Once Mormon children turn eight, they get to participate in midweek activities. For the 8- to 11-year-old boys, this means cub scouts—a weekly program with clearly stated aims that moves the boys along in a progressive building of skills with formal recognition of progress made along the way. The 8- to 11-year-old girls are in achievement days, a biweekly* meeting with vague goals that don’t really progress to a specific end and don’t naturally lend themselves to any recognition for intermediate progress.
Of course, my experience with this is in the United States, where the Mormon church and boy scouting are linked to a very high** degree. In some other locations, achievement days is a sex-neutral (though still, as i understand it, sex-segregated) church program. I’m curious how the implementation of the program might differ in those areas.
* In most wards, that is—in my current ward, achievement days occurs weekly. Of course, my current stake has never met a meeting it didn’t like, so this difference makes sense in that context.
** And unhealthy, in my opinion, but that’s just my opinion.
Faith Hill: Where Are You, Christmas?
11 years ago
3 comments:
I wish Achievement Days activities were weekly here. It would alleviate a lot of hurt feelings in my daughter. She is utterly convinced the Church hates girls. Actually, I'd much rather Achievement AND Scouts were twice a month if I could pick one way for them to be on the same schedule. On second (third) thought, I'd like Achievement to just be held. It's not very consistent in our ward. It's been cancelled the last two times in fact.
I was told that Achievement can ONLY be twice a month and absolutely canNOT be weekly. Church rule. Interesting that it is not that way in your ward.
They do a lot of coloring in Achievement here. Ani hates to color.
(Yep, more Chinese porn spam, just deleted. I wonder if it’s the word “girls” that attracts it.)
Post a Comment