The Patrol Method
Lessons and questions of Scout leadership and operating troop program
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LATEST POSTS
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By HashTagScouts · Posted
Don't disagree with you on when they could have messaged. Does seem to be desired to use NAM as the showcase the past few years- but that could be self-serving trying to get more people to attend ((BSA makes $ off the registration fees for NAM). -
By AwakeEnergyScouter · Posted
Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but that sounds like someone in your council fighting the success. It could just be poor job performance, of course. But the kind of stiff, emotional resistance to girls and women being a full, authentic part of Scouting America that some people in the organization have doesn't just evaporate in a year or even in the face of evidence. For them, it's not about success for the organization, it's about forcing the world to be a certain way. In this case cooties-free. It could definitely be that your council's policy is a result of an internal struggle between people who wanted coed and people who didn't. Did you see Scouting Maverick's take on postponing coed in Scouts BSA earlier? https://scoutingmaverick.com/2025/01/21/celebrating-a-sexist-scam-linked-troop-wood-badge-highlights-sas-cultural-rot/ Your example of a CC who is so invested in no girls that he's going to de facto let his unit die rather than go coed isn't the only one I'm sure. Actually, you mentioned several such units, so... They're going to keep shrieking until it stops working, which seems to be roundabout now or soon. But some won't stop shrieking because they realized it's actually fine, they will still sabotage what they can. Meanwhile in my corner of my female-friendly council, many leaders are working together to build out a coed pipeline from Cub Scouts into Scouts BSA. Not coincidentally we're about equal numbers of men and women. And it's working - all of our units are growing. If we keep working, Scouting America is going to come back from cultural oblivion in a decade or so. -
That's exactly where we are right now. Most of the adults in the troop were not Scouts. They took the youth lead concept to an extreme and now we have a patient that is sick. I'm trying to avoid getting to the life support stage, much less CPR. The oldest Scouts have succumbed to sports and the fumes. Half the troop is under the age of 13 and a quarter is under the age of 12. We are going to have to actually teach the PLC, such that it is, how to do the skills and then get them to retain the information long enough to teach it to their patrols. -
I get what you're saying; I would counter though that national should have been able to see that and should have planned that timeline to release the coed program earlier. So right now female membership growth is significantly outpacing male membership growth (I think the NAM numbers were 3x the number of females are joining right now), and most of us have no where to send our female AOLs. I don't know about you guys but my council adopted the dumbest policy during the coed pilot. Only existing linked units from prior to the coed policy can be coed, so we have female AOLs just dropping from the program. Who could be so stupid to think retention of female scout was going to go up in some of these councils where we're stuck telling parents that if they want to keep their daughters in the program they will have to continue to drive an additional 10+ miles just to go to a troop meeting when their sons are swinging around the block for a meeting? -
So we have a framework right. It's clear that adult leaders have to step in and instruct the senior scouts when there is a knowledge gap or lack of retention. This goes back to BP and his original Aids to Scoutmastership. The program has always allowed for adult leaders to step in; how we step in is critical though. My advice, which I would say is backed up by the solid century+ of the program and going back to the root (BP) is, in the absence of capable elected youth leaders, adults step in to teach those youth leaders and get them to the point where they are capable. In short it's a 2 part solution. Part 1) Adults are on hand and always willing to teach the PLC members what they need to do to teach, mentor, and lead the rest of the troop. Part 2) Constantly assessing if you're not being a lazy fat slob by flopping on the phrase "Have you asked your SPL".
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