New Structure for BSA?

[Twocubdad]

In my experience about 25% of older scouts are interested in working with the younger boys. About half of those have the skills and aptitude for doing so. A good Troop Guide is a gem. On the other end, there are about 25% of older Scouts who have no interest in being around the younger guys at all and there always seems to be one or two who seem to have a problem with the concept of Friendly and Kind. For the 50% in the middle, it mostly depends on the individuals, especially the relative maturity of both the younger and older scouts.

 

As to the rumored program changes, we've seen this coming for 15 years -- especially in the area of advancement. Between "first-year, First Class," the goal of one advancement per year and the general high-speed/low drag approach to advancement, there is a unstated presumption that everyone makes Eagle in four years anyway. Under a program like this, do you think there is going to be any added pressure at all to complete Eagle in the 8th grade? Fourteen will be the new 18.

 

I can also see where the money-changers see this as a "fix" for Venturing. But my bet is loss rates between Boy Scouts and Venturing will make Webelos transition look like a winner.

 

Skip has the pros and cons about right, especially the con regarding leadership. Ending at the 8th grade, I think, will significantly change the whole idea of leadership development in Boy Scouts. It's not that we can't teach 10, 11 and 12 year olds to lead, the issue is getting the rest to follow. Boys that age simply don't want to listen to a peer. Over the last two weeks we've had patrol elections with two of the patrols electing second-year Scouts as Green Bars. Both these patrols have older Scout as members including a 16-year old SPL in each. I met with those two guys last week and told them they both needed to take on the role of mentoring their PLs. They need to think of themselves as ASMs and learn to support the PLs without taking over. (Thinking about it, I may appoint them both JASMs just to drive home the point.) With no boys over age 14 who is going to take that role? Overall, I think you will see the program becoming much more adult supervised.

[walk in the woods]

They are just banshees.

 

I think you answered your own question about why 16-17 year old boys may not want to associate with younger scouts. It's not new. When I was a 16 year old scout I didn't want to hang with the 12 year old scouts either. I staffed camp and was deeply involved in the OA. They were my options for escaping from the younger crowd.

 

I don't worry too much about the leadership issue. Leaders move up with kids. My CO had a Pack, Troop and Crew. We had three committees on paper but only one in reality. It was fine, other than the pain of recharter.

[Eagle94-A1]

" Lions - Kindergarten

Tigers - 1st Grade

Wolves - 2nd Grade

Bears - 3rd Grade

Webelos/AOL - 4th Grade (one year)

Boy Scouts - 5th-8th Grades

Venturing* - 9th-College "

 

I hope this isn't so. I admit I don't know how the new changes to Cub Scouts will work out, but it is already too long IMHO. Maybe, just maybe, with more action it won't be so bad.

 

As for folks getting into a troop starting in 5th grade, mixed emotions on this one. I know at the begining of 5th grade, my son and his den were pumped and chomping at the bit to become Boy Scouts. Since then 2 have completely dropped out of the program, 1 attends sporadically, and my son at times seems dazed, confused, and overwhelmed. I blame part of that on him being in a New Scout Patrol and being PL. While he is managing, it was not really ready for the job IMHO. But that may be me as a biased observer. 2 others said he was ready.

 

I am a firm believer of mixed age patrols with a "senior Scout" patrol, in my day it was the Leadership Corps but called a venture patrol today, that provides the troop level leadership (SPL is de facto member, but ASPL runs it and Instructors, QM, Librarian, etc are members of the patrol). The troops I've been in that had the older scout patrol allowed them to do their own activities periodically, and sometimes within planned troop activities that they were running. I vividly remember the LC striking out with one of the ASMs (pre YPT) to do a tougher, more challenging trail at Vicksburg Military Park, while the rest of the troop did the 14 mile road hike. Even when the VMP Trek was closed off due to tornado damage, the LC still did their own thing. Instead of just doing the 14 Mile road trip with the troop, we started off before the troop at a faster pace to do not only the 14 miler, but also the 7 miler that was there as well.

 

So a troop with a good program CAN (emphasis) keep the older Scouts.

 

And that is my concern. I feel that if we move everyone to Venturing in 9th grade automatically, we lose a lot of experienced Scouts that could benefit the younger Scouts.

 

On a different note, and Stosh please correct me if I'm wrong, didn't the BSA try something like this in the 1950s?

[walk in the woods]

 

I can also see where the money-changers see this as a "fix" for Venturing.

 

Along with KDD's comment about bringing the structure in line with the LDS configuration, the head-counters have already moved Varsity into the Venturing column at least for head-counting purposes.

 

[Stosh]

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Venturing/About/history.aspx

 

C'mon, I was a Bobcat in the 1950's

 

Stosh

[King Ding Dong]

I have not had much contact with LDS units but I did have a great conversation with a couple leaders using the same climbing cliff as our troop last year. He expressed extreme frustration with just getting some of these boys trained as leaders and then off they go. He could not get any real patrol method going because there were no leaders. I suppose in most cases Boy Scouts will really become Webelos III.

[King Ding Dong]

W

KDD' date=' Actually, they register the 18-20 yr olds as adults, so they can run the background check on them. That way that 14 yr old girl's parents know that the 20 yr old Crew President is not a criminal. All this said, besides the death bed Eagles (the 17 yr olds that come back to finish their Eagle), how many active scouts does BSA have in the 15-17 yr old age range? Are there any stats out there?[/quote'] Sorry, I think there is more to it than that. Were is the law that says you can't run a background check on a 18-20 year old member registered as a youth? A simple form change fixes that.

[qwazse]

KDD, whatever the reason, it's patently ridiculous that a couple of competent 20 year olds can't take their crew on an outing. If this change allows that, it would be welcome.

[Stosh]

A 18-20 year old doing something inappropriate with a 14-18 year old is a felony that they will need to register for annually for the rest of their lives, let a lone the PR mess it would cause for the BSA.

 

Stosh

[Tampa Turtle]

First reaction: hate it.

 

Older boys are always a problem for reasons stated here many times. We have a Venture Patrol it does not work that much better. The older boys that 'get it' stick around in the mixed-age patrols; a lot of the others leave shortly after earning their Eagle (or after it becomes apparent it is too much work). Paradoxically expecting higher performance from Life Scouts slows them down a bit and helps retention.

[Stosh]

On the other hand my troops seem to retain the older boys and loose a lot of younger boys. Once they join up and figure out they have to actually learn something and be responsible for something, they lose interest very quickly. The boys that stay tend to stay for the long haul and have a great time. My patrols seem to gravitate towards same or very close aged boys. I have no say so in who's in what patrol.

 

Stosh

 

By the way, my older boys tend to be more adventurous and tend to challenge themselves with nice outings. They do step up and mentor the younger boys if asked.

 

PORs are rather irrelevant. If the young boys need some equipment, they know who to talk to, they don't need to run around and see who's got what patch on their shirt. A lot of my "officers" are there by default and step up as the occasion arises and does what is necessary to take care of others.

[RichardB]

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/programupdates.aspx

 

Source to debunk whatever you heard at a "preso"

 

 

[st0ut717]

OK i am very confused.

 

are these entry ranges? e.g. boys 11-14 enter boy scouts

or

are these age ranges? e.g. boy enters Boy scouts at age 11 and upon reaching 14 then transfer to venturing.

[Twocubdad]

So the solution to retaining older Scouts it to give them the boot? Sure, we can solve the retention overnight by redefining "older" as 13 and 14.

 

How about we learn from our mistakes? The root cause of Webelos/Boy Scout transition losses is we have created this huge opportunity for any boy/family who may have doubts about continuing on to quit. We even throw them a party and make a big deal about having achieved the pinnacle of Cub Scouting. Then we tell them if they want to continue on, they have to fill out forms, move to a different meeting schedule (a much bigger deal than most folks realize), acclimate to new leaders and a new program to figure out. And of course the parents are more wigged-out than the kids. Oh, and we do it right as the kids are going through the same stuff at school.

 

This plan wholly replicates all those mistakes between the 8th and 9th grades.

[JoeBob]

Burrow down to page 11 for the summary. I liked most of it!

 

http://www.scouting.org/filestore/program_update/pdf/2015_Program_Change_Overview_Cub_Scouts_Boy_Scouts.pdf