malraux

Finishing AOL and crossing over requires finishing 4th grade plus 6 months and or six months since becoming 10.

Which seems kinda jerk-ish on the part of the troop, IMO. Not that the troop should be at the beck and call of the pack, but the troop visits shouldn't be about just troop recruitment.

That doesn't seem exactly right. The threat is that "If we are not assured that she will be allowed to attend and participate fully then legal action may be the next step. I also plan on having a word with the school about allowing an organization to sell a program to girls that is then excluding those girls. In the future, parental permission should be required for outside organizations to use school time to recruit." That is not threatening legal action to require all units to go co-ed. Just that the troop shouldn't offer a camping opportunity to a pack and exclude some of the pack members. Now I'm skeptical of the potential success of such legal action, as the bsa is a private group and private groups can be exclusionary. The flip side of the bsa being a private group and their ability to be exclusionary is the somewhat legitimate point that not every private group should be granted access time to schools.

Theres a difference between the male female ratio changing and the rate of men going to college changing. If suddenly lots of women start going to college while the same percentage of men go to college, the m/f ratio will change while nothing has changed for the men.

I also find it to be a weird choice that GSUSA makes it difficult to find a girl scout troop to join. You have to send an inquiry to find local troops that are currently accepting girls and hope there's an opening. For all the tech issues with the BSA, the beascout pin system does work.

Weirdly, we have the same situation; the 4th and 2nd grade GSUSA troops folded so several of those girls transferred over.

My impression of the webelos program is that it is intended as a 1.5-2 year process. You can earn the pins in any order, with the general idea that you earn the web core ones in the first year to get that rank and then the aol core ones the next year, but you can work on aol elements while a 4th grader.

Totally anecdotal, but that's pretty consistent with my pack's experience. We're having pretty good recruitment numbers, still trying to pin down if any kids aren't coming back.

I'm pretty sure that within scout book you can. (and I think that internet advancement would also let you do so). When I was converting my pack's records to scout book, I had to add a bunch of missed things, like bobcat awards, to get everything correct. The system let me add bobcat for previous years. That said, does it matter?

But the scouting page or the be a scout page are more gender neutral. Its really the sign up for more info about scouts bsa starting in February that has a prominent girls only look. But if I’m a boy, I’m looking to sign up now.

To a large extent, the free range ideas are about properly assessing risks. So its recognizing that the drive to a trailhead is often as or more dangerous than the hike itself. Also the goal should be how to handle dangerous situations, ie being prepared.

Or properly buckle up while in the car.

But in modern times, kids are relatively safe from things like abduction.

But for the LNT stuff at my wood badge, we actually went out to have semi-practical stuff done by the Venture crew... Some people really get the wrong ideas from WB.

We just had our recruitment night, and had pretty fair turnout. A lot of higher grade youth, both boys and girls.