How has the addition of girls affected Scouting in other countries?

[Stosh]

I have never seen an MP3 player in one of those pockets.... 

[cchoat]

I have never seen an MP3 player in one of those pockets.... 

How could you have seen anything in that pocket?  Most people found the easiest way to sew on a Position of Responcibility patch on the little pocket meant you sewed the darn thing shut.  

[Stosh]

How could you have seen anything in that pocket?  Most people found the easiest way to sew on a Position of Responcibility patch on the little pocket meant you sewed the darn thing shut.  

Hmmmm, me thinks you don't like the pocket either. 

 

Usually the MP3 player has a wire running out of the pocket for the ear plugs.  Otherwise I just assume the lump there is the boy's cigarettes.

[krypton_son]

How could you have seen anything in that pocket?  Most people found the easiest way to sew on a Position of Responcibility patch on the little pocket meant you sewed the darn thing shut.  

 

 

Lol, I've always thought the same thing.  The pocket was always more for decoration than anything.  Once you sowed a patch onto it, it's worthless as a pocket.

[Stosh]

If one were to slip a small notebook into the pocket before hand, it makes it quite easy to sew patches onto pockets.

[qwazse]

Lol, I've always thought the same thing.  The pocket was always more for decoration than anything.  Once you sowed a patch onto it, it's worthless as a pocket.

One year, my wife got me a coat, with a pocket in the sleeve of the outer-liner. Put my cell-phone in it.

What does this have to do with co-ed? Not much, except one female advisor who helped me chaperon my crew on a winter backpacking trip who was duly impressed when I answered the phone without unzipping my jacket.

 

BSA - all the right pockets on all the wrong gear.

[Tampa Turtle]

I think they got the pants pockets right...I have worn them on trips because I could put a booklet in the pocket. I always WANTED to like the 'smokes' pocket but never it never seemed to be the right 'home'. I tried a small MP3 player, paper, lighter, and compass. Didn't really work.

 

Agree there are many opinions to what is best but there really is an art to pocket design and placement. The poor design of many new packs keeps me soldiering on with my old one. 

[vol_scouter]

So the only data that anyone has is on Scouting in the UK? I thought that in the past there were vigorous debates about the pros and cons of adding girls to Scouting with many spots about how it negatively affected membership in those countries. Should my conclusion be that there only in the UK was there a correlation and that one is complex? Does that in turn mean that adding girls will be net additional members?

[qwazse]

So the only data that anyone has is on Scouting in the UK? I thought that in the past there were vigorous debates about the pros and cons of adding girls to Scouting with many spots about how it negatively affected membership in those countries. Should my conclusion be that there only in the UK was there a correlation and that one is complex? Does that in turn mean that adding girls will be net additional members?

 

Well, the other data point is from the US. Venturing has had a boom and bust cycle. So you might conclude that adding girls might give you some growth out of the novelty of the thing, then membership will plummet faster than any other. Of course, boys have the option of dropping out of venturing quite readily. So, there's no way of telling what they would do if they didn't like going coed but the segregated option was not readily available.

 

You could write the Baden-Powell Service Association and ask them to publish their membership statistics. But it speaks volumes that they have no recent press releases touting a groundswell in membership.

 

I have no data-driven reason to believe that going co-ed will increase membership, let alone stop BSA's losses.  In America there are some parents who would love their kids to have a co-ed scouting experience, but they are far outnumbered by parents who love the segregated model. Think about it, we here a story about one cluster of girls that appeals to participate in the MB program or one CO who encourages segregated unites to work together to the point they are co-ed on all but paper in the ENTIRE nation. As cool as we are, the ladies simply are no knocking down our doors to get in, and our boys aren't holding them open.

 

I figure any gains in membership that may be had, would not be had for decades.

 

Could that outlook change in a couple years? Maybe. But that would require unforeseen factors.

Edited December 5, 2016 by qwazse

[NJCubScouter]

You could write the Baden-Powell Service Association and ask them to publish their membership statistics. But it speaks volumes that they have no recent press releases touting a groundswell in membership.

According to the Wikipedia article on BPSA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-Powell_Service_Association): "Today the BPSA consists of 80 groups, with over 1,000 scouts in 35 states." The source for this is a podcast apparently from April 2016, so it is fairly recent. (I did not listen to the podcast.) There is no indication there of whether their numbers were higher or lower in the past.  But either way, it's a pretty small organization and it does not seem to have "caught on" with very many people.  (I have never heard of it outside this forum and the Wikipedia article I just looked at.)  I believe that their membership number probably does not tell us very much about what might happen if the BSA "went coed", whatever exactly that means.  For one thing, if the BSA "went coed" it would be in every newspaper (or online equivalent) in the country the next day, so everybody would know about it - many more people than have even heard of BPSA in the first place.

Edited December 6, 2016 by NJCubScouter

[qwazse]

.. "Today the BPSA consists of 80 groups, with over 1,000 scouts in 35 states." ... April 2016, ...

From one to 1000 in 10 years. Nothing to sneeze at. The next decade's progress will speak volumes.

[NJCubScouter]

From one to 1000 in 10 years. Nothing to sneeze at. The next decade's progress will speak volumes.

 

It will speak volumes about the future of the BPSA.  I am not sure it will affect the BSA or offer the BSA any direction on whether to go "coed."  Of course, anything's possible.  In 10 years the BPSA could be larger than the BSA because what parents really wanted was a program where boys and girls aged 5-14 participated together in a single unit.  We'll see.  The older I get the more I realize that predicting the future is a worthless pastime, except for whatever entertainment value we may get out of it.

 

And by the way, if Trail Life USA's Wikipedia page is correct, they went from zero (or "one", if you wish) to 20,000 in ONE year.  At the risk of starting an argument, I suppose one might ask what it says about our society that a new organization built around the idea of exclusion grew at a rate 200 times faster (if my math is correct) than a new organization built around the idea of inclusion.

Edited December 6, 2016 by NJCubScouter

[Sentinel947]

It will speak volumes about the future of the BPSA.  I am not sure it will affect the BSA or offer the BSA any direction on whether to go "coed."  Of course, anything's possible.  In 10 years the BPSA could be larger than the BSA because what parents really wanted was a program where boys and girls aged 5-14 participated together in a single unit.  We'll see.  The older I get the more I realize that predicting the future is a worthless pastime, except for whatever entertainment value we may get out of it.

 

And by the way, if Trail Life USA's Wikipedia page is correct, they went from zero (or "one", if you wish) to 20,000 in ONE year.  At the risk of starting an argument, I suppose one might ask what it says about our society that a new organization built around the idea of exclusion grew at a rate 200 times faster (if my math is correct) than a new organization built around the idea of inclusion.

Trail Life was created by disatified members of a larger group. The BPSA didn't posch disatified members from the BSA.

 

For what its worth, my district actually added more youth than we lost for the first time since the early 2000's.

[Rick_in_CA]

In America there are some parents who would love their kids to have a co-ed scouting experience, but they are far outnumbered by parents who love the segregated model.

I'm curious where you got this data? Did someone do a survey?

[ianwilkins]

At the end of the day, BSA, BPSA, TrailLife, if they want to grow (or stop shrinking), they need to appeal to more people, be appealing. To the parents who need to think it's something they want their kids involved in, and to the kids, to enjoy doing it.

 

Everything else is noise.