Follow
Twenty years ago (or more) the B.S.A. concluded that Scouts ought to earn First Class rank in the first year based on a statistical ‘leading indicator’, a connection between when Scouts become First Class and how long they stay in Scouting.
Statistics can be a little ham-handed, they only reflect phenomena leaving us to interpret what’s really happening.
Accepting the premise that Scouts ought to earn First Class rank in the first year may drive a couple of different attitudes;
- Establishing a plan to get Scouts to First Class as quickly as possible, stepping them through requirements and moving them along because, well, Scouts ought to do this because that’s what we are told.
- Rejecting the idea as a statistically driven mandate that has no real effective purpose.
I don’t think either of these attitudes are particularly useful. It’s not a good idea to push Scouts to advance by creating a plan that moves them along a timeline. It’s equally shortsighted to think the B.S.A. just wants to drive numbers and they are asking us to do things to make the bottom line look better.
So why First Class in the First year? What does it matter?
If we unpack this ‘leading indicator’ we may begin to understand exactly what is being indicated and why it’s important.
- To become First Class in the first year a Scout has to be a member of an active troop that goes camping regularly, that provides plenty of opportunities to learn and use Scouting skills, that effectively presents the full Scouting program touching on all the aims and methods. Scouts earning First Class in the first year are one sign of a healthy troop.
- Scouting promises a number of things to a Scout and they are all associated with requirements up to First Class rank. A Scout earning First Class in the first year is an indication these promises are being delivered.
We can also contextualize the idea of a ‘leading indicator’ – it is just that; a reliable indication of what’s happening. It is not, however the only or necessarily the best indicator.
All that being said I think that Scouts earning First Class in the first year is an important aspiration and one that should be promoted. A healthy troop that is delivering the promises of Scouting will have Scouts earning First Class in the first year pretty regularly not because it is something they specifically drive towards but as a natural result of the health of the program.
What’s left to us is to look at our troops and see if we are getting Scouts to this benchmark. If we aren’t what should we start doing, stop doing or continue doing to make it happen?
Should Scouts earn First class in the first year?
Yes.
Should we come up with a specific, time driven plan that makes this happen because it ought to?
No.
What we ought to do is stop doing things that make this less likely and start doing things that make it more likely.
I was on a campout last week-end and a young scout who crossed over in the spring asked one of our Star scouts if he could check out the compass hanging from the older scouts daypack. After holding it for about 10 seconds the younger scout handed it back and asked… “so which way is north?”. The Star scout fumbled with it a bit. turned the degrees wheel like tuning a radio, wiggled his hand a little to jiggle the needle, then replied. “I don’t know.”
Um… just stand still and the needle will point North.
did I mention this same scout has his Orienteering badge. Amazing. The result of afternoon “merit badge classes” and rushing to get the reqs marked off.
Hopefully this is an isolated case. I’ve just recently gotten active in the troop and am observing before sticking my foot in my mouth with alot of ‘how it should be done’ rhetoric.
Mike
Hi Mike,
I fear that this may not be just an isolated case. Even though a scout may learn the skills, and learn them well, at age 11 or 12, by the time age 15 or 16 roles around, if he has not seen them in action or practiced them in a real world setting, he loses them. Thus, I have a plan to put a lot of these skills into use in the coming year. On a backpacking trip, I will give the map to a scout, and tell him to get us from point A to point B. I will give a dining fly to a patrol and tell them to use a two half hitches and a taught line hitch to put it up between two trees. We will go to the summer red cross life saving course as a troop, and put up a simple camp gate with lashings at a council scout camp. But it won’t happen unless we intend for it to happen.
