[Qcwa] QCWA STANDARDS AND MEMBERSHIP

[Harry Hodges]

Hi All,

I am not going to discuss the "dumbing down" of any activity, leaving that
to educators and those more qualified to address that subject than I;
however, I would like to address the subject of membership and participation
in organizations.

There is an exceptional scholarly work entitled "Bowling Alone" by Robert D.
Putnam that addresses the phenomena experienced in America over the last
quarter century or so. An that is the demise of social and fraternal
organizations and the difficulty in recruiting new members and eliciting
those who are members to participate.

According to Putnam, a few years ago two thirds of club members attended all
twelve monthly meetings during the year. Today this same fraction attend
only one monthly meeting annually. From boy scout troops to bowling leagues,
from PTA groups to Amateur Radio clubs, membership is off, attendance is
dwindling, and gathering enough volunteers to support whatever cause is like
pulling hen's teeth.

Here in San Diego County I have seen bowling alleys close because there was
not enough league activity to keep them financially viable. Cub Scout packs
are more like dens, and Amateur Radio clubs have lost members in spite of
more licenses being issued, e.g. 900 to less that 500, 1100 to less than
500, over 500 to about 300, and 175 to less than 20 in the case of a few
clubs that I know of personally.

Military folks retiring or just finishing up terms of enlistment are not
joining the American Legion, VFW, TROA, TREA, etc. And it is becoming
increasingly more difficult to get existing membership to "re-up".And this
same scenario is being played out with the Elks, Moose, Lions, and others.

Much of Putman's book consists of systematic, quantitative evidence about
scoial trends over the last half of the twentieth century. I recommend it to
all of you. It may come as a shock to many, but the diminishing membership
we see in QCWA (and in Amateur Radio clubs in general) may have far less to
do with code speed and exam difficulty but in societal change in America. We
were once a society of "joiners" but now it apperars we prefer to "bowl
alone".

73, Harry