Just got 1 girl

[walk in the woods]

2 hours ago, carebear3895 said:

What's National going to do? 

Be honest about the end game and quit making rules they know will be ignored and can't be enforced.  Leadership isn't difficult but it does take courage. 

[walk in the woods]

7 minutes ago, dfg890 said:

The more I work to remove those biases, the more they are just individuals.

Are you removing biases or just replacing them with new biases?

[Eagledad]

16 minutes ago, dfg890 said:

To reiterate, I don't mean to suggest no differences exist. They do.  I only say that depending on a packs circumstance, co-ed dens may make more sense.  Not always, but that's why I think it should be a choice. I don't think that's an unreasonable position to have.  

You also suggested not using experience to base performances. Experience is how I achieve maximum performance.

There are many reasons for making choices to inject a desired approach for desired performance. The Cub age program is different from the Troop age program because the troop age youth are expected to learn habits of character by their independent decisions. I have different expectations for each group and use different approaches to achieve the results. But, I learned those approaches over the years of what works, and what works better.

For Troop age youth, my experience is girls are better detail thinkers where boys are more visionary and creative. Girls will perform detailed task, like planning, faster and more efficiently than boys. Boys, on the other hand, come up with bigger ideas and creativity of reaching goals. The two together can make a great team if they work together. But Patrol method is good tool for teaching methods of working details. If girls always work the details and boys always make up the activities, they both suffer from not practicing the skills they need to learn. For the perceptive adult leaders, they force the boys to take on their share of working the fine details, but then that requires more adult interjection, which risk loosing the growth learned from making independent decisions. It's very tricky and complicated and just about impossible for low experienced leaders, which is most of the BSA.

Barry

 

[dfg890]

What I said was that society wide conclusions cannot be drawn from personal experience. It's a logical fallacy. If I were to say that my grandmother smoked four packs a day her whole life and lived to 92, therefore smoking leads to a long life, I would be committing a logical fallacy.

It's an absurd example but it gets the point across.  In my experience, my girls are far more creative and my boy likes to make lists and organize things, but I've met creative men and women in my life too. I think taking a small population and generalizing to experiences from people from disparate backgrounds and cultural upbringings is risky.  Which is why I think maximum flexibility should be allowed so units can be run in the manner that best fits their local values and kids.

[PinkPajamas]

I’d bet dollars to donuts a girl joining BSA instead of GSUSA is several standard deviations from average.

[Eagledad]

13 minutes ago, dfg890 said:

It's an absurd example but it gets the point across.  In my experience, my girls are far more creative and my boy likes to make lists and organize things, but I've met creative men and women in my life too. I think taking a small population and generalizing to experiences from people from disparate backgrounds and cultural upbringings is risky.  Which is why I think maximum flexibility should be allowed so units can be run in the manner that best fits their local values and kids.

Depends on how you want to express your method for success. If you want to continue local success, then why would you change? If you want consider the best method when comparing local success to national experience, you have to consider the options with humility. But, I certainly would not change local success for something less just because it works for a large population. 

How the data is collected is also part of the complexities. I can give several examples of program changes from National they said are supported by research. Yet, many scouters in the field say the data doesn't fit. I'm not going to get into who or why their changes don't perform as well, I'm only saying that one shouldn't shutdown success simply to appease advertised data. Do what works best.

I have a question: Your basically claiming that girls and boy are the same. There is one scout leader on this forum who is claiming her girls mop up the boys in their activities. How do you take that? 

Barry 

[Liz]

12 hours ago, awanatech said:

It's too bad that as Scouters, some pretend to go by the rules (on paper), when in reality, so many dance around the rules that are set in place.  And then we wonder why our youth take it upon themselves to decide which rules to follow and which ones are ok to just pretend that we follow. Either we have co-ed dens, or we don't.  If co-ed Dens are what BSA wants, then why do we have to whisper it?  If co-ed Dens are not what BSA wants, then why do we pretend to follow the rules, on paper, but really openly go against it? 

