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Every ringer who has been ringing for say 3 years, and has become confident in their own ringing should be encouraged to teach handling to others — Graham John

This, and everything else in your reply, exactly matches my experience. I learned to ring at a tower other than my home one, the TC / teacher there encouraged me to start helping her to teach others and eventually to go on the ART M1 course, which coincided with our rehang, the retirement of the old TC and the growth of the band. I've taught all the new starters at our tower, and the new TC is getting trained up as well. I think that's another important point - it isn't obligatory for the TC to do the basic teaching as well, it's a different skill set and a good TC may not necessarily be a good handling teacher.

You are right that you don't need to be an expert ringer to teach handling, however you do need to have confident handling yourself, for example ringing just one stroke with your "wrong" hand is not for everyone. Your observation about remembering your own difficulties is important as well, pointing out to people that it's not just them that has struggles seems to be helpful, particularly for adults.

Another common assumption seems to be that once people can handle a bell well enough to ring CC's and PH, handling training is over. I think that's wrong, mine certainly wasn't adequate to ring methods and from observation, I'm not alone. I run weekly 1 - 2 person simulator sessions for people in our tower to work on improving their handling and I'm now getting requests from a neighbouring association. I've been told "This is the first 1:1 tuition I've ever had" and the sessions seem to be effective - at the most recent one, the attendee had only ever rung PH on the treble "by bell number", at the end of the session they'd rung it on 2 & 3 as well, and were counting their place. Clearly that needs translating to ringing into "real" ringing but when it comes to basic skills, I do wonder if "on demand" help is more effective than annual ringing courses?

very little organised effort is directed at so‑called “elite” ringing — Graham John

And even less is directed outside of it as far as I can tell, apart from ART.

I believe those are the same motivations for why many people ring peals. — Jonathan Frye

Indeed, my point is that the social side of ringing is important at all levels, and for some people that's more important than the ability to ring complicated stuff.

We will need more ringers to be willing to learn to teach handling. ... Associations could do a review of which towers are unable to teach new learners and try to address this as a fundamental key to building a band is being able to teach from scratch. — Lucy Chandhial

We've grown our band from scratch - from three ringers, two of whom have since "retired" to twelve ringers currently. That's been via a mix of new & returning ringers, but we have one ART M1 accredited teacher and a second going through the process. If you want towers to be sustainable, they need to be exactly that, which means being able to teach new starters themselves. So yes, I think you are dead right.

Just thinking locally about my experience I don’t see an obvious link between age and tower Captain success (if successful means building a band, seeing ringers develop and ringers enjoying the regular practice so continuing as ringers). — Lucy Chandhial

Ditto.

Ultimately willing ringers in their 60’s will continue to be very useful in most towers as they are fit to teach, have time they are willing to invest and represent a significant proportion of all bell ringers (whether they learnt in their teens or on retirement). — Lucy Chandhial

You mean we aren't all useless will-never-amount-to-anything wastes of space? :lol: People who start ringing have a huge range of innate ability and aspirations, irrespective of their age. I'm not saying age isn't a factor, but I think it's far less important than the ringing hierarchy's apparent obsession with it would suggest.

Many do not have the reaction time to safely rescue people who lose control. Many come on ART Modules not because they are keen to learn to teach, but because there is no one left in their tower willing to take it on. — Roger Booth

It's teaching people to ring a bell, not trapeze, anyone who can safely drive a car should have the necessary reaction times. I've seen some dreadful "experienced" teachers who's startle response is even more extreme than their pupil's when things go pear shaped. And in any case, we should be teaching people to self-rescue or at least "float to live" as a basic skill, not least because of the huge confidence boost it gives them.

With a few mouse clicks I can see that from around 1950 to 1990 around 550 people a year rang their first peal. Since then there has been a gradual decline and last year only 146 people rang their first peal. — Roger Booth

I can't think of a worse indicator of the overall health of ringing than an elite activity like peal ringing. It's always going to be a severely lagging indicator; even if grass roots ringing gets back into rude health, I'd expect peal numbers to continue falling for years - I for one never expect to (or want to) ring one. I don't think that peal ringing ever reflected the "bog standard" ringers most people have always been.

