From: Jason Cruse (jcruse@SOCKET.NET)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 13:39:31 CDT
I've been trying to stay off of this, but have to jump in on one thing
below...
I've deleted the original senders name of some of these comments, so he
won't think I'm ranting on him. I'm not. He has raised points that I'd
like to address without appearing to attack him, directly or indirectly.
<snip>
>A good idea, in theory, if you have heartburn with the
>national organization or even your own council. In practice
>however, you've really got to find and remediate the source
>of the heartburn.
In fact, our chartered partner is going this route for FOS next year...that
is, we likely won't do an FOS drive in our troop and will encourage those
who give to give straight to the troop. There are MANY reasons for
this...this has been smoldering for over two years, and conversations
between our IH and the scout office. This is his call...
>You can eventually make the national organization (or your
>council) go away but, without the national organization
>there are no high adventure bases, Jamborees, handbooks,
>manuals, training curricula......
Sort of agreed...but would scouting still survive if there was no high
adventure or jamboree? Of course. Gee, the cost of my participation just
went down and scouting just got equalized between the haves and
have-nots...just a thought.
>without your local council, there's probably no camp
>property, summer camp program, districts, round tables, SMF,
>Wood Badge.....
>
Hmmmm...my dad, who is not that old, can recall non council summer camp,
non-district events...etc. Without some of these things, council budgets
drop. There are several theories for why these things came about, one being
that local leaders could not/would not provide them on a local level any
more. And some (not all) professionals get VERY angry when a return to this
era is suggested. I can recall about two years ago a troop in my council
saying that they were going to go on their own for summer camp, for less
money than the council charged, and so forth. The professionals went nuts
over this, and behaved generally in an unscoutlike manner...until the troop
came back from their week of camp having accomplished *more* than they would
have at summer camp. And what about troops planning their own high
adventure trips, instead of relying on overcrowded BSA bases? Why are the
bases overcrowded? BECAUSE WE WANT THE EASY WAY AND DON'T DO IT OURSELVES!
I'm not saying get rid of professionals. I am saying that we, as
volunteers, have become over-reliant on them.
>So. like it or not, you've got to deal with the "system" and
>fix it.....if you are of the opinion that it needs fixing.
>
*WE* as volunteers need to fix ourselves, first, before we can fix anything
else.
JAC
Jason A. Cruse
Dept. of Political Science
University of Missouri-Columbia
jcruse@socket.net
