Reply to Girl Scouts have lost their way

Forum Index » Off-Topic

Reply to "Girl Scouts have lost their way"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I'm the PP who is doing the Aerospace badge, etc.

The new programming is too much like school b/c they made a decision to align it with Common Core -- i.e. SCHOOL principles.  So they made a decision to get rid of a lot of interesting badges to focus on more school curriculum types of ideas.  We find that our FCPS students have done a bunch of the badge/journey requirements already.

What girls want is outdoor activities.  Unfortunately, the pool of adult women who have outdoor experience is very small and the pool of adults (either men or women) who are willing to take a group on an outdoor activity is even smaller.  We need adults willing to (a) learn and (b) lead.  My theory about why girls leave scouting in the upper elementary grades is that they out grow the program (get bored with just selling cookies and doing throw-away crafts in a school cafeteria at night).  They aren't being challenged and that's b/c the leaders are still plugging along with the skills they used for the K-3rd grade girls... and no other parents have stepped up to bring new skills to the girls.  The girls want to be challenged, but in order to challenge them, we need adults who are trained and willing to use their weekends to spend with a troop.  Most parents (of girls in scouts) are more comfortable with "spa days" than with campfires.... and they are very attached to keeping it that way.  Eventually the girls realize they can go to spa days without being in GS and they really don't have any need for scouting anymore b/c they have BTDT with the cookies and "make the world a better place" stuff.

Unfortunately, Nationals is actively destroying some of the best badges in GS -- which are the "council's own."  No, our local GSCNC council doens't have any good ones, but there are some really great badges offered by other councils (oceanography, archery, archeology, etc., etc. -- just tons of interesting topic).  Nationals is telling all the councils to get rid of their CO's unless they can make it specific to THAT particular location (so girls outside the council can't earn it).  This is just a travesty b/c they got rid of all the interesting badges that used to be national (outdoor cooking, horse rider, etc.) and now they are getting rid of the remaining interesting badges.

Again, I still think GSing is worthwhile, especially for kids who are not on athletic teams and need to learn how to work as a group...  but nationals is making it harder to find fun -- active -- things for girls to do under the scouting label.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics