New Cub Scout requirements are up - denner?

[Armymutt]

Took a glance at SB tonight.  One of the requirements for the Bear Bobcat adventure is "Learn about the denner position and responsibilities."  That will be interesting with 2 kids.  I also noticed that the youth protection part that used to be just part of the rank requirements is now one of the required adventures.  Bears no longer have to learn about knife safety or how to tie knots.  The only outdoor activity required is a 1-mile hike.  There is no requirement to observe nature during this hike.  You could probably do it on a track.  Oh, and there's exciting stuff like reviewing your medical record and "Learn about the mission of any non-profit. Find out how they fund their activities and how volunteers are used to help."  That just screams 3rd grader fun.  No more outings, no need to interact with the community.  Everything could be done in a classroom in 8 weeks.  This is definitely going to bring in hordes of kids.  

[Eagle94-A1]

Reading your post, and thinking how National will be "simplifying" the Scouts BSA program, It's as if multiple voices in my head are saying

 

Edited May 31 by Eagle94-A1

[Eagle94-A1]

This is what happens when educators take over the program.  BP said it best:

                           "Boys can see adventure in a dirty old duck puddle, and if the Scoutmaster is a boys’ man he can see it too."

                           “See things from the boy's point of view.”

                        "A boy is not a sitting-down animal."

                        "A fisherman does not bait his hook with food he likes. He uses food the fish likes. So with boys."

We need folks writing advancement  requirements who can see things through a kid's eye, remembering the excitement and adventures of their youth. We need folks writing advancement  requirements who realize the importance of experimental learning, as opposed to formal learning.  We need folks writing advancement  requirements that understand that some folks, especially boys, learn by doing. We need folks writing advancement  requirements that understand that failure is a learning method, probably one of the best. We need folks writing advancement  requirements that understand giving responsibility to youth is a way to help them learn and grow.

But most importantly We need folks writing advancement  requirement that understand that we cannot be all things to all people because "The open-air is the real objective of Scouting and the key to its success."

(sorry for some bolding, cannot undo it despite several attempts.)

 

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

On 5/30/2024 at 9:24 PM, Armymutt said:

There is no requirement to observe nature during this hike.  You could probably do it on a track. 

Did you check the leader guide?

Bear Habitat

Outdoors

REQUIRED

Requirement 7

Wildlife Snapshot

Snapshot of Activity

While on a walk, Cub Scouts identify six signs of any mammals, birds, insects, or reptiles.

https://www.scouting.org/cub-scout-activities/wildlife-snapshot/

 

[Tron]

Not required; but part of the rank still, yes. You have whittling for knife safety and you have knots added to the fishing adventure. I am not sure what the complaint is here? If you're running a 12 month program as prescribed you can easily add these adventures and provide the learning experience for the scouts.

[Eagle94-A1]

1 hour ago, Tron said:

If you're running a 12 month program as prescribed you can easily add these adventures and provide the learning experience for the scouts.

That is the thing, most packs still use a 9 month cycle based upon the school year. In all my years in Scouting, in multiple councils, only 1 pack had a 12 month program, and even then it was modified: instead of weekly meeting, it was biweekly fun activities to have Cubs earn the Summertime Award. In fact the entire reason why that award was created was to give an incentive for packs to remain active in some way over the summer.

 

Edited June 4 by Eagle94-A1

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

2 hours ago, Tron said:

Not required; but part of the rank still, yes.

Bear Habitat is rank required and wildlife observation is still a required part of the adventure, so I am also unclear on the problem.

Personally, I like almost everything I'm seeing, and lot of the new adventures seem like invitations to gamify more outdoors programming to me. I've been focusing on Webelos first, and I see several of the new adventures as ways to get the scouts to get better at outdoors life and scoutcraft. A lot of the requirements seem to split up into plan/prepare for the outings during meetings and then go do outdoor adventure, which is exactly as it should be. There's more repetition of skills year to year, which will reinforce key outdoor skills. The glances I've taken to other ranks are consistent with that, IMO.

Adding swimming, camping, fishing and boating adventures to all ranks is great, for example. That's a great way to encourage the whole pack to come out adventuring more. The requirements also set up a situation where the older scouts naturally serve as an example to the younger scouts. I see all kinds of potential for creating a strong pack scoutcraft culture by scheduling as many of the outdoor optional adventures as possible and choosing the outdoor and active options for the required adventures. Leave No Trace being interwoven into the adventures is also fantastic and makes it really easy to leverage their children's materials as well. Nothing is perfect, but I'm really excited to use these adventures to get those scouts outdoors more and with more skills asked of them for advancement!

[Tron]

On 6/4/2024 at 2:22 PM, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Bear Habitat is rank required and wildlife observation is still a required part of the adventure, so I am also unclear on the problem.

Personally, I like almost everything I'm seeing, and lot of the new adventures seem like invitations to gamify more outdoors programming to me. I've been focusing on Webelos first, and I see several of the new adventures as ways to get the scouts to get better at outdoors life and scoutcraft. A lot of the requirements seem to split up into plan/prepare for the outings during meetings and then go do outdoor adventure, which is exactly as it should be. There's more repetition of skills year to year, which will reinforce key outdoor skills. The glances I've taken to other ranks are consistent with that, IMO.

