I’m retaking Boy Scout and Venture leader Youth Protection Training. My Boy Scout training expired last August, and I’m tired of having one expire one year and the other the next, so I’m retaking the Venture training, too.
I fucking hate this.
First of all, the Boy Scout side of the training just makes me squirm. Adults who pull the kind of shit that gets talked about ought to be taken out and shot, not just reported and kicked off the premises. But at least it only takes 20 minutes and it’s mostly a video training with a few “stop and answer these questions” sections, then voila, you’re done.
Second, the fucking Venture side is more like a child psychology course, because Venturing goes from age 14 to 21, and we all know that 14 year olds are not the same either body-wise or mind-wise as 21 year olds. So they break that into “young teens” and “older teens” and spend most of the training explaining the difference, which should be obvious to anyone who lived through their teen years and/or brought up teenage children. And, bonus, it’s all “animated”, and you have to click to go from slide to slide — sometimes multiple times when the damn thing ought to just advance on its own. It’s obvious that the Boy Scout training was made by professionals back when I was still actively involved (it could be used either as a group training or a single-user training), whereas the Venture one was put together by introverted millenials who thought millions of clicks were a good thing. Oh, and also? The Venture training was clearly made for leaders in their 20’s or 30’s. The fucking fonts are so goddamn small I can barely read them. But don’t take my word for it:
(If you right-click that and use the “View Image” or equivalent in your browser controls, you’ll get the full size version. Not that it’s much bigger.)
But besides all that, the Venture version is kind of a waste, because it spends the bulk of its time talking about developmental issues rather than actual youth protection issues. The set of scenarios where you’re supposed to identify the appropriate YPT action seems like it was added on as an afterthought to a training that was originally just about how to deal with teenage youth. I would have liked to have seen something a little more in depth like the scenarios found in the Boy Scout YPT.
Bottom line, because of these shortcomings, I think it’s probably necessary to have both certifications if you want to be a Venture leader. The Boy Scout YPT talks a lot more about what to actually do in situations a leader may encounter. But I’m told that if you only do Venture, you need only take the Venture training (which is completely different from what I was originally told, that we had to take ALL FOUR YPT trainings — Cub, Boy, Venture, and Explorer — because our crew was going to interface with all four types of units).
But the whole thing is just annoying. It’s as bad as taking “diversity” training and sexual harassment training at work every time we turn around. When that shit started back in the late ’80s, we used to ask why we needed to take it every year when we had already taken it before. Never got a good answer, but I think I know what the answer is: Gotta keep that phoney-baloney parasite industry funded somehow.
Maybe under Trump, this PC culture will go to hell where it belongs, and we can stop wasting time and treasure on shit that ought to be common sense and bloody obvious.
(This isn’t going to Facebook because I’m just ranting.)