I read the rules very closely and we discussed this with our DE. On the cub scout level, there is no limit in the rules to how many of the activities need to be separate or how many can be together. In our Bear dens, with two girls and two boys, it not practical for us to separate any of the actual activities by gender. But we are following the rules and have two den leaders and the kids are registered into two dens. 

We are working on forming a girl troop and whether we end up with a pair of linked brother/sister troops or just a stand alone girl troop, we will still follow the rules. We may have more or fewer joint activities depending on what the two PLCs want to do, and it remains to be seen how much the two troops (if we have two) might look to outsiders like a single co-ed troop; but we'll follow the rules and each troop will have its own Scoutmaster and its own SPL and its own PLC. 

There's still a great deal of flexibility within the rules to have a plenty of joint/crossover activities. There is no reason to break those rules to accomplish what you need to accomplish given your unit's circumstances. 

[Liz]

2 hours ago, dfg890 said:

Disagree wholeheartedly.  Some girls tend to be more visual learners, some boys tend to be more tactile.  Most people tend to have multiple preferences for different learning styles.  The continued belief that one gender prefers certain learning styles is not born out by recent studies. 

This 100%. 

My daughter has receptive language delays. I can't explain ANYTHING to her to save her life. Literally. She appears fairly typical most of the time, but it was her inability at 4 years old to follow two-step instructions like "get your shoes and bring them here" that led me to argue with her doctor until she agreed to write a referral for an evaluation. Hands-on, and she learns as well or better than a lot of her same-age peers, but verbal instruction... she might as well not even have ears. She may be able to repeat the instructions back to you verbatim, but she won't be able to actually put them into action until she at least sees it being done or, better yet, has the ability to experiment until she figures it out on her own. 

To a lesser extent, I'm largely the same way. I have an abysmal ability to retain information that's given to me verbally. I can read stuff and remember it forever, but tell me without pointing it out on a map or at least letting me write it down that I need to drive 1 mile, turn left on Pearl street, go three blocks, and turn right on Ruby street, and I'm going to attempt to drive 3 miles and turn left on Ruby street then 1 block and turn right on Pearl. 

This whole idea that learning styles are based on gender is bunk. 

[dfg890]

5 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

 

I have a question: Your basically claiming that girls and boy are the same. There is one scout leader on this forum who is claiming her girls mop up the boys in their activities. How do you take that? 

Barry 

I dont really like that language honestly. I'd refer to them as scouts. If they performed better and "mopped up" I'd say we could try and be courteous and kind about it. Sore winning is just as undesirable as sore losing, un my opinion. 

And I dont want it to be said that I'm claiming sameness. I'm not. What I am saying is that the differences get overblown and that using a one size fits all approach might not work. Using averages and data can only get us so far, though I doubt enough data currently exists to draw conclusions from the inclusion of females in scouts yet.  

When the airforce first designed cockpits, they took ten measurements of 4000 pilots.  The idea would be to create a cockpit towards the average. The result was disastrous. When a statistician tried to find if any one individual was within 30 percent of the average for all ten dimensions, he found that not a single pilot met those criteria.  They introduced adjustable seats. 

And that's the real point. We all are different. Our communities, our spiritual practices, and we all can live in harmony here.l, free to run packs and troops within feasible guidelines based upon what works , using intellectual humility to reevaluate as we go. 

Lastly, in all of this discussion, I'd like to hear how exactly one thinks the scout program should be implemented differently. I for one teach my daughters knits the exact same way I teach my son.  I want to know what the practical implementation would look like if it is different?  Because last I checked the requirements are the same across the board. A boy webelos and girl Webelos have to complete the same duty to god requirement.  The standards for the swimming merit badge haven't changed last I checked (but maybe they have , since I'm honestly more focused on Cubs right now)

[PinkPajamas]

22 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

I have a question: Your basically claiming that girls and boy are the same. There is one scout leader on this forum who is claiming her girls mop up the boys in their activities. How do you take that?