There's a dilemma here - it's long-standing elite ringers that have the experience, breadth of experience and interest which impels them to worry about the future of ringing. But they often have little in common with those of us at the bottom of the pile. As a result most of the effort seems to be focused on elite ringing, which is perfectly understandable. But I don't think that has ever been representative of the majority of people who ring, enjoy it, value the friendships and appreciate the excuse to go down the pub.

Because that's what people do in a discussion.

I :up: with that - my point is that having to make posts such this one to just express agreement is tedious. You are right - on other platforms, :up: are pretty universally used to express agreement, not as an expression of admiration or affection :vomit:

This forum so needs a :up: button... Thanks both!

here are vast resources lying unused and poorly invested in BRF’s, which could instead be used to arrest the decline at a local level. — Roger Booth

I've seen this suggested multiple times and whilst I agree it's sensible, aren't most BRFs registered charities, so getting approval for a change of the charity’s purpose from the Charities Commission would be needed? I'm not saying that can't be done, but it's not as simple as the trustees just deciding to start spending the money on training.

Three-day courses teaching around 60 students at a time are not going to make a significant impact on delivering 10,000 new ringers over the next few years. Regular weekly sessions at a local level like those at St Clements are far easier to organise, less expensive to attend, and could engage a lot of new people — Roger Booth

Every year I look at the course prospectuses and every year I decide I'm not going to bother. The main reason is that as an adult starter I know the key to success is regular practice. Without that, a 3 day course isn't going to help much. But ongoing support takes long-term commitment from the organisers and the helpers, I'm not convinced that's easier to deliver than 3 day courses.

One of the things I've heard from people who help or teach at courses is that they get the same people coming back each year, often having made little progress. I think that's almost certainly because the courses aren't backed up by regular local opportunities. Personally I'd love to progress to 8 method ringing, but the activities in my area are pretty much closed shops, so I've given it up as an aspiration. I don't think that's uncommon.

Efforts like RftK & R2030 don't directly deliver a single new person and a teacher to the end of a rope in a tower, that's done locally. I'm not saying those initiatives shouldn't happen but without grass-roots support behind them, they are mostly futile. The challenge for the CCCBR is it's a top down organisation, whereas ringing is inherently a grass-roots activity.

The research I reported in The Ringing World a while ago suggests that big recruitment drives do not have a lasting effect. If you didn't see it there's a copy at: https://jaharrison.me.uk/New/Articles/RecruitmentDrives.pdf — John Harrison

An interesting article, I think the assessment at the end is pretty much spot on. I know of one tower that took on around 15 people for RftK, within a year, only 1 was still ringing. My tower has taken a different approach, we've decided we'll only take 2 new starters at the same time - we've even asked people to wait. Our thoughts are that learning to ring is a big investment in time from everyone involved, and resources are scarce, both in terms of learners and teachers. We try to maximise the chances of success by giving people sufficient rope time, and also by integrating them into the band as quickly as we can. Both of those are easier with a smaller but steady stream of joiners. It's not been a quick process but we've grown the band from 4 to 11, and we have another potential starter in a few weeks.

Has the CCCBR looked at the retention of ringers from that imitative and lessons learned. A similar question that could be thrown at ART — Robert Brown

The last time I could find the data, which was some time ago, the drop-out rate between ART L1 & L5 was 95%

Some caveats however: just because people stop progressing through ART it doesn’t mean they have stopped ringing. I myself am in that category, I never got past L4. And although we follow the ART teaching scheme, we haven't registered any of our newer learners, many adults aren't interested and/or find the logbook / certificate thing a bit infantilising.

More:

A Company of Ringers may attend a neighbouring Church rightly and usefully, as may a Choir, or a private family of worshippers. But if they habitually go out to ring they do wrong, because the practice involves a failure of principle. It amounts to treating the Lord's house and the Lord's day as our own wholly for our own amusement and without reference to His service.

https://www.whitingsociety.org.uk/old-ringing-books/wigram-change-ringing-07.pdf

See also The Ringer's True Guide by Rev. S. Beaufoy, which has a foreword by Ellacombe.

