[ffmike]

I'm a Girl Scout leader in the Midwest. Most of the leadership in this area (adult & youth) is at best skeptical about this initiative, and at worst openly hostile. Girls do not come to Scouting to learn about financial literacy and cybersecurity. They come to spend time with their friends, to be outdoors, to have parties, to do craft-y things. The cost of some of the new badges is also a great concern.

[clarkevans]

I'm a Girl Scout leader in the Midwest. Most of the leadership in this area (adult & youth) is at best skeptical about this initiative, and at worst openly hostile.

Young ladies face a cultural up-hill challenge with STEM expectations. Girls are told, for example, that they shouldn't bother with video game construction, but instead should learn knitting. As a parent, I have first hand experience with well-meaning social institutions that actively discourage science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Girls do not come to Scouting to learn about financial literacy and cybersecurity. They come to spend time with their friends, to be outdoors, to have parties, to do craft-y things.

In an enthusiastic environment, my 7 year old daughter and her friends enjoy MIT Scratch just as much as the boys. She's very into her transaction journal where she records her allowance income and outgoing expenses, adding up the numbers weekly with a new account balance. She likes to take her microscope outside to look at bug wings, etc.

[Spearchucker]

I don't think ffmike was trying to denigrate, discourage or otherwise be negative about STEM. Rather, the suggestion is that there might be other, better places for STEM than Girl Scouts.

Which is just as true for Boy Scouts.

[meheleventyone]

Not really as a boy in the UK I got a programming badge in Cub Scouts in the 80s. Which was about the only venue I could have got some recognition for that ability at that age. I think it's a great idea to recognise STEM skills in venues that are socially important to children at that age.

[Spearchucker]

Recognition is not something I want my son to learn to crave. I got into computers in the '80s of my own volition, in an environment where I was ridiculed for my interest (being a nerd/geek in the 80's was ensuring you had no friends).

If my kid shows an interest in a thing I will support him in that, but I will never push him. Recognition comes from being exceptional, not for being able to open a command prompt or writing a Hello World app.

[meheleventyone]

I think you're putting way more meaning into the word recognition than I am there. It's far more about acknowledging work and effort than turning a child into some sort of egomaniac.

Earning badges for your achievements is socially important if you take part in Scouts. Having badges for STEM subjects helps with the sort of stigma you are talking about by normalising them alongside less stigmatised activities.

[24gttghh]

If you never push your kid, even just a little with kindly parental suggestions, I fear you may raise a un-motivated dullard.

[jasode]

You and Spearchucker are using different semantics of "push":

It's a difference between "pushing unwanted interests on a child" vs "pushing the child's effort for interests he already desires".

The result of the first type of push is the child resenting her parents' forced violin lessons that she hated. (E.g. Tiger Mother's youngest daughter rebels.)

The result of the second type of push is the child's gratitude for his parents because they pushed him out of bed to make swim practice because he wanted to compete in the Olympics. The parents didn't push the love of competitive swimming on the child but they once that desire was identified, they helped maintain the child's discipline for training.

[Spearchucker]

If I push my kid, even just a little with kindly parental suggestions, I fear...

Hey who knows. You're probably right. I'm probably right. That's parenting. I try to facilitate his learning by letting him play. It's how I grew up. And yes, I'm not that naïve that I think I can give my child my childhood.

He's a human being, and a human beginning. As such he must (and will) find and tread his own path. My job is to show him how exceptional his path might become. His job is to choose the degree of exceptionalism he desires.

[JadeNB]

> Rather, the suggestion is that there might be other, better places for STEM than Girl Scouts.

That's true—like in the schools! But, since girls aren't getting the support and the role models that they need there, it's good if they're at least getting them somewhere.

[gorkonsine]

If you're talking about the US, no kids are getting the support and role models they need in the schools.

[JadeNB]

> If you're talking about the US, no kids are getting the support and role models they need in the schools.

While I can't argue with the sentiment, I think that this is unnecessarily dismissive of the efforts of teachers (as opposed to administrators or politicians), most of whom do not bear the blame for the current de-prioritisation of education. Certainly I got both support and role models in school, and it was from excellent teachers; and I can't believe that there are no such teachers left.

[gorkonsine]

There are some such teachers, but it's a totally mixed bag and for every good teacher, there's a couple of lousy ones. This comes down to the administration, since they control hiring and firing, the work environment, etc.

[whatshisface]

But - as hard as I suppose it may be for Hackernews to imagine, there are both girls and boys who would rather not go to space camp. Even if space camp has the best career prospects.

[pyroinferno]

If I sent my child to a coding camp, and found out they were only taught crafts and camped outdoors, i'd be pretty upset.

Maybe the solutions is to send your daughter to a school/organization that teaches programming, not an organization that has always taught children crafts and outdoorsy things.

[hellogoodbyeeee]

>I'm a Girl Scout leader in the Midwest. Most of the leadership in this area (adult & youth) is at best skeptical about this initiative, and at worst openly hostile. Girls do not come to Scouting to learn about financial literacy and cybersecurity. They come to spend time with their friends, to be outdoors, to have parties, to do craft-y things.

That is such a strange thought to me. I joined boy scouts for camping, but I also went to special events where I earned merit badges in stem topics. It probably occupied less than 10% of the time of my total scouting experience, but it was great in that it exposed me to topics and career paths that I may not have found otherwise. It would be wrong to completely replace campouts with lan parties, but that isn't what this sounds like.

