Eagledad

Leaders need to be taught to not be afraid of just going outside and letting the boys burn energy. My son has told me many times that those were some of his most memorable fun meetings. I ran two 1.5 hour den meetings a month and at least 30 minutes were given to high energy game time. Barry

Kill things! Is that like saying knives are designed to kill things? Or the SUV that kills drivers of other cars. Go visit a shooting range and count how many things are killed. I don't know, but I feel safe in saying that 99.999 percent of the bullets shot from these guns were not intended to kill anything. And it's probably just as safe to say that 99.9999 of gun owners have never killed anything either. That includes hunters. Guns are tools for sport, just like the killer baseball bat. In fact, there is actually a number of golfers killed each years by impelling themselves with a club that somehow struck a tree. I imagine they just need better training for hitting trees with their clubs. Guns are just tools like chainsaws, power saws, drills and even the evil nail "gun". I don't know how it is now, but the tree/limb saw was the most common reported woods tools accident by scouts and scouters. I know for a fact that schools have far more injuries in the shop classes than the number of gun incidents at schools. Is the band saw designed to kill? While I'm open to practical ideas on this subject, lets keeps things in perspective. Barry

The Latin Scot, you nailed it. How much would discussions change here if we all read your post before starting new threads. The tone of your post should be the tone of the SM Specific course. The contents of the syllabus wouldn’t need to change, just the adults frame of mind for how to apply the course subjects as they are presented. Barry

It’s more, but I don’t like showing my cards. Barry

Good point. It’s a whole new ball game. But, until experience shows us different, we work with what we know. Barry

Throwing out my 20 years Experience Card again. Boys don’t care if the program is a transition program or not. As long as they are having fun, they will stick around and cross over. I have watched Webelos dens that were nothing more than an advanced Bear programs cross over 100% because they were fun. I have seen Districts cross over 90% of their Webelos because they worked with each Webelos leader to make sure they had the support needed to run fun meetings. Burned out leaders were assigned troops to help them. While a transition program can certainly be fun, a fun program doesn’t have to be a transition program. Barry

Age card? Stating our experiences is a card? How does someone with a “anti-OA” card know what’s best for a dreamer? Scouters should spend less effort telling what Scouts can and cannot do, and instead a build a program that encourages more dreams and let’s the Scouts choose their path. Barry

Lol, I have too much actual experience to know better. And I have no problem with glass half empty people so long as they don’t keep trying to pour that half empty glass on dreamers.

Then you are doing it wrong. Barry

If the boys are having fun now, they will want to continue the fun next year. Barry

Well that is not typical of national, or wasn’t. I haven’t been involved for the last 10 years. Is that District or Council wide a far as you know? I would enjoy coming down to abserve the program in your area. Maybe you guys are doing something right that would benefit the rest of us. Barry

CMs and ACMs are generally more passionate about the program and aren’t as affected by burn out. But, those leaders (Wisconsinmomma) only make up about 5% of total leadership. Troops suffer from burnout as well, but it’s not as much of a problem because the Scouts take on a lot more responsibility. However, I have seen that Troop Venturing Crews were generally started by burned out troop leaders looking for more adventure to keep them interested. Likely why they rarely last more than 3 years. I found the best Webelos leaders are Troop leaders that go back to take on a Den. They know how to have fun and ignore the boring stuff. Barry

Could be right, but 80% of Bear leaders are moms in either the 2nd or 3rd year of Cub leading. We can agree to disagree, I invested a lot of time to find this conclusion. Dont ever blame other programs, if a boy enjoys scouts enough, he will find a way. Barry

No wonder the world is in such a mess. Folks are so focused on their own personal agendas, they are color blinded to reality. You always misread between the lines of my posts. The only blame is National that burdens the cub adults so much that they are burned out by third year of a five year program. I personally interviewed dozens of Webelos leaders over the years, so if you don’t agree, you are free to invest your own time to prove me wrong. Let me give you a hint, start talking to the Bear leaders. I also interviewed many male Webelos leaders who had no desire to lead the Den, but were swayed (heels dragging) one way or another into holding Den meetings. Their Scouts couldn’t wait to jump ship. I believe it’s fair to say 40% of Webelos leaders have no enthusiasm for being a den leader and are counting days to cross over. Its a huge problem, but as long as folks are stuck on their own personal agendas, the real problems get ignored. Shesh. I started a program in our District to help burned out Webelos leaders, which had some success. But a few scouters who read about the program on the forum created the program in their own district with great success of about 90% crossovers. Unimaginable in my area. Barry