They generally go to the ale-house and spend it in waste. At such times filthy conversation and swearing, lying and quarrelling, frequently abound among them. Intoxication often ensues, and each man's share of liquor, in one night, is very often as much as would refresh a man and his family a whole week, yea, more than many get in a month. - Some of these ringers are out of order the next day; they visit the publican again-spend more money - and lose more time

And much, much more besides.

https://www.whitingsociety.org.uk/old-ringing-books/beaufoy-the-ringers-true-guide.html

t’s partly my own experience of learning as an older ringer that makes me so passionate about making sure that others I see with the same faults are made aware of them and encouraged to correct them. — Corinne Orde

As an older learner who has ended up teaching myself (because there was nobody else to do it), I think we have a special insight into the challenges facing other older learners - although I've taught young 'uns as well, which is very enjoyable. My observation is it's often the "best" ringer in the tower that ends up teaching. That's great if they like doing it and are good at it, but often they aren't, and end up getting frustrated, usually because they struggle to understand why learners struggle.

I think we need to move away from the default "One person teaches everything from handling to Surprise" and recognise that you don't need to be a black zone ringer to teach handling. The time and skills of advanced ringers is precious, they are better used teaching advanced ringing.

it's not always that simple, people can start out without bad habits and develop them when under pressure to continually ring at the edge of their ability.

It seems to be built into ringing culture (outside centres of excellence in both method and call change ringing) that striking and bell control are taboo subjects, like driving and lovemaking, where advice is likely to be resented and people therefore shy away from giving it. — John Harrison

Yes, once some people feel they are no longer "raw learners" it becomes almost impossible to get them to work on it. I can think of multiple examples where people's handling and striking is abysmal and affects the entire band, but there's an eruption if you dare mention it. I think pushing people into PB too fast is a big contributor to the problem as well, I thought my handling was fine when I could hack my way through PB but I had a rude awakening as soon as I tried to move beyond it - my handling & ropesight was completely inadequate and I more or less had to start over.

It's not as if the tools to help aren't available - for example simulators allow you to analyse each blow as well as the overall quality of your striking. Improving it should always be a work in progress, whilst I can ring on 6 with ~10% errors overall my striking on 8 is not as good and I'm working hard on it.

your situation sounds very similar to that of my home tower when I started ringing, and I've seen the same challenges that you describe. I think your approach is well thought out and is the most likely way to deliver good results. I also think you are right about the problems of the "standard approach", despite it clearly not working well I've never heard anyone come up with a thought-through justification for teaching method ringing the way it's generally done, it's "Well, that's the way I was taught and it was good enough for me", which is really not a good reason.

the striking of good Devon CC bands is without par, the point I was making is that CCs on their own aren't sufficient preparation for good method striking, and that's the usual progression for method ringers - you learn CCs to a reasonable standard and then you are pitched into methods, the assumption often being that no further work on your bell control and striking is needed so people end up struggling with the simultaneous challenges of upping their handling and learning to ring methods.

60 on 3rds is regular Sunday Service fare at my tower, even though we are 300 miles away from Devon. We don't come close to the standard of striking that's found in Devon - but we are working on it!

I agree, up to a point. You only move the bell at handstroke in CCs, and only one place before going back into rounds speed. Methods require changes on both strokes, and sustaining the change in speed. Ringing methods requires a step change in bell handling, and people often aren't given enough time to gain adequate skills. But you aren't ever going to get those new skills if you only ring CCs.

The problem is that exposure to bad approaches can also click, — John Harrison

Yes, which is why I think ringing at more than one tower is a good idea. I think one of the first skills anyone who rings at multiple towers will develop is the ability to distinguish between good and bad advice. I can think of one teacher of very fixed ideas that appear theoretically sound but seems to produce ringers that struggle to ring with anyone else and are almost impossible to put right, which causes no end of frustration for conductors.

handling training is mostly "in tower" round here as well, but in the grouping to the north of here that I'm thinking of, once people can ring rounds they usually start getting out and about.

I'm not a great fan of "ring their way" teaching mostly because of the "my ringers" attitude it implies. Every teacher has a slightly different approach, some things work well for one person but not another so I think the more you are exposed to the more likely you are to find things that click. The other problem is that whilst there are good TCs, others shouldn't be let anywhere near a learner, and those are the ones who often have the "My tower, my ringers" mindset.

Personally I've always rung at multiple towers, initially because when I was learning to handle I was taken aside by a visiting ringer and told "Ask X at tower Y to teach you, before you kill yourself". But I'm the only person in my tower that rings regularly elsewhere, and I think that's reflected in my progress - one practice a week isn't enough if you want to push on.

Another bonus is I often pick up things I can take back to my home tower and pass on to others, we've benefitted a lot from outside influence in what was historically a completely isolated tower without needing others to come in and "prop us up".