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Call My Bluff *head Butts Keyboard*


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Interesting experience with the troop last night that I thought I'd share.....

 

So this term my troop has had an in take of 5 new scouts none of who were cubs before. It's quite unusual, the vast majority of ours feed through from the cub pack in our group with only a handful of "externals".

 

So with them not having a cubs background we introduced a bit of scout history to the troop last night with a game of call my bluff. The hope being that the knowledge of the existing scouts would seamlessly get transferred to the newbies.

 

Hmmmmm......

 

First how to do it. A big favourite game with the troop is a version of Call My Bluff. For this you get the patrols to line up at one end of the room, field or where ever you are and at the other end you have some chairs, one chair less than the number of patrols. Behind each chair stand a leader.

 

Another leader reads a question then in turn each leader behind the chair tries to convince the scouts that theirs is the correct answer. One from scout from each patrol runs down the room and sits on the chair of the correct answer. If someone is there already they have to sit on top of them. 5 points for the patrol of the scout on the bottom, 1 point for the others on top.

 

So this time round it was on scouting history. Quiz and numbers going for each answer below. In some cases impressive, in some cases I could have openly wept.......

 

1.             Who founded the Scout Movement?

a.             Bear Grylls  0

b.             Lord Robert Baden Powell 5

c.             Field Marshall Montgomery 0

d.             Neil Armstrong 0

 

Not bad but lets face it an easy one

 

2.             At which battle did he first have the idea?

a.             Mafeking 0

b.             Trafalgar 2

c.             Waterloo 3

d.             The Bulge 0

 

Well at least Waterloo was on land. But Trafalgar? TRAFALGAR?

 

3.             On what date did BP run the first experimental scout camp?

a.             1 August 1914 2

b.             1 January 1939 0

c.             1 August 1900 1

d.             1 August 1907 2

 

At least they all got the 1 August bit.

 

4.             Where was that camp held?

a.             The Isle of Wight 1

b.             The Isle of Skye 1

c.             Brownsea Island 3

d.             Holy Island 0

 

At least Isle of Wight is in the same part of the world. Isle of Skye? *head butts keyboard*

 

5.             What book did BP write after that camp?

a.             The Dangerous Book for Boys 0

b.             Guiding for Girls 0

c.             Scouting for Boys 5

d.             Just William 0

 

Better.

 

6.             In what place does Scouting For Boys Come in the all time best sellers list?

a.             1st 1

b.            4th 3

c.             114th

d.             57th 1

 

7.            What happened next?

a.             Teachers at schools started setting up scout troops 2

b.             Local police started setting up scout troops 2

c.             Local councils started setting up scout troops 1

d.             Groups of boys started setting up scout troops 0

 

So much for youth lead!

 

8.             In what year did cubs start?

a.             1916 4

b.             1914 1

c.             1945 0

d.             1978 0

 

Not bad.

 

9.             What book was the cub programme themed on?

a.             The Jungle book 5

b.             Just William 0

c.             20000 Leagues Under The Sea 0

d.             King Solomons Mines 0

 

I would have gently rocked myself to sleep if they got that one wrong! Our cub leaders positively revel in their jungle book personas :)

 

10.          In what year were girls admited to all age groups of scouts in the UK?

a.             2007 2

b.             1986 2

c.             1991 0

d.             2000 1 

 

To be fair they have all grown up with scouts always being mixed so no particular reason to know that.

 

11.          In what year was the first World Scout Jamboree?

a.             1930 0

b.             1920 2

c.             1940 0

d.             1910 3

 

I was impressed that any of them got that!

 

12.          The next Jamboree is this summer in Japan, where was the previous Jamboree in 2011?

a.             Norway 0

b.             Denmark 0

c.             Finland 0

d.            Sweden 5

 

Again quite impressed

 

13.          In which year was 12th Cambridge (our group) founded?

a.             1911 0

b.             2000 2

c.             1948 3

c.             1950 0

 

It's on our group t-shirts for heavens sake! And you don't have to spend very long in our building to know that it was definitely not built in the 21st century. (There's some debate whether it's even up to 19th century standards!)

 

14.          Roughly how many scouts are there in the world?

a.             35 million 2

b.             40 million 3

c.             10 million 0

d.             20 million 0

 

Not bad!

 

15.          Which country in the world has the most scouts?

a.             the United Kingdom 2

b.             Indonesia 0

c.             Russia 1

d.             Japan 2

 

At least some knew that it was in the far east.....

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@@Cambridgeskip, be thankful. Had you given the same test in the US you'd have gotten a much worse return.

 

"Baden-Powellwas in the army?"

 

"Isn't Mafeking Simba's father?"

 

"Isn't scouting for boys against the law?"

 

The US educational system leaves much to be desired. ;)

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I have a friend who teaches Western history and literature at a fairly prestigious college.

 

When he started his carreer, he asked all of his social media friends to help by replying to him with bogus answers to certain of the multiple choice questions. Great fun for all of us. Later he'd report whose answers were the winning decoys (i.e., the most students wrongly selecting a that reply).  More often than not, the decoys many degrees of separation from the right answer were selected the most. The ones quite close (at least, that I would have chosen) were rarely selected.

 

Anyway, all the best to your newbies. If they stick with it, they will definitely change troop culture. (Hopefully by bringing more non-cubs and increasing the level of cluelessness.) But, most years that's quite refreshing.

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In the States you'd possibly get as good a result with a random number generator.  But in defense of those who don't/didn't know the answers, I'm not sure how important those pieces of trivia* are to new scouts.  I work at the cub level in the US and I know none of that info is ever reviewed or presented.  And I occasionally skim through the BSA handbook, and I don't believe the majority of those answers are addressed.

 

*I intentionally used the word trivia because I don't think any of those pieces of information are core to what being a scout is.

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In the States you'd possibly get as good a result with a random number generator.  But in defense of those who don't/didn't know the answers, I'm not sure how important those pieces of trivia* are to new scouts.  I work at the cub level in the US and I know none of that info is ever reviewed or presented.  And I occasionally skim through the BSA handbook, and I don't believe the majority of those answers are addressed.

 

*I intentionally used the word trivia because I don't think any of those pieces of information are core to what being a scout is.

 

Yet just about every kid under 13 can conjugate the entire Pokemon Pokedex...yet don't know who the Vice President is.  :D

  1. Pokédex (n.) (Japanese: ãƒã‚±ãƒ¢ãƒ³å›³é‘‘) An illustrated Pokémon digital encyclopedia created by Professor Oak as an invaluable tool to Trainers in the Pokémon world.
Edited by Bad Wolf
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Yet just about every kid under 13 can conjugate the entire Pokemon Pokedex...yet don't know who the Vice President is.  :D

  1. Pokédex (n.) (Japanese: ãƒã‚±ãƒ¢ãƒ³å›³é‘‘) An illustrated Pokémon digital encyclopedia created by Professor Oak as an invaluable tool to Trainers in the Pokémon world.

 

You might be on to something here.  Scouting needs to pokefy itself.  BP becomes Lord Baden Bowell, an earth type.  His special power is poop missiles. 

Edited by SlowDerbyRacer
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>Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?

 

Julia Boggs Dent

The General Grant National memorial (AKA "Grant's Tomb") contains the bodies of:

 

Hiram Ulysses Grant

Julia Dent Grant

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