Our Weblos girl den is amazing and lead by our most experienced Scouter. I mentioned them, and only them,  because people seemed ::shocked:: a new troop could being doing well so early on. 

Our Bear girl den, lead by an inexperienced scouter....they struggle a lot....and both the scouts and leader rely heavily on the more experienced Bear boy den for help. 

[Eagledad]

4 minutes ago, dfg890 said:

I dont really like that language honestly. I'd refer to them as scouts. If they performed better and "mopped up" I'd say we could try and be courteous and kind about it. Sore winning is just as undesirable as sore losing, un my opinion.

Well, maybe the problem is just the the winning and losing. I think this is the issue that will make the transition difficult, especially for the boys.  Seems a lot of adults want to justify girls belonging in the program by showing they are the winners.

4 minutes ago, dfg890 said:

And I dont want it to be said that I'm claiming sameness. I'm not. What I am saying is that the differences get overblown and that using a one size fits all approach might not work. Using averages and data can only get us so far, though I doubt enough data currently exists to draw conclusions from the inclusion of females in scouts yet

Yes, that makes sense of course, but this got started on your defending the one size fits all basis that boys and girls do learn the same. You are going to have to rethink your wording for those of us who believe girls and boys are different and that one size certainly does not fit all. As for data, there is plenty of data for the last 50 years that draws conclusions from other mixed or single gender programs. For those of us with experience, you are going to have to rethink an approach in the discussion that is less argumentative or divisive because you certainly aren't going to experience. I have enough experience to explain how this program promotes growth in young men. I happen to believe that girls will hurt that growth. You don' that experience, so I believe the best you can say is that the program is providing you an opportunity for your daughters that you plan to take advantage of you will see how that plays out. I certainly can't argue, in fact I agree.

11 minutes ago, dfg890 said:

Lastly, in all of this discussion, I'd like to hear how exactly one thinks the scout program should be implemented differently. I for one teach my daughters knits the exact same way I teach my son.  I want to know what the practical implementation would look like if it is different?  Because last I checked the requirements are the same across the board. A boy webelos and girl Webelos have to complete the same duty to god requirement.  The standards for the swimming merit badge haven't changed last I checked (but maybe they have , since I'm honestly more focused on Cubs right now)

Sameness of requirements doesn't mean the sameness of teaching methods. At least to those of us who experiences the difference between boys and girls. How did the leader in the example present the activity to the point of girls mopping up the boys? We don't know, but I sure don't see a willingness in the leaders words to do the activity different next time. In fact, the words imply the girls are just better than boys. This is the problem the BSA is going to have to deal with on the whole. Are girls really better? If so, now what? Even when adults say that girls and boys are equal, they can't wait (like in the camporee) to point out when girls are "more" equal. One poster said we need to be cheering the girls on, but how do we do that without turning the boys into losers? Did the girls have to take top honors at the camporee to be winners? 

But let me just say that I think we are speaking from to different places, the Troop program is completely different in that to a large degree from the pack program. The individual scout in the troop sets the teaching style because they are learning from their decisions. The adults are supposed to step back and allow that style of learning play out on the scouts terms. My concern isn't that the individual scout can't learn from their decisions when the adults inject enough interference to prevent the scout from learning. Seems reasonable, yet we have the adults at the camporee getting in the way. The patrol environment is very important to growth, but will be neglected in my opinion because of the one size fits all mentality. Right now the scouts aren't mixed, but, they will eventually be mixed because there are a lot of adults who think the learning styles are equal. Ops, here we go again, round and round. LOL

Barry 

[Treflienne]

24 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

The patrol environment is very important to growth, but will be neglected in my opinion because of the one size fits all mentality

I think that the patrol environment is very important to growth (based on my experience eons ago with patrols in a girl scout / girl guide context).   Why do you think that patrols will be neglected now that girls have joined BSA?

But I could see a girls' patrol having a rather different style of operation than a boys' patrol,  just as any two patrols could come to have their own style or culture.