About 3 years ago, at a Troop leadership conference the boys realized they did not have the level of understanding of the requirements to first class. They came up with a solution that works very well. The patrol leaders, we have 4, survey the members of their patrol for the requirments they would like to learn on the first and second meeting of the month. Thier surveys are forwarded to the ASPL. The ASPL contacts the Troop giudes and skills instructors to inform them of what needs to be covered on the 3rd meeting of the month. The scouts coined an acronym OSNST. Old Scout New Scout Training. This happens on the 3rd meeting of the month. The Older higher ranking scouts work with the younger ranks 1 on 1 ,if possible. This works well in that the older typically do not remember everything but they will study harder now that they are expected by the younger scouts to know their stuff. The older scouts have a week to brush up on their skills and they do. The desire to succed in this comes from their peers. They like this format and it is employed every month. The result from this is the senior ranks are learning just as much as the younger ranks.
Michael
“The red flag here would be if NO boys were reaching first class in a year or 18 months or if most or all were getting stuck at one of the early ranks for years at a time.” You said what i wanted to say, and much better than I did.
If no Scout is reaching First Class due to program issues. If almost all Scouts are reaching First Class because the Troop is run like a Webelos den. Neither is good. Scouting is always going to lie somewhere in the middle.
Statistics can be misleading and in the case of developing boys they should not be applied across the board in terms of setting individual goals. The goal is for the boy to develop into a self sufficient man of great character. In doing so he must learn to educate himself. Boys cognitive development occurs at different times, unique to each boy. I have seen boys cognitive ability go from a spark to a burning fire at each age group. As Scoutmaster we need to provide an environment in which the Scout can educate himself and encourage him to acconplish the realistic goals he has set for himself.
Setting the goal for one year is a good approach. The skills up through first class are basic scout skills that scouts need to acquire early on. Our recent summer camps have all included some type of “path to eagle” program that give the scouts that attend a head start. We also have a couple campouts during the year that are relatively low key with lots of opportunity to focus on scout skills. During the outings we have breakout sessions run by older boys on specific skills.
Not all boys make it to first class in the first year but this is mainly due to not participating in outings. Sometimes we run into problems with cooking where we have scouts serve as cooks for patrols other than their own to complete the requirements. This is due to the issue of having all the new scouts in one patrol but I believe we will be getting away from having a new boy patrol for the upcoming crossover group.
After being Scoutmaster for several years now and a Scouter for a few years before that and seeing a number of groups of new boys come through the program, I’ve come to view this as a indicator of the health of the program and not as a goal to be achieved in itself.
Boys are all different in their approach and commitment to Scouts. Some are all in, attending every outing shoving their book under your nose to be tested on what they have just mastered. Others just kind of drift through the program, missing outings and advancement opportunities. Often you have to ask those Scouts if they learned anything at the outing and then they will hustle off to get their book (if they brought it) to get it signed. They all get to First Class in the end. Some just take longer to do it. Often the less motivated boys don’t become excited about a new rank until they have only a few achievements left to go and can see it on the horizon. Of the Webelos that entered the Troop two years ago when I became Scoutmaster, one is Star, two are First Class and two are Second class. Obviously the first took advancement seriously and the last two, not so much.
The red flag here would be if NO boys were reaching first class in a year or 18 months or if most or all were getting stuck at one of the early ranks for years at a time. That would give me pause for reflection on why they weren’t getting opportunities to advance. Are we not having enough outings? Is the PLC concentrating on their favorite skills and skipping the less popular but needed ones? Is there one crucial achievement that we have missed in our program?
One thing we sometimes miss is that advancement is optional. No Scout is required to advance. While it’s the exception to the rule I have had a few Scouts over the years who showed little to no interest in advancement at all – that’s fine by me.
“It’s equally shortsighted to think the B.S.A. just wants to drive numbers and they are asking us to do things to make the bottom line look better.”
That’s a bit naive. My DE has been calling us for weeks because they need a new unit on the books and want us to form a Venture Crew (I have 134 Scouts and 86 Registered Adults). No one here is interested but since we are the biggest in the District they think we can spare a handful.
While that example is not about 1st Year 1st Class they (the professionals) do have numbers they have to hit (units, scouts, advancement, popcorn, FOS) in their District.
Well. I don’t think I am being naive about First Class emphasis, nor about the numbers that a District Executive concerns themselves with.
