First Class First Year & Retaining Important Skills

[OldGreyEagle]

I am sorry, I do not undersatnd the very premise of this thread, so please help me out. I do not see how whether or not you have a FCFY program impacts skills retention. Whether the scout learns the skills to become first class in a year or it takes him five years the only way he will retain those skills is if he uses them and that is the role of the program. If you dont use it, you lose it, simply put. As it is obvious I miss Beavah's subtlety on this issue, can someone explain to me what the issue is?

[FScouter]

Bluntly, if the idea was thunk up by BSA and submitted as a good approach in the BSA provided book, it can't be nothin but no good. Homebrewed new-wheel inventions are far better. If you don't believe it, ask the inventor.

[SR540Beaver]

Beavah,

 

If you'll go back and read my post again, you won't see any mention of boys receiving sign-offs at the campout where they received active hands-on instruction from the TG's. I can assure you that each one of their books are still as blank as when they bought it a few weeks ago.

 

FCFY is a program, nothing more, nothing less. Think of it kind of like when the boys do their annual planning. They decide where they want to go each month and what they want to do on the outing. They have a road map for their journey. FCFY is a roadmap. The troop provides the program and if the boy will come, participate and demonstrate his knowledge and skill, he will advance individually. If he doesn't come and can't show any skill, he doesn't advance. Some program elements like the 5 mile hike have to be organized and scheduled. We can't do an individual 5 mile hike for each scout when he wants to do it. If he fails to show up for it, he does not get signed off and it may be months before we do it again and he won't advance. FCFY does not mean holding a lecture and then lining the boys up for a check mark in their book on their way to a 13 year old Eagle.

 

Perhaps some untrained folks do that and call it FCFY, but I don't know of any and would have to believe they are few and far between. At least they are in this neck of the woods.

[Beavah]

Yah, FScouter, I'd ask you again to begin by telling us all how the unit(s) you volunteer for operate, what it's setup is for first year boys, where you feel it's successful for them at learning/retaining skills and where you think there's room for improvement.

 

Just a simple courtesy for the discussion, mate, so we all understand where you're coming from. Lobbing stink bombs is easy, but working honestly on behalf of kids is hard. Leastways for those of us who don't come gifted with a textbook-perfect understanding .

 

Beavah

 

[Beavah]

Yah, sorry there SR540. I read "We adults watched the TG's do all of this skill instruction from halfway across camp in our lawn chairs. They had a lot thrown at them, so they spent the afternoon taking a 1.5 hour hike ... They came back and demonstrated their knowledge for the ASM's." That sounded like instruction/hike/signoff on the same outing.

 

I'm glad you don't do it that way, but I really do see that fairly frequently in troops. And I bet if other contributors are honest, more will admit to it. I know I sure have done exactly that to "move a boy along" advancement-wise in days when I was a SM.

 

It's not that FCFY is the cause directly. My worry is that FCFY is easy for adults to understand and adopt as a goal, which then drives them to "underweight" other more vital parts of the program to achieve the goal, or meet the kids'/parents' expectation for awards.

 

Learning skills to proficiency and solid retention is hard. That takes a lot of effort by the kid and the adults.

 

Youth leadership is hard, and also takes a lot of effort by kids and adults.

 

Building deep adult/youth relationships is hard, and takes a lot of effort by kids and adults.

 

etc. etc.

 

Getting a kid a First Class award in a year is, by contrast, pretty easy to understand and to execute, eh? Even from the proverbial "Scouter's lawn chair". It's especially easy if yeh don't quite understand and execute some of the other things I just listed.

 

I think FCFY often provides a spur or incentive to "go light" on the core methods of Scouting as an unintended consequence, especially in newer/inexperienced leaders and troops.

 

We might all ask ourselves questions like these:

 

Could an average Tenderfoot, right now, be dropped into Michael Auberry's situation and do the right things so that he's rescued on Saturday or Sunday?

 

Could an average First Class scout, with no additional adult help, plan a safe weekend canoe trip for his patrol?

 

Could I grab any boy above Second Class at random, present him with a serious bleed, and have him succeed at saving a life?

 

Yah, I think for most boys, with the attendance expectations of most troops, gettin' to that level of skill takes longer than a year, eh? Especially if they're goin' to have a huge helpin' of just running around the woods chasin' toads and armadillos, or figurin' out how to get along with a tentmate in a patrol, or engagin' in any of those other pesky scouting methods.

 

Skill proficiency is what advancement is supposed to mean, though - what a boy is able to do. And skill proficiency is necessary for safety, when we only have a few adults along, and boys might just wander off.

 

So I'm curious what other people do, because what I see is that often a real strong FCFY goal, for average kids with average attendance, tends to short the core methods of scoutin'.

 

My thanks to everybody who is sharing their experiences, their strengths, and their challenges.

[BrentAllen]

Beavah,

I don't think using/not using a FCFY program will determine whether the boys actually learn and retain the skills. As has been mentioned, FCFY is a road map, and a pretty clear one, compared to the alternative. It SHOULD help with attendance, as the Scouts will see they need to attend meetings and events, or they are going to miss a lot!

I think the problem with retention is too much Webelos-mentality carry-over for the new Scout parents and leaders. Cub Scouting is about experiencing things, and getting the requirement checked off. Boy Scouts should be about mastering the skills.

When little Johnny isn't advancing as fast as his friends, dear ol' mom is going to look at the requirements and say "Johnny was there for the first aid class for TF #12b, he should have that checked off!" Hopefully, a good leader would explain he needs to master those skills, not learn them just long enough to answer some questions at the end of the class.

When I was in Scouting as a youth, we used to have all kinds of skills relays between patrols - knots, first aid, fire building, etc. Sadly, I don't see much of that today.