Having raised the issue of Scouting, lets view the possibilities of this in the aspect of a ‘responsible’ goup.
I worked with the Scouts for many years, despite being a small village group, our leaders were incredible. We had experts on sailing, canoeing, mountaineering etc, my speciality was mountain knowledge, map reading, camping skills, generally living off the land.
Our kids were taught to pretty much be able to look after themselves, it was noticeable at Jamborees and such like, how much more independant our kids were compared to some of the others, to put it in to context, despite the fact that we were the smallest group at the International Jamboree in Walton in 91, and bearing in mind there were 5000 Scouts from all over the world present, we won the bronze award, third place, a bit of a triumph.
As time went on, it became more noticeable that the attitude of the kids coming through from Cubs was pretty pathetic, they were only interested in computer games and football. Now we are talking about middle class kids here from wealthy local farming families, rich kids who’s parents had moved from London, and kids from the families of MOD Police instructors at Wethersfield Base, ( they were the worse).
My own son was probably the last true Scout left, he had to pack it in anyway at 15, but was so fed up with the up and coming kids, that he wasn’t prepared to become a venture scout and have to deal with these nerds, that he went for the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme instead.
Leaving scouting aside for a while, he joined up, when the organisers saw his scouting CV, they thought he was Rambo, shudder, no this is what we do!!!!
Totally oblivious to the fact that his Chief Scout award meant he already qualified for the Bronze Award, he started off at the bottom.
Despite having apparently unlimited funds and equipment, he found the instructors so bad, that after personally rescuing them in the middle of Thetford Forest, he gave that one up as a bad job. He’s at University now, and a cool kid, probably the only scout ever in existance that is a real Masai warrior, but thats another story.
Back to Scouting, the kids that were coming through, despite their parentage, background etc, were just pathetic.
Our main scout leader resigned, he’d had enough of it. I soldiered on for a while with our new leader, a smashing bloke too, but what did it was a weekend narrow boat cruise.
Apart from my other attributes, I am an ECC narrow boat captain, but the behaviour and attitude of the kids on this trip was appalling. One of them nearly drowned and got crushed between two boats, the rest of the trip was mayhem. After that I didn’t want to know, the leader resigned as well and the great Finchingfield scout group ceased to exist, sad isn’t it, you spend all your time working with kids and it gets to the point where you can’t be bothered anymore, and wer’e not talking about inner city kids here, they probably would have made more of an effort.
So would you try and give these kids shooting lessons, I don’t think so, I’ve worked with them, no way would they understand the point of it all, it would be blam blam you’re dead, the situation with the shotguns at the Jamboree gave us cause for concern, we decided to give the area a wide berth afterwards.
Get back to your security cloaked mansion Mr Tebbitt and forget about real life, if happy go lucky, happy family, country village kids can’t be trusted with penknives, forget shooting practice, you’ll end up wiping out a generation, or is that a bad thing?