And one other big factor is the average Webelos leader is the burned out mom who has no outdoor camping experience. Is anybody surprised by the 49% crossover number? Barry

I agree and disagree on this. The statistic Nationally is less than 50% of “Webelos IIs” join Boy Scouts. So if we added the dropouts from all the age groups, including the Tigers, the number of cubs who don’t join Boy Scouts is substantial, maybe 75%.The main cause of cub drop outs is adult leader burnout. Burned out Leaders don’t put the effort into the program to make it interesting for the boys, so they get bored and move on. I believe the overburdened Cub program is the main cause for dropping membership the 30 years. Barry

Aren’t you the adult who doesn’t allow OA in your troop? Barry

So very true. I was a very good recruiter as well. It requires someone of humility because others will get the recognition for the tasks you recruited for. I learned that recruiting is an art and a rarer skill than most realize. You can move mountains simply by putting the right people in the right positions. I know this, we now have a few mountains in Oklahoma. Barry

I was recruited for that very thing. BUT, how much can we do in one hour a week. We turned a dying troop of 7 into a successful patrol method program of 100. That takes a bit more than one hour a week. There are many discussions on this forum of learning how to say "No". And please don't think bad of us. I had many choices for applying my one hour a week after I step back from Scoutmastering. I decided to go a route where I could accomplish the most growth with my limited time. It was a purposeful strategic choice of teaching adults and senior scouts at the council level. My dream was a council of patrol method troops. I just didn't see accomplishing the same goal with OA. I admit I believe OA is hopeless. Barry

I think what OA represented is dead. OA used to recognize the above average scouts. They were experts with woods tools and felt very comfortable alone in the woods. They were givers of their time an represent Friendly, Courteous, and Kind to a fine art. Todays adults prefer mediocrity so that nobody feels bad being the below average scout. Advancement is more desired in groups and leadership is given so that each scout gets a turn. OA was a program that gave the above average scouts a bigger arena to expand dreams. Now it's just another boring program that is challenged to fit in a troop agenda. Barry

You think National would have change their mind if they researched the Canadian Scouts and the Campfire Kids programs after their membership policy change? Personally, after watching how they handled this whole thing, I think this was a knew-jerk action without much consideration of failure. They wanted it, so they did it. Barry

I agree. I believe I was clear, but the point of the text was showing how much the program can change as a result of a membership policy change. Barry

It's difficult because the data can change depending on the time of year it is taken. National has not found a consistent method for acquiring data that has enough precision to see a trend. And they also are their own worst enemy. National pushes families of Webelos IIs to join a troop. But they won't know for at least a year if the scout was active. A lot of Webelos are pushed to join a troop only to never show up. So, National can't really track how many Webelos actually continue into scouting. I had to personally call the families to find that kind of data. I know that I have a better feel for program problems than National. The Tiger program is a membership killer for many reasons, but National has only shown their reliance of the program. I have the data, I'm not sure what they have. Barry

You keep asking that question and we answering it. The program changed a lot with the admittance of women leaders. There didn't appear to be a lot of changes from the outside, but it was obvious from the inside. As I've said several times (I believe to you, but I could be wrong), the massive training course changes in 2000 were largely a result of bringing women into the troop. Not because they were women, but because they had no Boy Scouting experienced. The BSA was so overwhelmed with un-experienced adult leaders that they had to rethink how to train them. And I think most of us who were leading Troop programs back then would say that Patrol Method has suffered greatly. Adults today don't get patrol method because training doesn't teach it well and there aren't enough experienced leaders to encourage it at Council or district level. Bringing in girls will increase the number of un-experienced unit adult leaders. If there was any hope that the program 10 years from now resembled today's program, calling it a family program killed it. Calling it a family program will add more confusion between leadership and parents. It will eventually sort itself out if scouting survives, but it won't be the same program. Barry

I remember watching an interview with Charleston Heston talking about the his experience making the Planet of the Apes movie. He found it interesting that while the actors who played the parts of the chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas came from different backgrounds and races, they all hung around in the character groups. There was no reason for them to do that other than some kind of bonding attraction for the character. Just his observation. Barry