One of the points I was attempting to make (perhaps imperfectly) is that while ‘leading indicators’ are driven by numbers and statistics we shouldn’t be so cynical to reject them simply on that basis.
Are D.E.s concerned about driving numbers? Certainly. But I think it’s a bit cynical to imply that they don’t appreciate the good things that those numbers represent.
At some level Scouting professionals and volunteers have only numbers to look at, they may not know every specific story and concern associated with them but it’s been my experience that they appreciate there’s more than just numbers at stake.
I agree generally. But the way we’ve come to approach it is to insure our program maximizes opportunities. Not spoon feeding per say, but insuring we camp every month, real camping, not lockins or cabins. That we do service projects regularly. We came from a troop that seemd to take the oppossite tack, where the refrain was always “slow down, don’t be in a rush” and as a result scouts often took years to make first class…or they just drifted away.
One of the problems with a scheduled approach to advancement is akin to the training of our youth leaders at training events or weekends, as Clark described a few weeks ago. Just as adults give a “Trained” patch to a young patrol leader and send him off to do what they taught him at the event, we adult leaders will mark off a requirement in a book and consider that an end of the matter. We teach the scouts a bowline knot or a round lashing, watch them tie one, and mark the book. On to the next requirement. Some of the skills we expect the scouts to know, they do not retain. With modern tents and gear, they may never have to tie a knot, lash a pole, or light a fire after they get these requirements marked off. In the past, I have sat on Eagle boards of review where someone brought a rope, asked the candidate to tie a clove hitch, and I watched as the embarrassed scout fumbled with the rope trying to remember how to do it.
I became challenged a few years ago to see that the scouts had to use these skills regularly. I make patrols put up tarps and dining flies using basic scouting knots. I make scouts read maps and prepare for hikes. I have a fire master appointed on camp outs, responsible for starting the camp fire. (Clark, your video on this is priceless.) Just as we should consider the idea of leadership development as a long term activity instead of just leadership training, I believe we should adopt the idea of “Scout Skills development” in a troop setting. To me as SM, this means finding ways to incorporate the basic first class skills into the camping trips. This is where patrol competition is great. If I hold a patrol game to see which patrol can find evidence of 10 woodland creatures, or a “name that tree” type of game (should I let them use their iphones to find the answers? It could make it fun for them.) I will be doing skills development, which I think is more in the spirit of the scoutcraft skills requirements.
According to the advancement requirements listed on the National website, retesting is NOT Appropriate for a board of review. See the following for the exact wording from national: http://www.scouting.org/sitecore/content/home/guidetoadvancement/boardsofreview.aspx
I totally agree that a BOR is not a retest. An on that occasion, if memory serves, we did award the scout his Eagle rank. But have you not seen the kind of scouter who brings a rope to a BOR and asks a boy to tie something? To some, it is an old tradition.
My point is that this scout had not had to use the knot skills in such a long time that he had forgotten them. It is the characteristic of modern camping equipment that rope and knots are not required. I taught my scouts to use a fire steel sparker to start the camp fire, and some older boys wondered “Why do that. We could just all bring a Bic lighter.” We need to find ways to make the skills relevant and needed. And we need to make the review of these skills into a game the boys will like to play.
I agree, but 🙂
Boy Scouts is not Webelos. There is an element of “I get it” that is a vital part of the Boy Scout Program. Just because we have an axe yard at the campout, we don’t award every Scout his Tot’n Chip or sign off his knife/axe requirement. He is expected to “get it”, participate, learn, approach someone to have his skill reviewed, and approach someone to have his requirement signed off.
Getting all of that takes about one to two years if a Scout starts at 11 years old. Yes, I agree that the Troop should be moving along so that those Scouts who “get it” have every opportunity for regular advancement. However, some of them, maybe many of them, won’t “get it” in the first 12 months. Many Scouts are Tenderfoot or Second Class after a year and may have several requirements signed off for their next rank. They just haven’t taken the initiative to finish the whole thing.
That’s how boys (and men) work. We start things. We don’t finish things. That is one of the most important things a new Scout is learning. How to get finished.