The Downside of Training

The Scout Association has too many training modules (see my rant in last edition of 8th Mag) but the 8th doesn't do enough training. There is a sweet middle ground but it is a middleground definitely closer to the 8th's approach. Let me tell you the downsides of the way of the SA:

You can't remember…

There’s no way you can possibly remember everything which means why bother teaching it in the first place or it creates either cause for concern that regulation is not being followed.

An expensive and time-consuming inconvenience

There are two residential training weekends. These cost £22 each which may not be much considering all meals are included (I didn’t stay for anything more than sandwiches but apparently the lasagne was god-awful) however it still costs something! Moreover, you need to travel to the Scouting centre in Dulwich and then the travel to the validation sessions. Talking to leaders, it seemed around 50% were reimbursed for the course by their group however 50% weren’t.

Also, it takes up a ton of time. It takes at least 4 full days to be taught all the modules (that’s if you do it in two residential weekends), otherwise you’ll be going to over a 15 night courses. That then doesn’t mean you can sign it off either as you then need to get it validated by actually doing the thing and showing evidence of that to your training advisor at a validation session.

It puts people off being leaders

Taking this much time out and paying this much money is not appealing.

What's not said

The scope of the training is so large, I can imagine it leaves some leaders with the subconscious mentality of: If it wasn't covered in the training, I'm not qualified to do this.

I think, this mentality is brought about by teaching common sense and the most basic of basic things (e.g. asking a child what is wrong if they are crying - or telling a girl who has just got her first period on camp that she isn't dying). We are given that many examples and case studies over tediously long sessions that it leaves the impression of we've covered everything.

It's common sense!

If you hadn't done the training, you would have reacted the same, if not better, a lot of the time as long as you've got some common sense/empathy. The training makes you almost second guess yourself sometimes on very basic things - the fact they give you 10 minutes to discuss in teams and write on a flipchart 'How to encourage positive behaviour', and then 10 minutes on 'What are the external influences on children?' and then 10 minutes on 'Who are role models in children's lives' etc etc etc on and on until eventual head smashing against table feeling. Basically, the excessive training makes you think solutions to problems are far more complicated than they actually are.

What works for one might not work for all

We spent at least 4 hours on 'delivering a quality program' and 'program planning'. Basically, just ensure meetings are varied (duh!) but when they started talking about important things we should do, I got rather defensive as I think what works for one group will not work for all. A code of conduct for example, the Greenwich group don't need that, the kids know to respect each other without having to have it written down as a rule and stuck up at every meeting with other rules.

The assumption that kids are reasonable

Too many times the way to handle things, plan things, challenge behaviour was to talk to the kid or explain to other children why Shmichael acts the way he does. This assumes that kids aren't horrible little creatures - which many are.