Toastmasters International recently announced the return of the vintage Competent Communicator (CC) path. Some longtime members see it as a positive gesture, but many feel the underlying issue remains unresolved: legacy titles such as Advanced Communicator Silver (ACS) were discontinued with the launch of Pathways, leaving members who completed dozens of speeches without equivalent recognition.
One member shared that they delivered 30 speeches to earn ACS, only to be told they would have to start over under the new system. In their view, accommodations were made for Distinguished Toastmasters (DTMs) but not for other long-time members. After 18 years in the organization, they are now considering whether to renew their membership.
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Toastmasters International lost me years ago due to Pathways and the resulting fallout. They’re incompetent. This change is way too little, way too late.
Incidentally, I mainly follow this sub because I’m morbidly curious about TMI’s pathetic attempts to make fetch happen.
That’s unexpected and welcome news. For those with long memories, it feels like a New Coke moment.
The CC was a clear, focussed introduction to public speaking, while the advanced manuals were a superb resource for developing further skills. It always felt like Pathways threw away all the best parts of the previous programme (the CC, advanced manuals and speech-specific evaluations), while keeping the very worst (particularly the over-complicated structure from the CL).
I left TM a few years ago, mostly because of Pathways. If the CC is being restored, not to mention two of the advanced manuals, then I could easily return. Mrs Giraffe, herself an ex-TM, concurs.
If I’m reading things right, an individual club could now invite all its new members to use the CC manual for their first path. That would take it most of the way back to the previous programme. Meanwhile, I hope TM will update and restore the other advanced manuals, and address the OP’s question by recognizing those who had previously earned the CC or AC.
As someone who was a VPE for a number of years during the CC & Pathways eras, I’m going to hold out some hope that this is a tentative step in the right direction.
IMO the reason the CC worked for members was because of its simplicity – 10 speeches where each has an aim that you can understand in a sentence. You do one speech, then the next one, and so on, simple. Don’t know your TMs login? Doesn’t matter. Lost your manual? Doesn’t matter – because everything’s straight-forward enough to understand and explain without them.
By contrast – with Pathways a new member has to set up a user account, choose a path, read through the aims/objectives – these might seem like small things but trust me, a large number of my club members simply never did these and as a result many slowly lost interest.
I still hold out hope that one day there will be a ‘default’ TM pathway that is just 10 speeches that can be, say, downloaded on a PDF and given to new / prospective members.
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