[Eagledad]

6 minutes ago, Treflienne said:

I think that the patrol environment is very important to growth (based on my experience eons ago with patrols in a girl scout / girl guide context).   Why do you think that patrols will be neglected now that girls have joined BSA?

But I could see a girls' patrol having a rather different style of operation than a boys' patrol,  just as any two patrols could come to have their own style or culture.

You answered your question. Girls learn differently than boys, so the patrol method will have to compromise to have any growth. 

Barry

[Treflienne]

21 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

You answered your question. Girls learn differently than boys, so the patrol method will have to compromise to have any growth. 

Hi @Eagledad, I just don't understand what you mean.  Can you restate in different words?

By "the patrol environment is very important to growth"  I mean that learning to work with others in a patrol environment is important to the growth of the individual scouts.

 

[dfg890]

19 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Well, maybe the problem is just the the winning and losing. I think this is the issue that will make the transition difficult, especially for the boys.  Seems a lot of adults want to justify girls belonging in the program by showing they are the winners.

Yes, that makes sense of course, but this got started on your defending the one size fits all basis that boys and girls do learn the same. You are going to have to rethink your wording for those of us who believe girls and boys are different and that one size certainly does not fit all. As for data, there is plenty of data for the last 50 years that draws conclusions from other mixed or single gender programs. For those of us with experience, you are going to have to rethink an approach in the discussion that is less argumentative or divisive because you certainly aren't going to experience. I have enough experience to explain how this program promotes growth in young men. I happen to believe that girls will hurt that growth. You don' that experience, so I believe the best you can say is that the program is providing you an opportunity for your daughters that you plan to take advantage of you will see how that plays out. I certainly can't argue, in fact I agree.

Sameness of requirements doesn't mean the sameness of teaching methods. At least to those of us who experiences the difference between boys and girls. How did the leader in the example present the activity to the point of girls mopping up the boys? We don't know, but I sure don't see a willingness in the leaders words to do the activity different next time. In fact, the words imply the girls are just better than boys. This is the problem the BSA is going to have to deal with on the whole. Are girls really better? If so, now what? Even when adults say that girls and boys are equal, they can't wait (like in the camporee) to point out when girls are "more" equal. One poster said we need to be cheering the girls on, but how do we do that without turning the boys into losers? Did the girls have to take top honors at the camporee to be winners? 

But let me just say that I think we are speaking from to different places, the Troop program is completely different in that to a large degree from the pack program. The individual scout in the troop sets the teaching style because they are learning from their decisions. The adults are supposed to step back and allow that style of learning play out on the scouts terms. My concern isn't that the individual scout can't learn from their decisions when the adults inject enough interference to prevent the scout from learning. Seems reasonable, yet we have the adults at the camporee getting in the way. The patrol environment is very important to growth, but will be neglected in my opinion because of the one size fits all mentality. Right now the scouts aren't mixed, but, they will eventually be mixed because there are a lot of adults who think the learning styles are equal. Ops, here we go again, round and round. LOL

Barry 

Look, I'm certain we come from widely different points of view and personal experiences.  I think it's a great time for growth in scouting.  I think that in order to expand we need to have flexible options for families.  I see no reason, even if we concede that the ideal should be separate dens or troops or patrols or what have you, to have options for those who that doesn't mesh with.  After all, we have the lone scout program.  No one would argue that is the ideal way to go through scouting, but it's there because there may be times it's the only way for the scout to participate.

That's really the crux of it. Even if we concede that an ideal exists and it is separation of the scouts on the basis of gender, then still we should allow other options, because that may mean the difference between participating and not participating at all for some.  I'll leave it at that because I think we've talked this to death and while I enjoy a spirited debate and thank you for thoughtful input which I'll consider, I do have much to go do.  I hope trying to see things from my perspective has helped you in some way, as reading your thoughts has helped me.  I will certainly endeavor to be less argumentative, its a flaw I'll probably never fully overcome.