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Well, that's sort of where I am going with this, and I do not think the "gender correlation" is anywhere near 100% - or more to the point, is not likely to be anywhere near 100% with the girls who are going to join the Cub Scouts or the Whatever (11-17) Scouts. Boys (and girls) are already pretty different just within their own genders. Some are much more athletic than others (and everything in between.) Same thing with their enthusiasm for different parts of the program. (I have seen boys who actually liked the Eagle-required "homework-badges", and liked camping and hiking and backpacking

(Fixed typo in thread title)

A girl lead boy scout program will work fine. A boy lead boy scout program works fine. They can use the same content and there is room in the program for them to do what they are interested in. When girl scouts started it was a mirror of the boy scout program and it worked fine.

So imagine for a moment if you will. You are a father of a child that wishes to join scouts and there is not a pack in your area. You contact your District leadership and inquire about any packs that plan to open up to your child and they tell you they are considering the option. You wait a few weeks and you contact them again and nothing has developed. You contact them again a few weeks later (it is now late February early March) and they tell you that no packs in your area will be open for your child. So now you widen your search. You ask that same leadership team if there are packs in anoth

The thought that removing a corner of the Totin' chip for safety infractions amounts to hazing just blows my mind. When my Cubs earned their whittling chip, they received it with one corner already removed by me... We had a three strikes rule. Minor infractions would result in removing a corner and a little remedial training. If you lost all three corners, you lost the chip and had to redo it to earn another one. Major infractions would have been dealt with differently, but I never had one. Never had a parent complain.

@Hawkwin, I am sorry for your, and your daughter's situation. Seriously. This is what happens when adult leaders rush in to something with no plan and no regard for National's policies. But that's water under the bridge now. How to best salvage the situation? Are you receiving any input or guidance from the CM? Any communication at all? What happens at pack meetings? Are there other girls in the pack? If so, they should all be put in one den so they can have a den experience. it is probably also worth a phone call or two to see if that district or council has an "

Scars from knife wounds also are permanent. Also, for the tablet misusage, cut corners from the cyber-chip.

I've seen similar arguments over time in regards to what was tradition now being seen as hazing. For example, when I was at Texas A&M I learned how they made a lot of the traditions illegal for various reasons. Some had been made illegal within the corps years before I arrived and some after. All for good reasons at the time, but the resistance to those changes was incredible and can still cause some folks to go red face and bug-eye'd with foam flecks. Two examples. To say a cadet was motivated and/or doing great you used the term, "Red A^^". The history of that phrase dat

I would have a real problem if I took offense at every jab against lawyers in this forum - or in real life.

Why isn't cutting the corner of your chip more like the police officer cutting the corner of your license? A point or two for speeding eventually goes away. You never regain the corner of you chip. Because it is permanent. What other "punishment" or corrective action do we take in BSA that leaves a permanent mark? You can never regain that cut corner. It builds resentment and does nothing, on its own, to teach better skills. Cutting the corner of a card is as an effective method of corrective action as making someone sing for their stuff back. In thinking about this, I considered

The changes aren't about the program, they're about the fact girls and boys are different, have different needs, wants, development rates and thought processes. An agile leader will take the content and tailor it to meet the human element for a girl and a boy differently based on those needs.

So far I have had to make minimal changes. One is to modify gender language on the fly. So in some cases an adventure would have me read something about “boys” and I would insert “girls” or “scouts”. The other is to be prepared with more adventure content. That could be due to the smaller den size or that the girls are a bit more focused at this age. The other area I have watched for is interactions between boys and girls. That will be a new dynamic but again shouldn’t require a change to the program. For the life of me I have no idea what else would have to change. I would b

As a parent who has raised both genders, I beg to differ. They both need equal amounts of love, care, and discipline. But epual and identical are two different things.

I think this is a wise policy to act confident and magnanimous towards other youth scouting programs. Getting nasty will only hurt the BSA brand name.

Better a cut corner than a knife wound. Better a hurt feeling than a hurt hand. Not saying there may be better things to use in your correctional bag of tricks but there are times you need to make an impression. Knives and fires are not toys and there are real physical consequences to their misuse.

Considering I know who wrote that comment on the blog and heard him talk about it, I can tell you it was made to show how BSA policies and literature is constantly changing, contradictory and confusing. One BSA official document, Bryan's Blog, is NOT stating that the practice of cutting corners of TOTIN" CHIP ( emphasis) is being denied. And many Packs use those policies in absence of specific Cub Scout ones, or to help Webelos transition to Boy Scouts. But then a change is made in another BSA document, 2017 BALOO Syllabus, stating that you cannot cut corners on Whittling Chip. As a f

1. Cub scouts is not Boy Scouts. Nor is Whittling Totin'. But, this may be @Gwaihir's instructor's source of confusion. The privilege of greater accountability comes with moving up in the big leagues. 2. It's a card. In a kid's pocket (hopefully in a wallet ). It's likely to not survive the boy's tenure. If he damages it, should we call him out for hazing himself? Not every negative action is hazing. 3. We are not interested in collecting/sequestering knives and axes. We want scouts to hold onto them and keep working with them, making the world a better place in the process. 4.

We don't make unit policy that way. This sort of stuff is nothing new. There have always been pushy people who try to throw their weight around. It not only happen is scouting, it happens in sports programs too. In fact, it happens a lot more often in sports programs. A scout unit needs to have a IH and COR who aren't pushovers for that sort of thing.

What about taking the card and holding it until the Scout re-qualifies for the card by doing all the requirements again? Why does there have to be any form of hazing at all?

A lot of hysteria over the OP hearsay. This is a safety issue. We occasionally tear corners of a Totin Chip card but more frequently we immediately take away the object that is not being used safely and that intervention is not deterred by the presence of others. No songs, rather retraining. This is made clear to parents so we are all on the same page. My $0.02

It is not "Hazing" if done properly and if the result is expected. Every government agency, every company or organization big enough to be concerned about public performance or safety and accidents has standards of behavior, and consequences for not following those standards. Cause an accident? Neglect a responsibility? Reprimand in file, day(s) off work , forfeited annual leave,,,, Every state requires standards of behavior to drive a car, a truck, own a gun, practice medicine. Fail to follow those standards, lose something.... Throw a knife? Drop an axe? Threaten ano

yeah, I never bought into the corner cutting thing either. They earned the card or they didn't. Don't make up requirements.

I don’t know Eagle93, National has admitted they brought in girls to save the program from a declining membership. Switch the BSA and GSUSA titles around and your post would be just as believable. The BSA membership numbers have been dropping for many years. Once the influx of girls is stable, National has done nothing I can see that prevents the return of a continued membership decline. A good marketing slogan for the BSA in this moment could be: “Join the BSA, the lesser of two evils”. Barry

Specific actions may or may not be hazing depending on context, intent and other factors. Is having a scout do push-ups hazing? If it is in context of encouraging physical fitness, probably not. Making a first year scout do push-ups to get his breakfast, yes. I may not be able to define it; but I know it when I see it.

No worries, next infarction, we'll have the scout stand in front of the troop and read one of the incident reviews (https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/incident-report/incident-reviews/) in operatic voice.

I usually apply the Show me where that is written rule.

Real lesson learned 2.0: Lawyers ruin everything. No offense @NJCubScouter

I never bought into the corner clipping scene. Our scouts saw it as a badge of honor to have corners missing... We just take the card and require that they go without for a couple of events, and then re-earn the privilege. This seems to get the message across, and we rarely have repeat offenders

I recently did the new YPT training (online). I don't recall it mentioning the Totin' Chip or ripping corners.