Programme Change

“We cannot always create the future for our youth, but we can build the youth for our future.”  It’s a quote which has been attributed to Franklin D Roosevelt.  And there’s a lot of truth in it. 

 

We’ve had word that Guiding programmes in the UK, for all sections, are going to change.  So far, the first big announcement has been made, a change in age groupings for Senior Section.  For quite a few years now, it has tried to encompass the full age range from 14 to 26.  And although a few units did make this work, and did have active membership from across the range, by far the majority of units served either 14-18, or 18-26 - but not both.  We have, of course, already started going through all the stages which feature in every ‘change management’ diagram ever drawn.  We’ve had the upset, and the anger.  We’ve had people complaining that the information provided to date is far too limited to be of any use, and simultaneously others complaining about the age change as if it was a done deal and totally non-negotiable.  We’ve had people pleading to have this or that part of their section programmes preserved in formaldehyde, and others begging them to scrap the existing programmes entirely and start building from scratch.  Some saying that a 2-year process is far too rushed, others saying that it’s ridiculously dragged out, they want change tomorrow (if not sooner).

 

Fact is, since the last universal change in 1966-1968 (yes, fully 50 years ago), there have been rolling and piecemeal changes to each section’s programmes.  Tweaks and more significant changes have been made to each one in turn, but at no point has Guiding actually sat down to look at the youth programme as a united whole, and considered changes to apply across all the sections simultaneously.

 

Over those 50 years, a lot has changed in society.  Back in 1968 there weren’t any of the equality acts we take for granted – no guarantee of equality for gender, race or disability.  The role of girls and women in society has totally changed – back then most women only worked until they were married and then were housewives, the minority who stayed single had a full career but few of those earned a full pension.  Education has changed – now girls and boys alike do both technical and home economics subjects, but that wasn’t the norm in the 1960s.  Back then not everyone was ‘on the phone’, television was in black and white, and career options for girls were limited.  Now we’re not just on the phone, but on the smartphone.  Computers and televisions are widespread, and in theory every career is equally open to girls and boys.

 

In Guiding, too, uniforms and programmes have changed – cotton blouses and polished shoes have given way to soft shell hoodies and trainers.  Typed newsletters and landline phone calls have been replaced by emails, texts and facebook.  We spend less time on domestic skills and more on science, and adventure.

 

The changes in 1966 were introduced because the world had changed a lot in the 50 years since Guiding was first created.  Guiding’s leadership felt that the old system of fixed tests for Tenderfoot, Golden Bar/Second Class, and Golden Hand/First Class had served well in it’s time, but in spite of piecemeal updating, was obsolete.  So they were replaced by annual badges in each section which offered choices.  Now, another 50 years have passed and once again piecemeal updating has been done over that time, but the programmes were once again becoming obsolete.  So time for another 2-year period of review and change.  Once every 50 years doesn’t seem too often, does it?

 

Things did not go entirely smoothly in 1966-68, despite a lot of preparation work being done.  The biggest objections were to the ending of Sea Rangers, and in the end a breakaway Sea Ranger Association formed, which still exists albeit on a very small scale.  And undoubtedly, whatever changes end up being introduced this time round, there will be a lot of anguish once again, and perhaps even breakaways once again.  But, viewed from a distance, the 1968 changes did turn out to be positive, and did succeed in updating the programme whilst retaining the key elements of it.  And it may be that the coming changes, however painful the process of deciding and implementing them may be, and however much initial upset is caused by change, will end up as positive ones too.

 

As the quote says, we can’t create the future for our youth.  We can try to help shape it, but we can’t create it, nor can we choose exactly how it will develop.  We can’t control the outside factors, and the future is going to be theirs, not ours.  But building the youth for it?  We can certainly make a significant contribution to that.  Provided we accept that Guiding is, and has to be, a movement.  It is constantly changing with us or in spite of us, and will continue to be constantly changing regardless of us.  The world will still spin around every 24 hours, standing still isn’t possible.  So it needs us to embrace change, to work to make change, to constantly be working to update what we do to ensure we are serving the needs of the future, not just the needs of the past or of the present.  We are merely the current custodians, but just as we received it from the generation before us, in time it will pass from our hands onto future generations of members.  We are training the girls of today to be ready to replace us tomorrow.

 

The changes in 1966 were the result of a review of programmes – and a report was published summarising the results of the review and the reasoning behind the proposed changes which were then implemented.  I think we would do well to bear in mind the title of that report, for it described the person they were planning for – who is equally well the person we too should be planning for.

 

It’s name?  “Tomorrow’s Guide”.

Age-Appropriate Activities

Yes, I know what you think I’m going to say.  No effing and blinding from the Rainbows, and don’t let the Brownies smoke until they are outside the hall.  Or something of that ilk.

 

But actually, you’re wrong.  I’m not thinking about activities which are too old or too mature for the girls.  But actually, about activities which are too young, too immature, too twee.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no problem with the Guides or Senior Section occasionally having a ‘silly night’ where they do finger painting, play in sandpits, blow bubbles, and do all the things they loved doing in their nursery days.  It’s great fun as a one-off.  And of course Rainbows should enjoy singing games, and the younger Brownies enjoy dressing up and imaginative play, for such things are age-appropriate to them.  And there will always be a small proportion of girls whose developmental age is less than their biological.  But actually, what I’m referring to is pitching the regular unit programme at the right age group and the right level of maturity for the girls in the units nowadays.  And as far as Guides and Senior Section are concerned, ‘Silly night’ should be an occasional treat once a year or so, not what happens at most meetings.  As an educational charity we’re meant to be focussed on developing the skills of the unit members, and that means maintaining a level of challenge, seeking to have an element of educational value in all of the activities we do, ensuring the girls are progressing and developing their skills and knowledge.  That needn’t preclude fun, indeed fun is often the best way to sugar the educational pills, the whole idea behind Guiding (and Scouting) is “learning through games”.

