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What you're talking about already exists. They're just called Venture Crews, and they don't have any fitness tests and are variable in how active they are. Realistically, 11 is too young for them to make that kind of choice. Even if the kid can pass some kind of test, they aren't going to keep up. My program was geared toward Venture crews and older scouts and while there were a few 12 and 13 year olds who slipped through for various reasons and invariably did fine, there's generally a pretty clear skill progression with age, and when I worked with younger kids on the side there's no way I'd want them anywhere near my program as a matter of course. If you were to try to separate these kids out right after crossing over all but a few would go to normal troops and the pipeline would dry up pretty quickly because no one wants to join a troop without their friends. Aside from the fitness test, nothing is preventing anyone from starting a troop like this as it is, but saying you want to be more active runs up against the reality that it requires active adult leaders and kids who are also willing to put in the work as far as planning is concerned. Last year I had to tag along with my old troop because a few kids wanted to get the cycling merit badge and needed a second adult to go on the 50-miler. The first adult was a 22-year-old who hung around after aging out. I hadn't been involved with the troop in 20 years. None of the dads were willing to ride 50 miles, even if the scouts were. And by the end of the ride, the kids, who were all fit and reasonably active, looked like they never wanted to sit on a bike again. I think it's easy to sit here as adults and think of what we would have like d in retrospect, forgetting that we weren't always stronger than we are now and didn't have as much tolerance for pain as we do now.
The fitness test is more or less the point here. In current rules you can't exclude anyone, which is pretty much the whole point of this hypothetical. Ordinary boy scout troops have to admit weak, fat, uninterested, special needs kids. This obviously limits the outer boundaries of what can be done.
Absolutely, I'm musing here to push the conversation in a new direction, is it something that would be practical to create or not? And if it won't work, then why are we complaining about the direction the boy scouts have gone in?
Alternatively, the more intense scouting path could be a badge track within the boy scouts. If Eagle has been Goodhart'd, the Department of War could collaborate on designing a new set of qualifications that would deliver those results for the military?
I'll note in the way of reminiscence that I'm not entirely speaking out of turn here, I wanted my scout troop to do more outdoor events, so I started going on hikes and camping trips with the other troops my friends were in. There were other scouts who similarly wanted more activities, and the paths for achieving that goal within the scouts were limited. So I do think there exists some subset of boys who are interested in more activities. And the world is full of men who want to mentor younger boys in physically intense activity! Guys love to coach baseball and basketball and jiu jitsu etc.
So I'm questioning if part of the problem is the lack of exclusion. Without exclusionary principles, there's no real urge to progression.
Let me try to restate my argument, because I think we're talking past each other. What kind of test are you going to have and what is it going to entail? What I'm getting at is: What percentage of 11-year-olds crossing over is it going to exclude? 80%? 90% 50%? It honestly doesn't matter what number you pick, because unless you're only selecting for the top 1% you're using a test that any 14-year-old is going to be able to pass easily unless he's fat, special needs, etc. IF you're talking about a troop, where you do the full complement of scout activities and advance towards Eagle, you need a steady pipeline from Cubs, or the troop withers and dies. I've seen power struggles before where the Cubmaster loses faith in the local troop and sends the kids elsewhere, and it takes a long time for the troop to recover, if it can at all. So any troop that decides to exclude is at a disadvantage initially, even if their reputation enables them to draw from a wider geographic area.
But all you've really done is exclude for an 11-year-old with the fitness of a below average 14-year-old. And any 14-year-old who is that out of shape doesn't want to do the more difficult activities anyway. The goal of Venturing is to move away from advancement and focus on high-adventure group activities. Selecting for motivated 14-year-olds does a better job than selecting for fit 11-year-olds, and since advancement is an afterthought the group can focus on activities. I haven't seen any Venture crews who participated in my programs that included people who shouldn't have been there. I saw more 14-year-olds who could pass a fitness test but were some combination of lazy, unskilled, or petulant, while these kids never seemed to show up in Venturing. In any organization that relies on people acting locally (rather than the council-level program), some groups are going to be more active than others. I don't think creating a new kind of class is going to do anything, and in the years I spent heavily involved in Scouting and Venturing, nothing led me to believe that something like this would have any benefit.
How did you get into Venturing? I wasn't even aware it was a thing when I was young. And when I was an adult volunteer, everything made it sound like a thing for older kids who couldn't let go, a way to hang onto scouting after Eagle until you could drink.
If it's more of a parallel to existing BSA program, maybe that's the a good chunk of the answer I was looking for... just poorly advertised.
Looks like there are none in my county, but 25 miles isn't too far. My 14 year old might be more into that than the social studies stuff.
Yeah, I remember venture scouting was a thing for older boys- they made it sound like you got your eagle and then pivoted to venture scouts if you didn't want to hang around helping mentor eleven year olds in the troop.
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