crew vs. post

[Gold Winger]

That's because Beaver is a black letter Scouter unless it suits to be otherwise.

 

Let's say that you have a bunch of boys who are junior volunteer firefighters. They spend much of their time at the firehouse and have gotten tired of Boy Scouts because the adults won't let them lead. However, one or two of them still want to earn Eagle. As Venturers, they can earn Scout advancement but as Explorers they cannot. As Venturers they can remain active in OA. As Venturers they can go to Camporees and wow everyone with their knot tying skills. So as Venturers, they can do their firefighting but still advance and have non-firefighting fun.

 

As Explorers, they can learn about firefighting and hang out at the fire hall.

 

 

[emb021]

Exploring vs Venturing.

 

Some things to keep in mind.

 

Explorers are no members of the BSA. Depending on the situation with the chartering org, this can be good or bad. Depending on what the youth want, this can be good or bad.

 

Exploring is a career-oriented program. LFL/Exploring provides a wealth of materials to support several career focused type of Explorer posts, including Fire, Law Enforcement and more. For some groups (LE and Fire), this included national conferences and more.

 

Venturing is NOT career-oriented. Its focus is on outdoors, sports, religious life, arts/hobbies, and Sea Scouts (which is why there are 5 different Bronzes).

 

Can you have a Venturing Crew for junior fireman? Yeah, but its problematic. The program support for such a group exists, but not under Venturing, it's under Exploring. And if the charter org is the local fire department, that can be a problem due to the membership policies of the BSA as regarding gays and atheists. This is one of the main reasons such units should be LFL/Explorer Posts and not Venturing Crews.

 

If those junior fireman want to keep their BSA registration and work on BSA advancement, that's fine, but they should do it thru a unit not associated with the local fire department. Do their firefighting stuff thru a LFL/Explorer Post focus on firefightning. Do their scouting stuff (advancement, OA membership) thru a separate Venturing Crew.

 

[Beavah]

Beav implied there was no real difference in programs between Exploring and Venturing.

 

Not sure I went that far, eh?

 

They have the same historical roots and because of that they have a sorta similar structure. Emb's got the right of it, though.

 

Exploring is the pre-career program now. So it's only in Exploring that you'll find program materials and association with other units that do pre-career stuff. That's the "proper" program for a fire department, in all likelihood, and it's natural that they'd want to set it up that way. As an Explorer Post, though, they can also go camping, use BSA facilities, and participate in a wide range of other activities besides sittin' around the firehouse. In fact the same wide range of activities as Venturers .

 

Nothing stopping boys who want to do Boy Scouting Advancement to continue on in their troop, which is the proper place for Boy Scouting Advancement. Boys belong to multiple extracurriculars all the time.

 

Beavah

 

[Trevorum]

All very confusing. Too bad we had to schism. But thank you for the explanations. Now I think I could explain it to someone else if the need ever arose.

[emb021]

The history of all this is covered at my website: http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Falls/8826/

 

Basically, from early on, the BSA looked for new programs more appropriate for older youth (ie 14/15 and up).

 

Sea Scouts came first in 1912. The program we know today as Sea Scouts started around 1925.

 

In the 1930s, they expanded this under the umbrella of "Senior Scouts" with the Explorer Scouts, Air Scouts, and Rover Scouts, along with the already existing Sea Scouts.

 

Explorer Scouts was an advanced outdoor program, Air Scouts was the aviation counterpart the nautical Sea Scouts. Rover Scouts was for 18+ youth to do service.

 

In the mid 1940s they gave the Explorer Scouts forest green uniforms and a more formal 4-level advancement program leading to Ranger Scout.

 

In 1949, the Senior Scout program was revamped into the Explorer program. Explorer Scouts became Explorers, and got a new 4-level program leading to the Silver Award. Air Scouts became Air Explorers, Sea Scouts became Sea Explorers.

 

Also during this time, the idea of Explorer Posts having a specific focus or speciality became more the norm. Pre-career exploration became a big part of it, as the Explorer program had been transformed from being an advanced outdoor/scout program into a more general older boy program.

 

In 1959 the Explorer program became Exploring. Gone was the advancement program, as well as the Post organization that followed scout troops. Now Posts would have club officer titles like President, and such. The navy blazer uniform was provided as an alternate to the forest green. Even more so then in the 50s, Post specialities was the norm.

 

In 1965 Air Explorers was killed off as a special program, and changes to Sea Explorers allowed youth to be 'Sea Explorers' without using the traditional Sea Scout advancement, uniform, program, etc.

 

Into the 70s and 80s, Exploring became to most people a pre-career program, such that the idea of high adventure posts or church youth group posts or the like was to many people unthinkable (dispite the fact that such groups DID exist, and in increasing numbers).

 

Of course, issues with the BSA membership policies started to become a problem in the 90s. This didn't help that many of the career-oriented Explorer Posts (Fire, Law Enforcement, Law, etc) were charted to government bodies.

 

The BSA was faced with a choice of either killing off the very successful career-oriented Exploring program, or doing something. Which they hurriedly did in 1998.

 

So what they did was move the career Exploring Posts (along with the name "Explorer" "Exploring" "Explorer Post", etc) to its Learning for Life corporation.

 

What was left behind, the outdoor, sports, arts/hobbies, religious life Explorer Posts, along with Sea Explorers, became the new Venturing program. (and Sea Explorers got their old name of Sea Scouts). The new Venturing program was actually already being developed for Exploring (being built around the already existing Exploring G.O.L.D. Award, which became the Venturing Gold Award), so they were quickly rolled out for the new Venturing program.

 

So as noted, Venturing, while to some is a 'new' program soon to be 10 years old, is really a program rooted in several decades of programs going back to the 1930s and beyond. By and large, the current LFL/Exploring program is really just an offshoot of these programs that got its start in the 1950s.

 

[Gold Winger]

" Yeah, but its problematic."

 

Only for some. Many fire departments have their junior firefighter programs running without LFL support so doing it as a Venture Crew isn't a problem.

 

"Nothing stopping boys who want to do Boy Scouting Advancement to continue on in their troop, which is the proper place for Boy Scouting Advancement."

 

The proper place? If that was the case, then it wouldn't be allowed through Venturing. Could it be that Beaver's wisdom is greater than the gods in Texas?

[Trevorum]

Now, now, GW. A scout is courteous.

[emb021]

""Nothing stopping boys who want to do Boy Scouting Advancement to continue on in their troop, which is the proper place for Boy Scouting Advancement."

 

"The proper place? If that was the case, then it wouldn't be allowed through Venturing. Could it be that Beaver's wisdom is greater than the gods in Texas? "

 

The allowing Venturers to work on Boy Scout advancement is a continuation of policies in place since the 1930s that allowed boys in the various Senior Scout programs to earn Boy Scout advancement while in a Senior Scout unit. They even provided paths for boys who had never been Boy Scouts to earn Star/Life/Eagle after earning specific Senior Scout advancement.

 

Also, the term is "Venturing Crew". Please stop calling them "Venture Crews". That's incorrect and confusing with Venture Patrols.

 

 

[Gold Winger]

So? It is still allowed so doing isn't imporoper.

 

Venture Crew, Venturing Crew. I'll try but I need you to work on all of the adults who refer to Venture Scots which includes the chairman of the Council's committee on venturing.

 

 

[emb021]

"I'll try but I need you to work on all of the adults who refer to Venture Scouts which includes the chairman of the Council's committee on venturing. "

 

there are several of us on-line who try to point out the correct terms.

 

It's sad that many of our fellow venturing leaders don't educate themselves on the correct terms. (and many other aspects of the prorgam)

 

If you're council venturing chair doesn't know and use the correct terms, one has to wonder how knowledgable he really is on the Venturing program. (sadly, I've met a few council venturing chairs that weren't that knowledgable) You have to wonder why such a person was given that position? As a reward/recognition for past works or because they were really knowledgable/passionate about the program??? (ie, did they really put the right person in that position??)

 

 

[Gold Winger]

Maybe they are part of the BSA vanguard to change the name from Venturers to Venture Scouts which actually makes more sense.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Gold Winger writes:

I've also run across small police departments chartering Venture Crews, obviously they haven't appeared on Meryln's radar yet. Why? maybe because they wanted the opportunities to take advantage of some of the opportunities that Venturing offers.

 

Oh, they aren't off my radar, Gold Winger....

[Gold Winger]

Hey! Whaddyaknow, ignore user works.