[elviiis]

Been with GS for 5 years and BSA for 25.

Requirements for badges will change, but the local unit has a lot of control over its direction and purpose.

If a girl-led troop wants to explore this option, get out of the way and make it happen. Otherwise, as you were.

[Spearchucker]

That's very well put. I forget sometimes that as a parent my job is not to teach my child/ren, but to provide an environment in which my child/ren can learn.

[humanrebar]

We don't call teachers "learning facilitators", so I don't see a problem saying one of a parents' jobs is Teacher-In-Chief of their kids.

[gremy0]

You can do STEM outside and with your friends. There's quite a bit of science outside.

[pizza234]

It's true, but if you look at the list of badges, the point above some of them being, in a way, "out of context", makes sense (I don't say it's right in a strict sense; just that it makes sense).

I don't have knowledge of the existing badges though. Certainly, Financial Literacy doesn't sound very outdoors-y :-)

[tchaffee]

How is it possible to do anything outdoorsy without a budget? Even getting there takes transport money. When I was in Boy Scouts, budgeting for and buying supplies for even a weekend trip was a task the adults did not shelter us from. We also had to do fundraising and keep track of available funds.

[throwawayjava]

This. A long-weekend backpacking trip can easily cost between $20 and $100 per person, depending on: distance traveled and size of cars, tolls, number of days on the trail, whether you need perishables such as fuel for cooking and water filters (often weather and trail dependent), meals eaten on the road, trail passes or campground fees, rental fees if you're planning on floating a portion of the trip, etc. Up-front purchases (e.g., backpack, boots) need to be accounted for as well. Also really basic stuff like "do we have enough cash to pay for campsites along the way".

It's a great opportunity to teach basic accounting skills. Simple stuff: summing costs, figuring out which costs are shared by the group and which ones individuals should be responsible for, planning ahead for forms of payment. More advanced: amortization of big expenses across N years of trips (and related cash flow issues), parameterizing cost calculations over weather conditions and terrain, doing all of this in a spreadsheet so that when we do the trip next year we can change some values and know immediately how much it'll cost, etc.

[clarkevans]

It's not hard to work finance into all sorts of interactions. Take making cardboard sandals on a blanket outside. You can bring out all of the raw materials: cardboard, string, tape, paint, etc. List the prices for each. Then, figure out how many sandals were made. Add up the costs, and compute the average material cost for each pair of sandals they make. Girls get into it. One might even say: "yea, but we worked on this too; doesn't that count?" You can then factor in labour cost. Then, comes a few eyes that get big: "wow, $2.45 in materials and $5 in labour" (they debated and agreed it'd be great if someone paid them $5 for the hour they spent). Lots of lessons emerged: labor can be the dominant factor in product construction; and noone was really going to pay $7.45 for the cardboard sandals.

[noonshine]

"Financial literacy" is a category - not a badge. The badges in that category for 2nd and 3rd graders were Money Management (maybe all those cookie sales?) and Philanthropy... which are things most troops do anyway.

[pizza234]

The cost of some of the new badges is also a great concern.

Could you elaborate more on this? I'm curious, since I was a scout in a different context (time and culture wise).

[candu]

It's worth noting that BSA has STEM programs / badges, as do other national Scouting organizations elsewhere (e.g. Scouts Canada). So if it helps motivate this, it's really just extending availability of an existing program. (Also, STEM activities are largely craft-y, just not in the traditional "arts and crafts" sense).

As a Scout up in Canada, I vastly prefer the non-gender-segregated approach Scouts Canada takes. They've even openly welcomed LGBTQ members for some time now [1].

[1] http://www.scouts.ca/ca/frequently-asked-questions

[nsgi]

> They've even openly welcomed LGBTQ members for some time now [1].

It would be pretty shocking if they didn't in this day and age.

[John23832]

I guess the BSA are pretty shocking then...

[philh]

It looks like the BSA accepts LGBTQ members (or at least GBTQ) as of recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_membersh...

[John23832]

They have, however, been openly hostile to GBTQ scout leaders by allowing religious chartered organizations to revoke scout leadership on the grounds of sexuality.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/dont-clap-just-yet-bo...

[cr0sh]

...and completely forget anything BSA if you don't believe in some sort of religion-based supreme being, and are open about it (at minimum at the national level - local level varies, but in general is pretty hostile to the idea of atheism as well).

[analog31]

My daughter quickly lost interest in girl scouts because of this.

[morgtheborg]

I lost interest as a kid for the same reason. I thought I'd learn outdoorsy, Boy Scout activities. Instead I was bored to death.

[upvotinglurker]

Lost interest because she didn't want crafts/parties, or because she didn't want STEM activities? (Curious, sentence wasn't clear to me)

[analog31]

Thanks. Lost interest because she didn't want to make crafts and cookies. And it was a bit surprising, since we live in a neighborhood where there are plenty of girls, and moms, who are interested in STEM.

And I'm not sure it's a bad thing to have activities for kids that are not 100% STEM focused. I think you don't push STEM by pushing STEM at a young age, but by encouraging curiosity, exploration, reasoning, etc.

[greglindahl]

Financial literacy has traditionally been a part of "home economics".

There are lots of results for googling ["personal finance" "home economics"] and ["financial literacy" "home economics"]