Scouting America

[Tron]

On 9/18/2024 at 3:33 PM, Eagledad said:

The troop membership trend used to reflect the pack membership trend five years later. But the Cub growth in 2022 makes me wonder if adding girl membership will change that factor. I would be curious to know how much membership changes in the GSUSA from 10-year-olds to 12-year-olds. Do girls lose interest as the program becomes more outdoor? That is when my daughter quit.

Barry

National has to fix the girl troop/blended troop/coed troop issue before any female cub scout uptick can have a beneficial affect on troops. In my area we've lost so many female scouts due to no or poor troop options over the past 2 years. National needs to pull the trigger on full coed before next April or we're just going to lose a ton of female scouts yet again in crossover season.

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

1 hour ago, Tron said:

National has to fix the girl troop/blended troop/coed troop issue before any female cub scout uptick can have a beneficial affect on troops. In my area we've lost so many female scouts due to no or poor troop options over the past 2 years. National needs to pull the trigger on full coed before next April or we're just going to lose a ton of female scouts yet again in crossover season.

This seems to be generally true. Once the rules start requiring gender segregation, suddenly you have an operational problem if you don't have a critical mass of girls (to be clear, we also care about and value the presence of boys in Scouting America units, but because it used to be the case that all units were 100% boys there are already a lot of boys in the organization such that best I can tell nobody is struggling to serve them), and it's hard to get that critical mass in one go. 

We had a scout in my unit be the only one who couldn't tent with another scout at Webelo-AOL "transition" summer camp and had to tent with a parent. That happened because of the genders of who happened to sign up from our unit as well as the added complexity for the camp to track and match gender in each campsite and operational den. The scout was promised a tentmate by the camp, and the scout was excited to meet them until the point close to bedtime that it became clear that they weren't coming. The camp had moved the pack with the other lone girl to another campsite and patrol without noticing that it broke the gender pairing. TBH I can't blame them. It's too much.

Edited Wednesday at 04:33 PM by AwakeEnergyScouter
Typo

[Eagledad]

1 hour ago, Tron said:

National has to fix the girl troop/blended troop/coed troop issue before any female cub scout uptick can have a beneficial affect on troops. In my area we've lost so many female scouts due to no or poor troop options over the past 2 years. National needs to pull the trigger on full coed before next April or we're just going to lose a ton of female scouts yet again in crossover season.

Are you saying an option for full coed or single-gender patrols or just full coed?

I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe National knows something you don't.

Barry

[Eagle94-A1]

Talking to folks in the UK when they went coed, single gendered troop, whether all male or all female, gradually died off.

[Eagledad]

22 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Talking to folks in the UK when they went coed, single gendered troop, whether all male or all female, gradually died off.

It makes sense, efficiency with limited resources of adults would encourage a coed program.

Barry

[qwazse]

Moms who were fielding a very active GS/USA unit in our neighborhood retired. So we are a little behind in girls joining the pack. I’m starting to give those parents a warning that their daughters will need to recruit a critical mass for our CO to support them. The parent remain clueless that “family scouting”, “scouts BSA”, and “Scouting America” are just corporate doublespeak for the program of BSA4G that now operated in anddition to BSA.

[BetterWithCheddar]

On 10/3/2024 at 4:07 AM, qwazse said:

The parent remain clueless that “family scouting”, “scouts BSA”, and “Scouting America” are just corporate doublespeak for the program of BSA4G that now operated in anddition to BSA.

In defense of those parents, I don't think the BSA (SA?) has done a particularly good job of branding itself in the public sphere, considering those of us closer to the program still struggle.

I still do not know how to refer to the classic Scouting program formerly for boys ages 11-18. We used to distinguish between "Cub Scouts" and "Boy Scouts." Then it was "Cub Scouts" and "Scouts BSA." Now, I guess it would be "Cub Scouts" and just "Scouts?" That's confusing because Cub Scouts are also Scouts, are they not?

[MikeS72]

18 minutes ago, BetterWithCheddar said:

In defense of those parents, I don't think the BSA (SA?) has done a particularly good job of branding itself in the public sphere, considering those of us closer to the program still struggle.

I still do not know how to refer to the classic Scouting program formerly for boys ages 11-18. We used to distinguish between "Cub Scouts" and "Boy Scouts." Then it was "Cub Scouts" and "Scouts BSA." Now, I guess it would be "Cub Scouts" and just "Scouts?" That's confusing because Cub Scouts are also Scouts, are they not?

Cut and pasted from the front page of scouting.org

[BetterWithCheddar]

1 hour ago, MikeS72 said:

Cut and pasted from the front page of scouting.org

Thanks, but I'm not sure that really helps. The BSA moniker is no more, yet we still brand our flagship program as "Scouts BSA?" (never mind the fact that "Scouts BSA" wasn't a particularly strong re-brand to begin with).

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

4 hours ago, BetterWithCheddar said:

I still do not know how to refer to the classic Scouting program formerly for boys ages 11-18. We used to distinguish between "Cub Scouts" and "Boy Scouts." Then it was "Cub Scouts" and "Scouts BSA." Now, I guess it would be "Cub Scouts" and just "Scouts?" That's confusing because Cub Scouts are also Scouts, are they not?

I think we're all struggling with this. I have found myself saying and writing "cub scouts" more (for cub scouts, of course) whereas I used to just say "scouts" about them, and "the regular scouting program" about what is formally called Scouts BSA and trying to reserve "scouts" for those older youth. But I can see that my division of cub scouts being "extra" and Scouts BSA being the "regular" program isn't necessarily how others around me think about it so I don't know that I'd recommend that last bit.

I suppose the way it used to be way back when cub scouts were wolf cubs and blue-winged butterflies makes it clear in that 'scout' isn't even in the name for those, but it would be a real bad idea to give up the US Cub Scouts brand when there's nothing particularly wrong with it. But, certainly, to me 'scouts' is the patrol-method-using thing above all else, so while it doesn't solve the problem directly I do think that adding that 'cub' for cub scouts can help with clarity.