 

I guess the thought behind this blog post was prompted by a post I saw on a forum the other week.  This Leader was looking for Remembrance ideas for her Guide unit, to do at her meeting nearest to 11^th November.  She had one idea, which was a painted handprint wreath, and she wanted some more ideas to fill the meeting.  And my immediate thought was ‘handprint wreath?   but it’s a Guide forum – so this is meant to be a remembrance-themed programme for 10-14 year olds, not for 5-6 year olds.’    I recalled what my Guide unit had done to mark remembrance over the last few years – last year we researched the one woman on our local war memorial, a war nurse who had worked in a military hospital in central Scotland during WW1, only to die of flu in 1919.  And we made large laminated poppies and then origami peace cranes to stick onto them, these were then laid on each of the war graves in our village’s cemetery.  The year before we used the education pack from the Royal British Legion to investigate the different roles women had in both world wars – working on farms and in forestry, working in factories, working in hospitals and rest centres, working as first aiders and fire watchers, serving in the ATC, WRNS and WAAF, working in factories, etc.  The year before that, the Guides had made a collage with a background of green fields and blue sky, and each Guide had made a paper poppy and written on it the people they especially chose to remember, before placing it onto the landscape.  One year, we told the Guides of how, in 1939 with war imminent, many adults had been ‘called up’ so the PLs should be ready to run the unit meeting the following week.  Although my Assistant Leader and I turned up on the night for insurance’ sake, we made it clear that other than in the case of genuine emergency, we were “not there” – the PLs had to run the meeting as they thought best, while we sat on chairs in the corner of the room.  I left a bag on a table which contained the attendance register, a G-File and a few other relevant forms/reference books – the sort of thing I might have dropped off at a PL’s house before heading off for ‘somewhere in the country’ – it gave them a feel for the situation that genuinely happened at a lot of Guide units in the first week of September 1939, and though surprised, they carried out the meeting in full, including opening and closing ceremonies.

 

And I found myself wondering – were we going too ‘deep’?  In asking them to think about what some aspect or another of war might have been like, in asking them to take an interest in someone else’s real-life experience, in drawing their attention to quite how many war graves there were for the size our village was in 1914 or 1939 and letting them see what age the people were when they died, of making it clear that if war had broken out in our country both their Leaders were liable to be called up and they would have had to carry the unit on not just for one night but for the foreseeable?  Or, perhaps, were others going too shallow, and expecting too little of their unit members?  So I again considered the age group we deal with.  And I concluded that as the older Guides in the unit are only two years off being able to sign up for the forces themselves, given that Guides during WWII served in after-the-raid squads helping people to recover property from  bomb-damaged houses despite the danger and served hot drinks to injured survivors of bombing many of whom would have been traumatised if not slightly injured, given that Guides during WW1 were involved in both making and also laundering used hospital dressings, and worked as confidential messengers for the predecessors of MI5 at the Ministry of Defence and at the Versailles Peace Conference, given that the Guides in the Channel Islands continued meeting in secret throughout WW2 in spite of the occupation of their islands and the threat of execution if they were caught in uniform or gathering – that actually, remembrance is something we can take fairly seriously at Guide age, and we can seek to enlighten the Guides and Senior Section members, to an appropriate extent for their age group, to the sort of real experiences which girls and young women just like them had when war came to the UK.  It’s up to us to pitch it at a level which enlightens without unduly upsetting the more sensitive individuals, and to tailor what we do to the age group we are working with whether it be Rainbow, Brownie, Guide or Senior Section – but nevertheless, to fulfil our role as an educational charity, we should seek to educate and enlighten the girls, on this topic as much as on others, and to try to make it as relevant and meaningful as we can.

 

Thing is, though, it’s not just remembrance that this applies to.  We should constantly be seeking to challenge, and stretch, and encourage achievement from the girls in our units in all the activities we do, all year round.  And to do that, we have to keep tailoring and tweaking our activities so that they remain at that ideal challenging-but-just-attainable level, so that the girls will get a personal sense of achievement from a tough challenge met, a worthwhile task completed, a genuinely useful skill attained.   That can only happen if the tasks we set are at just the right level for them.  If too much of the work is too easy or half of it has been done for them, there is neither challenge nor the reward of achievement, and they become hard work of the wrong sort – a chore.  Something to get through in hopes of the next thing being something worth doing or something fun.  Equally, too difficult can be demoralising.  But – as the girls change, so what is challenging changes, we need to keep revising what we do and which activities we use with which age group.

 

I reckon that if you took any unit’s programme for the term, and stripped out all the obvious giveaways like badgework, you should still be able to tell at a glance what section the unit is in.  Literally at a glance.  Because the activities themselves should smack loud and clear of the age group they are aimed at, and there should be clear distinctions between the sort of activities which would be done by 5-7 year olds, 7-10 year olds, 10-14 year olds, and 14-26 year olds.  There can be a few things in common between the age groups, absolutely, and some things are good fun for any age - but the majority of activities should differ in what type they are, in how they are run, or in both.

 

So, although I’d agree that Rainbows shouldn’t be effing and blinding, and Brownies shouldn’t be smoking in the hall – I’d also suggest that other than as a one-off ‘nursery night’ theme, Guides shouldn’t be doing finger painting, and Senior Section shouldn’t be playing singing games (unless they are serving as Young Leaders at the time).  Because there is plenty of age-appropriate fun out there which they could be enjoying . . .