding factors that make comparisons rather difficult. (a more inclusive approach to education now vs. then and self-selection of older students in particular, but also changes in the goals of modern education, changes in parental expectations, changes in acceptable methods of discipline and behavioral standards in schools, etc.)

[Eagledad]

>>Mixed age by contrast feels more like family. There's more a sense of mentoring like Eagle92 describes, and of growin' into responsibility and leadership rather than being elected into it. More a sense of being part of something long-lasting. Also a bit better behavior and safety-wise.

 

Good folks can make either approach work, eh? But in terms of da sort of kid outcomes I care about, mixed-age has always seemed a bit stronger and more natural.

[Stosh]

I've seen both the mixed and age related patrols work just fine, and the key for me always remains: is it the boys' choice or some arbitrary process imposed by adults?

 

While I have seen older scouts take the younger boys under their wings and both flourished, but it was the choice of both parties.

 

I have also seen older boys take advantage of younger boys, having them do all the camp chores while the older boys sit back and do nothing. While this goes a long way of developing stronger servant leadership amongst the younger boys, it does nothing but reinforce minor bullying from the older boys.

 

Success/failure of either system is exclusively dependent upon the choices of the boys themselves. If buddies want to stick together, great. If they want to be part of the old boys' groups, that's great too. But unless the boys themselves buy into the program it will not succeed in the long run.

 

For the younger boys that want to hang together, at least in the beginning, they will still need a good TG or even PL to get them through orientation, but after a couple of months, those roles can be rolled back and allow for the boys to build their own autonomy.

 

As has been pointed out, every troop is different, and adding to that every patrol is different as well. There is no reason why a large troop can't have examples of both types of patrols. It take a bit more understanding on the part of the adults to understand this, but that's why we're there in the first place.

 

Stosh

[JMHawkins]

I read somewhere once that one-room schoolhouses often did better than our modern same-age factory schools. Can anyone who actually knows about that sort of thing confirm that?

 

Like Lisabob said, there are enough other moving parts that it's hard to separate the impact of one-room schoolhouse, but my sense it it was better. If nothing else, I think it fostered better behavior. I can give two annecdotes, six decades apart in time.

 

One, my father was a school teacher, principal and superintendent. When he was still in school, his first student teaching assignment was to one of the last one-room schoolhouses in the local county (this was back in 1950). It was in one of the rougher, more rural areas. One day one of the younger boys was smarting off to the teacher, Ms. Smith, and my dad thought maybe he'd have a chat with the boy at recess. He walked behind the school looking for the kid and found him in, shall we say, "conversation" with one of the older boys. The older boy was making it very plain to his younger classmate - in words and deeds young boys understand - that he would treat Ms Smith with respect and knock off the disruptive behavior.

 

Two, my own son spent several years in a mixed age classroom. This last year he was in a same-age class. The biggest difference I have noticed is that he is far less self-motivated to do his schoolwork now than he was before. Again, there are other differences besides the classroom, but when I've questioned him about some homework scores, he's said things like "that's better than average for the class" and other comments that indicate he's not using the Cub Scout motto in his schoolwork any more. He's not doing his best, he's just going with the flow. In his old school, there was no "average" or expected grade levels, there was just kids of multliple ages learning stuff at their own pace. Their own pace seems to be a lot faster than the single-aged group pace.