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/

"Peter Clinch" wrote in message
...
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.

That may well change from the bottom up. In DoE and in Guides and Scouts,
and I suspect in Cadets and Woodcraft folks (do the BB still do anything?)
we will find that there are indeed restrictions imposed on where we can and
cannot go. -it does vary between organisations - but the trend, supported by
the MLTB, is towards qualifications. certainly for leaders and instructors,
it is only a matter of time before they start telling us that we can't walk
up Criffell incase we fall of. How we fall off I'm not too sure. We all take
responsibility for our own mistakes, but sometimes others blame us for
theirs and whilst a piece of paper doesn't proove anything really, it is
what the system requires.

I know what you are saying, I empathise,I even agree. But then again,
coaching isn't (sadly) about teaching kids to paddle for fun, it is about
teaching a system to win medals at the Olympics and heck, we can't have any
old Tom, Dick or Harry doing that don't you know, old chap :-)

snip

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 :-(

That extreme would bother me too. Except that the learning curve for me has
been dictated by the BCU Star system from the get go.

Ewan Scott

Ewan Scott wrote:

That may well change from the bottom up. In DoE and in Guides and Scouts,
and I suspect in Cadets and Woodcraft folks (do the BB still do anything?)

they do around here...

we will find that there are indeed restrictions imposed on where we can and
cannot go. -it does vary between organisations - but the trend, supported by
the MLTB, is towards qualifications. certainly for leaders and instructors,

I think award schemes for coaching and basic achievement are very
different things. While you should (assuming some Clues in possession)
have a fair idea of what you can do, there isn't an easy way to tell
what a teacher can teach in many situations. There are certainly
exceptions to that and it would be absurd to say someone without
coaching *s necessarily won't be up to it, but you can tell that someone
with coaching *s knows a certain level of stuff (at least if the
coaching scheme is properly sorted).

With so much business now being generated by people getting instruction
from someone on a professional basis who they wouldn't have known from
Adam before reaching for the Yellow Pages I think it's fair to want some
sort of standard to back that up. But providing a service to someone
and deciding for yourself if you can do something potentially risky are
very different things, or at least they seem so to me.

it is only a matter of time before they start telling us that we can't walk
up Criffell incase we fall of.

Maybe things aren't that bad. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/4485133.stm for a
heartening reverse for this sort of nonsense, and from the High Court at
that!

That extreme would bother me too. Except that the learning curve for me has
been dictated by the BCU Star system from the get go.

Shame it isn't a bit more flexible. Not that I know how you'd go about
making it so, of course, but that aspect of being cast in stone is one
of the bad things about it IMHO. Having a badge to say you've swum 50m
is one thing, but something with as many complex and varied aspects as
paddling doesn't work quite so well.

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/

That extreme would bother me too. Except that the learning curve for me
has
been dictated by the BCU Star system from the get go.

Shame it isn't a bit more flexible. Not that I know how you'd go about
making it so, of course, but that aspect of being cast in stone is one
of the bad things about it IMHO. Having a badge to say you've swum 50m
is one thing, but something with as many complex and varied aspects as
paddling doesn't work quite so well.

Oh I'm not sure that it isn't flexible. At the risk of upsetting a few folks
by a traceable anecdote...

In order to gain authorisation I had to start from scratch and train to the
standards expected locally. No real problem there really, except that you
don't know what standards are actually acceptable.

When doing my L2 Assessment I(and two others from my training course) were
mixed with others (some professional coaches) and on my tutorial session I
was tasked to teach high brace sculling to a group of coaches supposedly at
the same level as myself. I explained what I wanted them to do demonstrated
the high brace scull, with my head and shoulders in the water, boat at 90
degrees and sculling in the front quarter. None of the other coaches could
manage to scull with the boat beyond 45 degrees. Thinking I had been set
up, I pressed them to push their sculling further until the Assessor called
me over and somewhat sheepishly advised that it wasn't actually necessary to
scull to that level.

This was repeated with several other skills during the day. So, here I am
teaching my kids to reach standards that will get them past a Star test
carried out locally, when they could obviously pass one carried out
elsewhere without the same level of skill.... As with any subjective
assessment there will always be flexibility. An assessor who has difficulty
with, say Hanging Draw, will skip over it. One who has no difficulty with it
will press for a better standard of presentation at test.

However, I do know what you mean and I know of some unqualified paddlers who
are much better than some highly qualified ones I have seen in operation.

Ewan Scott

Ewan Scott wrote:

Oh I'm not sure that it isn't flexible. At the risk of upsetting a few folks
by a traceable anecdote...

snip

Not /quite/ the sort of flexibility I mean ;-) For example, skulling
for support at 90 degrees in a sprint K1 with no spray deck is not
really going to work, so for someone doing just sprint there just isn't
much point at all in being able to do it. OTOH, wing paddle technique
would be very useful to our notional sprinter, and pretty much
completely useless to an aspiring surfer. Perhaps some sort of points
scheme where the sprinter can get through choosing skills applicable to
what a sprinter needs, and so on.

However, I do know what you mean and I know of some unqualified paddlers who
are much better than some highly qualified ones I have seen in operation.

Indeed. I wonder if the Greenland rolling champion has as much as a
Canoe Safety Test to their name...

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/

Here we use BCU and CRCA ( Canadian Recreational Canoe Association )
awards when describing club tours.
We find at a club level it allows us room to warn brand new out of the
box beginners that this trip may be a little over their head.
We qualify it by saying CRCA 1 ( BCU 3) or equivilent.
We make no attempt to enforce our dictetes because there are some
exceptional paddlers here that have never taken a course.
The reason to allow people to pre qualify themselves works well as the
olly rational for such qualificatiobns is not so much to keep people
safe as to ensure some other club member is not forced into a 4 KM tow.

Renters here have moved from asking little skitt testing questions, to
asking about leadership and qualifications then back to asking nothing.

The reasoning is legal.
To ask someone about a skill level then rent them a piece of equipment
is a suggestion that that skill, that equipment and these people are
capable of paddling around what ever place they mention. Conditions
change and participants lie.
Just my views
Alex