Eventual Co-Ed Scouting

[ozemu]

I just asked the two (boy) Scouts behind me what they think and they are more serious than my daughter was.

 

"When you play games the boys are always trying too hard to win and the girls just play for fun which is better"

 

"Its better to talk to boys and girls because most of the time at school boys don't talk to girls unless they are your friend"

 

There you go. Not really sure what to make of those two responses.

 

They have not known Scouts without girls except within the batchelor Patrol we had last year. They were both in that Patrol. (As explained in a previous post we concentrate girls into Patrols where they are about 50% of the Patrol membership. That leaves other Patrols boy only due to lower numbers of girls in the Troop).

[ScoutNut]

NJCubScouter asks -

 

"I have never heard of the Seeker program, which organization is that a part of?"

 

 

The Seeker Program is part of BSA's classroom based Learning For Life program. It is for kindergarten - 2nd grade.

 

Learning For Life / Explorers have always been co-ed.

 

[NJCubScouter]

ScoutNut, thanks for that information. I was somewhat familiar with LFL but was not aware of the names of the different programs. I looked at this web site:

 

http://www.learning-for-life.org/lfl/programs/elem.html

 

and now I see that Seeker is just one of the group-names I did not know.

 

But one of the things I am not clear on with LFL is, are the children themselves "Seekers" or is that just the name of the program? In other words, do they "join," are they "members" of Seekers or LFL? Or are they participating simply because their school (or teacher, or school district, or whoever) has chosen to have the program in the child's classroom? If the latter is the case (which is what I thought), then the fact that the program is "co-ed" would not seem to be a harbinger of any change in policy for the "traditional" BSA programs since it is not a matter of admitting or accepting members, but simply one of delivering a curriculum (with an associated "recognition" program which the web site tells me is where the names Seeker Discoverer etc. come in) to the students who happen to be in a particular class -- which in almost all (but not all) public schools will be a "co-ed" class.

 

Am I correct?

 

By the way, don't let Bob see you referring to "BSA's classroom based Learning For Life program." He likes to think BSA and LFL are separate.