Young Eagles

In the process of "helping" my son formulate a letter requesting a lette
r of recommendation for Eagle, I pulled up
Eagle Tip 12 and thought about rehashing the dead horse again. There is a thinl
y disguised, but virulent, bias against the 13
to 15 yr. old Eagle that I find a bit repugnant. The line of reasoning seems to
be that it took me (or my son) until 17.99 yr. to
Eagle and therefore, it should take everyone that long. Remember that there is
an interaction between the maturation process
and Scouting advancement in the performance of a boy during a BOR. It is a simp
le fact that an 18 yr. old Tenderfoot could
make a better impression at an Eagle BOR than a 13 yr. old Life Scout who happen
s to be an Eagle candidate. What your are
judging, to some extent, is the aging process and the consequences on maturation
. Please read Tim O'Leary's comments in
Eagle Tip 12 and see if there is some truth in his writings about the static vs.
dynamic nature of the Eagle award and see if
these comments don't open your eyes.

Writing and finessing letters of recommendation is a real art form. Bru
ce Johnson has some worthwhile thoughts
that are worth considering. Briefly, If you can't write something positive, I w
ould recommend simply saying that you are not
familiar enough with the boy to write a letter of recommendation. This a method
I have used for graduate students that I didn't
feel comfortable recommending. I do, however, search my own "data bank" when I
use this approach. It seems that Tim
O'Leary and I have similar feelings concerning writing letters of recommendation
vs. one's own biases toward kids. Some of
the comments in Eagle Tip #12 suggest a whole lot of feeling that are not expres
sed verbally, but are rather obvious from the
wording of the comments. Sometimes we fail to admit we are dealing with KIDS wh
o don't understand the nuances of adults.
My point is did the kid perform badly (act like a kid??) or did he fail to read
adult minds to know what was expected of him. My
son went through this as a 13 yr. old ASPL and was never allowed to forget his f
ailure in leadership as a Life Scout when in
reality his former SM required all boys to serve a yr. as SPL before he would si
gn off on leadership for Eagle. I guess he
should have read the SM's mind to know that this was expected of him.

The comments about what the boy did on the Eagle Project and what paren
ts' did has always been a bit of a
laugher for me. I have never seen an Eagle awarded without substantial parenta
l input. The key is how the parents hide
their roles in the project and criticize the same actions in other parents. The
whole application process for Eagle is almost as
diabolical as submitting a thesis to a graduate school for a Ph.D.. You know wh
at I mean Tim!! My son's efforts in getting his
project together and written up are equal to one of my major journal articles!!
Obviously, I am going to proof read and help him
format the write up. The question id do I hide my role like everyone else or ad
mit it.

Nuff said for now

Bob Rosebrough
ASM Troop 601
Columbia MD

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