Eagledad

Our troop had many awkward scouts, and they truly flourished in the program. I say awkward because not all youth with nontypical behavior for their age are autistic, ADHD, or mentally handicapped. Many, are just awkward. I'm curious about the UK Scout training. The challenge for adult leaders is that the behavior pattern of each awkward scout is as different as their personalities and requires a slightly different approach for their special needs. Generally, the parent's involvement improves the odds of their child having a good scouting experience because they can help guide the adults

Your being defensive yknot when nobody criticising. But, these reporting systems are only as good or as bad as the training. And, the anonymous reporting system will have to be added to the BSA youth and adult training. Barry

I agree we need something like this. But, from my experiences of scouts reporting these things to unit adults they trust, I wonder if the system will encourage victims to bypass unit authorities. Also, I have experience with observing youth making false accusations at adults and youth, which has its own complexities. Accusations of harm can be complicated and I wonder what kind of training the folks handling the reports are getting. Barry

Apples and oranges. My polling was between 1995 to 2005. Nothing has changed that would affect my conclusions. Several events have occurred in the last 15 years to draw National’s conclusions today. But, the burnout problem is still there and not being addressed. Barry

Lol. Hmm, in theory? Whose theory? I learned these facts from interviewing hundreds of scouters, parents, and scouts. And, the experiences of scouters in other states verify my results. So, I'm confident with my analysis. The prime reason for the burnout is Tigers. The number of volunteers, including the parents, nearly doubles the desired number of volunteers to manage the whole pack program. If you read the present discussions on the forum, you find that many units are not recruiting even the minimum ideal number of volunteers for their program. So, they don't have a pool of

Burnout of managing the program. A volunteer organization gets about 2 good dedicated years from the average volunteer and three years of providing an adequate program. After that, they either leave or just basically show up. The scouts get a boring program each week that they whine about to the parents. The parents will make them stay as long as they can stand the whining. The Cub youth program is 5 long years for the adults. Cutting out the Tiger program completely, and shortening the Webelos program would bring the Cub Scout program to a more manageable 3.5 years, and reduce the adult

I'm talking about leader burnout. When leaders burnout, the program becomes boring and the scouts leave. Your idea is sound from a marketing perspective, but it doesn't approach the real issue. Barry

I interviewed hundreds of scouts and parents. I narrowed the cause down to adult burnout. I can write paragraphs on how burnout drove out thousands of families, but the the BSA simply lost between 50 to 75 percent of their cub families by crossover. Barry

I'm not surprised. Go visit all your neighbors and they will say the same thing. This very subject came up several times on the forum during the sex abuse litigation. The high image drives a lot of those who felt the drama from the sexual abuse should have been the last nail in the BSA coffin. A few of those anti-BSA folks are still on this forum and use every chance they can to take a dig at the BSA. But the problem they have is BSA sex abuse media reports are rare, media reports of sex abuse in schools occur almost weekly. The truth is that most of the damage to the BSA image has c

When our troop was 100 scouts strong, I would say 50 percent of those scouts were in sports and other outside activities that demanded some of their time. But, it was seasonal. I average troop meetings between September and December averaged about 60 scouts. 100 scouts January through March, then 60 to 80 scouts until June. We took 100 scouts to summer camp and then the cycle started over again. I agree that parents understand the value of the scouting experience better than their kids, but, I also think if the troop has a good (fun) program, the scouts will attend when they can. They w

This has always been the situation during my time in scouting. What might be a little surprising is that even some two-parent families look for programs with male role modes to help develop their sons. I'm not sure if the reason is because the culture is anti-male and they are looking for reinforcement of masculine behavior, or the father is out of the picture a lot from work. But our troop had several scouts in that situation. Looking at this further, I wouldn't be surprised that families would be looking for the experiences for their daughters since the evidence also shows that girls s

Gays had very little influence one way or the other on membership until National decided to allow gays. That caused the exodus in numbers as well as as alumni funds. And that was the beginning of raising membership fees. Forcing scouting out of schools was done by the atheist. Non of the progressive activism really affected membership except for the girls. What really hurt the BSA the most was the financial support from past members. While liberal corporations taking away their support got all the media attention, it was the huge alumni pockets that hurt the most as National tried to

You had me going there for a moment. Then I remembered that National only makes program changes that serve the folks at National. I’ve been wondering lately what the Boy Scout program has that would attract girls over the Girl Scouts program. Then I ran into a BSA girls troop fundraising at a local store yesterday. These girls were in full uniforms with every patch they could wear appropriate for their rank. They looked really sharp and any Scoutmaster would be proud. I think these girls are attracted to the legacy Boy Scout program. Sadly, National is going to shuck that away from them l

I’ve been preaching for a more simple cub program for many years because it pulls down the membership for all the other programs. But, I fear it’s the troop program that will be changed, which doesn’t need change. National has rarely shown to make changes to better the program toward a better program. Barry

Thanks. Barry