Boy Scouts

I was listening to the radio yesterday and heard boy scouts mentioned. Apparently they are going to update and start teaching them diy basics, such as carpentry, painting and building things. Also how to recycle things and make use of discarded wood etc.

It's a great idea, it may actually help get lads and lasses back into trades/industry, as so much is geared to finance these days particularly the teaching in schools. The scouts will also be supported by B & Q.

Now, I don't know a lot about what goes on within the scouts, but is this not reviving an idea from there past. I'm not knocking it by any means but I don't believe it's a new idea.

I hope it works, I have said for years, and no doubt others to, that it's time the trades were given a boost with the revival of skills like this for the youngsters.

 

Blooming good idea.

Its frightening how many youngsters don't know the basics.

Mind you, its also frightening how many adults don't either:DOH:

Took me a while, but i'm now past the guilt stage when a fully grown man wants to pay me for doing something he should be able to do himself but just hasn't got a clue.

I'm of the opinion that if its been done before, I should be able to do it.

I'd never installed a heating system before 2008, it didn't stop me installing a complete system running 9 radiators, hot water storage and solar heating.

I put that down to the confidence installed by my uncle & my Dad when we moved Gran into a flat when I was eight.

A plug needed putting on an appliance, my uncle told me to do it and then looked at my dad, saying

"He can wire a plug can't he?"

My Dad looked at me & said "Oh yes"

Never having done one before, I thought, well, i'd better get this right then.

 

Showing them 'basics' of trades doesn't really work, because you need a CSCS card to get a job with a firm in the trade.. which takes 2 years to attain.

 

They should teach stuff like this in schools, and first aid.
Knowing how to wire a plug,put up a shelf,fill out a tax form,and money management, is just as important as all the academic stuff they try to cram their brains with.

 

They're not allowed to make use of pallets (that would otherwise go to landfill) for camp fires any more.

 

Kyle, showing them the basics will develop the interest and show whether they've got a talent for it. If they have, then it's something they can work towards as they progress through school and obtain the necessary training after.

 

But you still need to be doing it every day to be able to turn the basics into something you can earn a living from (if that's what they're trying to do). I think schools should allow 15-16 year olds to do a few days a week doing an apprentice, which would benefit them greatly.

 

I think its a good idea, but I'm also a bit surprised that they don't do it already anyway.

I never bothered with the cubs or scouts as a kid. I was put off by the few kids I knew that were in it wearing the uniforms proudly when they weren't at the club. I guess I thought they were too conformist in the midst of the rebellious anarchy of the punk movement in the late 70s and 80s (although I wouldn't have used such words then ). But I thought they did all sorts of handy stuff then and now.

When I was a kid, we made all sorts out of discarded bits and pieces. We were natural recyclers (and I'm not going to claim to be the first generation to be like that, my dad has tales of such things from his childhood). If it was somewhere in the collective imagination of me and my mates, we'd have a go at making it out of whatever had washed up on the beach or been put out in the alleys for the bin man. Nobody had to teach us what to do with the stuff we found, we just did it.

I'm not in a trade (I'm a computer programmer), but only because during my schooling I brainwashed into believing that the trades were 'dead end jobs' (the teachers actually told us that repeatedly), so I believed it for a while.

I do genuinely believe that something is currently very wrong in our society. Kids are brainwashed into effectively taking out a mortgage these days for their 'essential education' at university. They can charge £9k per year now, and I believe that doesn't even include rent at the 'halls of residence' and I know it doesn't include the books they are pressured into buying. They pay (via a massive loan) while they have no possibility of earning any real money (due to academic commitments) until after they graduate, assuming they do graduate. And even then they face going into the market with insanely unrealistic expectations and competing against thousands of others. And they are brainwashed into believing this is not only the correct thing to do, but the only thing to do and that they have a duty to themselves and the country to do it. Poor so and so's.

 

It used to be only the qualified workers that enjoyed subjecting apprentices to ritual 'initiation ceremonies', and even then for one day only.

 

I've been diy-ing since I was 14, I was reared with 4 men in the family and learned by watching them, plastering, wall tiling, woodwork and so on, I'll have a go at anything new, all self taught. If you've got a talent for it, it's possible to turn it into a business. So many people in trade now are time served only, they don't need bits of paper saying they're qualified.

I don't want to upset anyone, but how many times do you find graduates working a job, well beneath there qualifications, by choice. What a waste of that expensive education.

 

No idea what this means, sorry.. but, I don't think this will work, unless it's the bare minium basics, like people have said, how to change a fuse in a plug, etc..

 

I think the humour arises from the typo, 'doing an apprentice', which I presume was supposed to be 'doing an apprenticeship'

 

Ah, yes! :o