Adding swimming, camping, fishing and boating adventures to all ranks is great, for example. That's a great way to encourage the whole pack to come out adventuring more. The requirements also set up a situation where the older scouts naturally serve as an example to the younger scouts. I see all kinds of potential for creating a strong pack scoutcraft culture by scheduling as many of the outdoor optional adventures as possible and choosing the outdoor and active options for the required adventures. Leave No Trace being interwoven into the adventures is also fantastic and makes it really easy to leverage their children's materials as well. Nothing is perfect, but I'm really excited to use these adventures to get those scouts outdoors more and with more skills asked of them for advancement!

You have to be careful with this as the new platform is a choose your own adventure type situation. Many of the things we're discussing are still in the rank but there alternate options. The quality of the program is going to fall on the den leaders to make sure they are choosing to do the engaging fun stuff instead of just what is easy for them. The handbook reads like everything is required; however, when you go look at the website there is a bit of wiggle room. The new ranking scales per "story card" which outline indoor vs outdoor, energy level, resources, and time are going to be interesting to see how many lazy den leaders naturally gravitate to the 1 and 2 (low end) prep time/resource requirement story cards (adventure options). 

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

10 hours ago, Tron said:

You have to be careful with this as the new platform is a choose your own adventure type situation. Many of the things we're discussing are still in the rank but there alternate options. The quality of the program is going to fall on the den leaders to make sure they are choosing to do the engaging fun stuff instead of just what is easy for them. The handbook reads like everything is required; however, when you go look at the website there is a bit of wiggle room. The new ranking scales per "story card" which outline indoor vs outdoor, energy level, resources, and time are going to be interesting to see how many lazy den leaders naturally gravitate to the 1 and 2 (low end) prep time/resource requirement story cards (adventure options). 

I agree that the quality of the program is going to fall on the den leaders to make sure they are choosing to do the engaging fun stuff instead of just what is easy for them, but that has always been the case - that's not a change. 

I'm not sure what you mean by "wiggle room" in what's required where, but in the case of Bear Habitat (which is rank required) there is only one activity suggested for requirement 7, which is the one I posted above. Unless Scoutbook doesn't have requirement 7 as required, which I can't check right now, it would seem that Bears are still required to make animal sign observations. That verbiage is even the same as before. Or am I missing something here?

I was hoping that seeing that it wasn't in fact the case that you can walk the mile on a track without paying any attention would be heartening, but perhaps it wasn't. May all beings be happy regardless.

 

[Tron]

On 6/10/2024 at 10:30 PM, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

I agree that the quality of the program is going to fall on the den leaders to make sure they are choosing to do the engaging fun stuff instead of just what is easy for them, but that has always been the case - that's not a change. 

I'm not sure what you mean by "wiggle room" in what's required where, but in the case of Bear Habitat (which is rank required) there is only one activity suggested for requirement 7, which is the one I posted above. Unless Scoutbook doesn't have requirement 7 as required, which I can't check right now, it would seem that Bears are still required to make animal sign observations. That verbiage is even the same as before. Or am I missing something here?

I was hoping that seeing that it wasn't in fact the case that you can walk the mile on a track without paying any attention would be heartening, but perhaps it wasn't. May all beings be happy regardless.

 

We're both probably missing stuff here as not everything is available/clearly defined yet. Supposedly the SB+ stuff is being cleaned up right now and some of this confusion should go away. I really wish they had just published hardcopy leader guides for the wolves-aol. Hoping back and forth between the handbooks and the website is going to get old fast.

[mrjohns2]

8 hours ago, Tron said:

I really wish they had just published hardcopy leader guides for the wolves-aol.

agreed

[fred8033]

I have to speak up as I'm an opposing view.

• PDF documentation enable BSA to rapidly update documents and provide the documents free to the end-user. 
• BSA should just partner with a printing company that then can print and ship on demand. 

It is wrong wrong to charge for materials that volunteers need to volunteer and have already paid their membership fees to volunteer.  ... Maybe, BSA should charge for bigger books like the scout handbooks.  Beyond that, we want BSA documentation to get into the hands of volunteers as fast and cheap as possible.  We don't want people volunteering and avoiding reading / seeing the materials because they have to pay yet more yet again.  

My big fear is that BSA maintaining an inventory of printed materials is a cost that needs to be off-set in sales and membership fees.  That creates a profit center that slows down keeping books up to date and creates a disincentive to make all the literature free as PDFs.

PLUS ... Some materials already have high volunteer input / authorship.   GTA?   If this can be done with high quality, it should continue and grow.   It feels wrong to charge for volunteer maintained documents.  ... I love the GTA and G2SS being free as PDFs.  IMHO, many more documents should follow that approach.

Edited June 14 by fred8033

[InquisitiveScouter]

On 6/14/2024 at 9:52 AM, fred8033 said:

I love the GTA and G2SS being free as PDFs

Me too, except the pdf of the G2SS is WAYYYYY out of date.

https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/gss/

This is a huge foul. 

We often take trips to places with no cell/data service.  I download the pdf to my phone for reference whilst out and about.

[mrjohns2]

On 6/14/2024 at 8:52 AM, fred8033 said:

PDF documentation enable BSA to rapidly update documents and provide the documents free to the end-user. 

They were PDFs before, but choose to charge for them on Amazon. 
 

Like @InquisitiveScouter pointed out, plenty of BSA info is a pdf or on a Website. They aren’t motivated or capable of keeping them updated. 

[fred8033]

1 hour ago, mrjohns2 said:

They were PDFs before, but choose to charge for them on Amazon. 
 

Like @InquisitiveScouter pointed out, plenty of BSA info is a pdf or on a Website. They aren’t motivated or capable of keeping them updated. 

Time for a dedicated volunteer corp.  Linux is based on volunteer maintenance.  BSA could do similar with leadership materials.