Putting the pieces together - Where are we headed?

[FireStone]

13 hours ago, FormerProfessional said:

...How many of you will stay or leave with what we know now about girls, “boys” life, and OA changes?

 

I really hope no one will actually leave because Boys' Life changed their name. Or because there will be pictures of girls in handbooks, as was suggested in another thread. 

[Buggie]

related/unrelated question. Is there a date for a new handbook for 11-18 scouts to arrive? (not sure how to state that without saying boy scouts and being clear enough that I"m not talking about the various cub scout programs, LOL)

[FireStone]

4 minutes ago, Buggie said:

related/unrelated question. Is there a date for a new handbook for 11-18 scouts to arrive? (not sure how to state that without saying boy scouts and being clear enough that I"m not talking about the various cub scout programs, LOL)

I don't know if there is a date, but I imagine you could just call it the "Scouts BSA Handbook" and I think most folks will know which book you're talking about. 

Making an assumption based on the release of the Cub books less than a month from the official start date, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Scouts BSA books show up in January. 

[carebear3895]

12 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

Now time to beg for FOS donations... 😀

BAH GOD...That's carebear3895's  music!!

[NJCubScouter]

5 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

My last year of summer camp (between my Jr. and Sr. years of HS) my SM asked me to tent with and generally buddy with a first year camper.  He was our only first year and his parents were concerned about home sickness.  I was in camp to hang with my Tribal brothers so no big deal to me.  For that week I was his big brother and he was my little brother.  If there had been a two-year age differential tenting restriction at the time that relationship wouldn't have been a beneficial for him or me.

I don't know when that was, but I was a Boy Scout 1969-76, before YP even existed, and there are MANY differences between what you could do then and what you can do now.  The two examples that strike me as the most glaring at the moment are (1) When I went to Philmont (1974) the majority of crews had ONE adult leader.  There was a ranger (who as I recall was probably barely an adult, but he was an adult) who was with us part of the time, but I don't think he was with us most of the time.  And (2) if there was a communal shower facility somewhere, it was the adult leaders (men) and Scouts at the same time.  None of this "respect for privacy" stuff.  And, just as in your era (which may be the same era, I don't know), the idea of an 17-year-old sharing a tent with an 11-year-old would not even have raised an eyebrow.  Nobody at the unit level thought about this stuff at all - and yet at various places in the country, bad things were happening and the BSA was basically covering it up. 

Yes, complying with YP sometimes does affect program, and we can debate about particular aspects of YP that might seem a little unnecessary, and, some of it is driven by insurance, but what is the alternative?  If YP hadn't been adopted the BSA when it was, I don't think there would be a BSA now, so the program wouldn't matter.

[NJCubScouter]

1 hour ago, FireStone said:

I really hope no one will actually leave because Boys' Life changed their name.

Oh no, I must have missed that. They really didn't have to do that.  But I don't think anyone is going to leave over it.

[walk in the woods]

23 minutes ago, FireStone said:

Fair enough, here goes...

I pushed for inclusion in the BSA for many reasons. Sometimes because I thought that doing so would benefit the programs, sometimes because I felt that morally it was right, and sometimes because I felt that what the BSA was doing previously was just wrong (kicking kids out and denying advancement on the basis of sexual orientation, for example). The latter points can and have been debated here ad nauseum. 

On the "benefit the program" front, I think inclusion adds an additional layer of richness to the BSA. I have yet to hear about any gay scout or scouter who damaged the program in any way, and I've only heard stories of the exceptional LQBTQ men and women who have positively contributed to the BSA. From what I've seen so far, I say let's have more of them, and we all will benefit from their contributions to the organization. 

Girls just magnify that opportunity. Girls already contribute positively to many units. My Pack has had girl siblings participating in Pack activities for a long time now, and they always bring fun and enthusiasm to everything they do. Sometimes more than the boys. 

We just doubled our pool of potential members and future alumni. For every notable male Eagle Scout or former Boy Scout we brag about, imagine the roster of alumni we'll have in the next few decades with comparable accomoplishments. Or imagine if the BSA had done this decades ago and we could be bragging right now about pioneering women who earnd the Eagle rank. 

For Scouters it's a no-brainer for me, especially at the Pack level. I'm going to love handing out badges and awards to girls who I already know, who have already been participating and enjoying Cub Scouts "unofficially". Now they get to do this officially, and not just because their brother does it. And hopefully they will want to bring in their friends who don't have siblings in the Pack. We're suffering losses now in the short-term, but long term I see this as a massive growth opportunity. I'm not sure that anyone (myself included) can know the full potential of this just yet, it's too soon to say, but I remain optimistic that this will be big.  

For Scouts, I think their program only gets made better by all of this. I've never seen it as a negative that boys could be doing scout activities alongside girls, and really I've only ever seen it as a positive. We're supposed to be preparing these boys for adulthood, "Prepared for life," as the slogan goes. That life includes a lot of women, in all capacities, now more than ever. The boys that continue on to the military will soldier alongside women some times. They're going to work alongside women, in offices, firehouses, work sites, everywhere, and see women rise to the same levels as men. I think it only benefits our boys to learn to work alongside girls and truly prepare for the professional lives they have ahead of them. 

I believe that bringing the girl perspective into what we do can only enhance it. Every bit of it. One of the constant arguments against girls in the BSA has been that boys and girls learn differently. Why is that a bad thing? And why not use that to our advantage? If girls learn differently, let's use that to improve how we teach all scouts, boys and girls, to develop scout skills and learn how to live by the oath and law. It hasn't been a negative in school classrooms to have boys and girls working together. Let's enjoy that same benefit in Scouting. 

And lastly, I think that if we're honest about why we do this, why we put kids in the BSA at all, we have to acknowledge the basic idea that Scouting makes kids into better adults, and the more of that we have, the better. For all of us. If we believe so deeply in the BSA program and what it does for kids, why would we not want to use that to build a bigger and better society of people who will use their BSA experiences to be better people for the rest of their lives? 

Thank you.  Let me provide what I hope is an equally well stated rebuttal.

I don't see the addition of girls to the program as adding a layer of richness, I see it as replacing a layer of richness that already exists.  A place for boys to hang with their mates around the campfire is a rich and important experience.  There's plenty of literature out there that suggests today's men don't have other male friends and it's impacting their mental health.  The Boy Scouts has always been a place for boys to learn how to make male friends, nay, brothers.  That process will be irrevocably changed with the addition of girls to the program.  Men will suffer as a result.

You said that we're preparing the boys for adulthood, and since they'll have to work with women, they should work with girls now.  While I think there is truth in that argument, forcing co-ed scouts at all ages is using a sledge hammer to kill a fly.  I believe that boys certainly in the 11-14 year age range, and probably in the 5 - 14 year age range need to learn how to deal with the transition to manhood first.  We all remember what it was like to be that age.  Having mentors and leaders and peers who have been or are going through that same period in life is critical.  Yes, they need to learn how to work with women, but, I think that happens after they've learned how to be young men.  I have no problem with co-ed scouting at the high school age level, as an option.  If I honestly believe the separate troop thing was anything other than a short transition phase to fully co-ed Troops, designed to minimize losses, I might be onboard.  In a spearate thread on this forum at least one scouter was already touting their co-ed patrols.  Separate or linked troops are a fantasy.

You earlier referenced Scouts UK as a model.  The wikipedia page references their 2016/2017 report and says "Girls now make up 27% of all-age participants with a total of 99,989 female participants aged between 6 and 25 and a further 69,460 women involved in volunteer roles (being more than 1 adult female for every 2 female young people), while new recruits are now 71% girls (approx. 2.5 girls for every boy)" Emphasis is mine.  If in 10 years our movement is 27% female, and we don't lose any marketshare in boys, then we'll just have made up the delta for the departures in the last few years.  More importantly (and I haven't read the entire report so I'm taking the 2.5:1 comment at face value), if the UK Scout Association is recruiting 2.5 girls for every boy that enters the program, one has to question if they are in fact serving the general population of boys.  It's not clear to me that set of numbers is a win for boys.  The Scout Association is seeing 8% year-over-year growth, so it is clearly winning, but maybe at the expense of boys.

I too have seen girls bring fun and enthusiasm to activities in Cub Scouts.  But, I've also watched adult leaders, male and female, break up boys unstructured, loud, rough, and unstructured play in order to get them to attend to some boring, quiet, and structured activity.  The girls thrive in the latter, the boys in the former.  I've had more than a few conversations with leaders, male and female, to the effect of you have to let boys play.  Requirements are nice, but, not nearly as important as unstructured, rowdy, play.  Once they've blown off that steam you can probably get them to attend to whatever classroom stuff you have to offer.

Finally, you said "It hasn't been a negative in school classrooms to have boys and girls working together."  I can't begin to express how strongly I disagree with this statement.  Boys are loud, squirmy, and active.  Nobody who has ever actually worked with boys was shocked when taking away the unstructured play of recess, and the jungle gyms and swings, caused problems in the classroom.  But, instead of giving boys the room to be boys, we've chosen to medicate the ones that can't act like their female counterparts.  Scouting used to be a refuge from that mentality.  I fear it will become more of the same, and worse than it is today (MBUs, Citizenship MBs at summer camp, etc.).  

[walk in the woods]

55 minutes ago, NJCubScouter said:

I don't know when that was, but I was a Boy Scout 1969-76, before YP even existed, and there are MANY differences between what you could do then and what you can do now.  The two examples that strike me as the most glaring at the moment are (1) When I went to Philmont (1974) the majority of crews had ONE adult leader.  There was a ranger (who as I recall was probably barely an adult, but he was an adult) who was with us part of the time, but I don't think he was with us most of the time.  And (2) if there was a communal shower facility somewhere, it was the adult leaders (men) and Scouts at the same time.  None of this "respect for privacy" stuff.  And, just as in your era (which may be the same era, I don't know), the idea of an 17-year-old sharing a tent with an 11-year-old would not even have raised an eyebrow.  Nobody at the unit level thought about this stuff at all - and yet at various places in the country, bad things were happening and the BSA was basically covering it up. 

Yes, complying with YP sometimes does affect program, and we can debate about particular aspects of YP that might seem a little unnecessary, and, some of it is driven by insurance, but what is the alternative?  If YP hadn't been adopted the BSA when it was, I don't think there would be a BSA now, so the program wouldn't matter.

It's about the same era, close enough anyway.  The alternatives are tough.  It probably involves harshly punishing the perpetrators of bad deeds while not restricting the rights of innocent actors.  It's the same philosophy as the knife discussion.  Blanket policies restricting anything mostly serve to punish the innocent.  Anyway, thank you for acknowledging the YPT does affect program.

[David CO]

33 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

Finally, you said "It hasn't been a negative in school classrooms to have boys and girls working together."  I can't begin to express how strongly I disagree with this statement.  Boys are loud, squirmy, and active.  Nobody who has ever actually worked with boys was shocked when taking away the unstructured play of recess, and the jungle gyms and swings, caused problems in the classroom.  But, instead of giving boys the room to be boys, we've chosen to medicate the ones that can't act like their female counterparts.  Scouting used to be a refuge from that mentality.  I fear it will become more of the same, and worse than it is today (MBUs, Citizenship MBs at summer camp, etc.).  

It has had a huge effect on the Physical Education curriculum. Boy's PE used to be a very active rough-and-tumble class. Now it's just like the girl's class used to be.

[NJCubScouter]

29 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

The alternatives are tough.  It probably involves harshly punishing the perpetrators of bad deeds while not restricting the rights of innocent actors.

Well, that was really the pre-1980s/90s approach - not necessarily in BSA exactly, but generally.   But now the general consensus is that you don't know who is an innocent actor or a guilty actor in advance, and prevention (or at least reduction in occurrences) is better than punishment anyway.  A kid who has been abused is not really going to be helped by the fact that his abuser received punishment, but if you could have made it so difficult for the abuser to be alone with the abused that it never happened in the first place, that really does help.  Obviously you punish an offender after he/she is caught, but actual punishment (beyond expulsion from BSA) is really the job of the state, not the BSA, anyway

[walk in the woods]

2 minutes ago, David CO said:

It has had a huge effect on the Physical Education curriculum. Boy's PE used to be a very active rough-and-tumble class. Now it's just like the girl's class used to be.

This was exactly my experience in HS when Physical Education went co-ed.  Dodgeball, gym hockey, wrestling all disappeared from the curriculum.  Flag football went from a contact game to being kicked out of class if you bumped into a girl.  Boys weren't allowed to block shots in basketball or hit spikes in volleyball if the person on the other side was a girl.  Again, kicked out of class for the day.  They added square dancing for the love of Pete!

[David CO]

1 hour ago, NJCubScouter said:

And (2) if there was a communal shower facility somewhere, it was the adult leaders (men) and Scouts at the same time.  None of this "respect for privacy" stuff.

I don't know how much of these changes are due to youth protection. I think some of it has nothing to do with YP.

Even in a school with a properly run, well-supervised locker room, we get some mothers who object to having their children taking showers after gym class and extra-curricular activities. It is not safety they are concerned about. They object to group showers.

As a boy, I never felt that I needed much privacy. Privacy was a girl thing.

 

Edited May 25, 2018 by David CO

[NJCubScouter]

16 hours ago, walk in the woods said:

I would encourage the folks who believe the most recent change in the BSA is a good thing to offer me their vision of the future of the BSA.  I can't see it from where I sit.  Change my mind!

Well, I don't know whether it's going to turn out to be a good thing or not.  I do know that the departure of the LDS church is not good for at least the short-term health of the organization.  And readers of this forum know that when the situation is right, I can be almost as gloomy as the next guy.  I have made my own predictions about things, some of which have turned out to be correct, and some of which have not. But I just don't think it's productive to go from making a gloomy prediction to being in continuous red-alert panic mode over a possible future situation that may or may not turn out to be as negative as you may have predicted - UNLESS there is something you can do to change the underlying situation in the first place.  I think the only thing that can possibly change the decision on girls is if the number who join in the next few years is much fewer than they expect. Nothing that anyone says here, no matter how loud and long they say it, is going to make a difference on that front.  It's also my opinion that there are two reasonable alternatives for those who are very unhappy: (1) Quit, or (2) don't quit, by which I mean, stay and make the best of it.  Staying, but at the same time wailing and gnashing ones teeth for months or years on end, when there is no prospect of getting one's way, seems like a very unhappy way to spend one's life.

[FireStone]

58 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

Thank you.  Let me provide what I hope is an equally well stated rebuttal...

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm not going to do a point-by-point reply, I think we both know where we stand on this. We disagree, and that probably won't change. 

My point of this thread was optimism and looking forward, which I continue to do and continue to have about the BSA. It's not a popular opinion around here, but I truly believe that the best days of the BSA are ahead of us.

[walk in the woods]

13 minutes ago, FireStone said:

My point of this thread was optimism and looking forward, which I continue to do and continue to have about the BSA. It's not a popular opinion around here, but I truly believe that the best days of the BSA are ahead of us.

I hope you are right.