Ewan Scott wrote:
Snip

Beyond
that I'm very happy to learn skills but have very limited interest in
owning a piece of paper that tells me what I'm capable of doing.

Maybe that's a cue for a new thread... :-)

Here we go...

I do regard the achievement awards as a very mixed blessing (coaching
awards are different if you'll need a regulated framework, which in a
lot of cases we do, I'm just talking about achievement awards here).
While on the one hand they will encourage many people, especially
youngsters, to get on and get their badge (and some skills with it!) I
am rather worried about the other side of the coin, which is closing
things off to people who *don't* have x number of stars.

A background more in mountaineering than paddling is probably a major
factor here, where there is more accent on personal freedom than in
paddle sports (not that there isn't one in paddling, just not IMHO quite
as accented). The Mountaineering Council of Scotland (the
mountaineering equivalent of the SCA) are actually specifically
*against* personal achievement awards to prevent the "you can only climb
on this crag if you have at least such and such award" approach coming
into being. The British Mountaineering Council tried to introduce
formal achievement awards a couple of years ago, and they got a lot of
very angry reaction from their established membership which caused them
to drop the idea.

The ethos in mountaineering is that you set your own limits, and if you
get it wrong then you take responsibility for your own actions and
mistakes. While this is generally true of paddling too, it is an
increasing danger that BCU stars will be used to dictate who can do what.
I'm seeing this at debates in my own club as we struggle to keep things
acceptably safe for a large influx of new members. Who can hire kit
outwith "official" meets and under what circumstances? Who can go on
such and such weekend meet to a more grown-up place? While needing x
stars is an approach to this it actually discriminates against some of
the most experienced paddlers I know who don't have a single star, or
any need of one. It requires use of a formal structure to do something
I regard as an expression of personal freedom, not a happy mix.

That's my main problem with achievement awards, beyond that there is the
relatively minor (for me) point that one looks at what you need to pass
an exam rather than what you need to excel in your particular flavour of
paddling. Whitewater paddlers may well need good rolls while strutting
their stuff, but it's irrelevant to a sprint paddler, and a brilliant
sprinter who can't roll won't pass a 3* test, and so on. General awards
can direct people at needless things when they might be better served
with other, more specific skills. But things only get specific at
higher levels.

Having said all that, I remember how I was often driven as a child not
to have a particular skill set, but to have the badge that represented
it sewn onto my tracksuit top! I'm very different now, but not to
acknowledge the use of an award like a BCU * in getting people motivated
to learn skills would be very shortsighted.

In summary, I want them to be there for people who want them and value
them and gain by them, but I don't want them being used to restrict
access to water. In the increasingly blame-driven, litigious, formally
risk-assessed society we live in that will be increasingly
problematical, and it bothers me :-(

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/