Eagledad

Good idea, but I would need "All the above". I'm just giving concerns depending on the discussion at the moment. We had a couple of these mothers. Part of their conflict is they felt participating with their son was interupting the male role model experience that they valued from the program. That isn't on your list either. Yep, and it is even more complicated by National's reputation of acting without listening. It appears to me that nobody trust that National will do the right thing for the right reasons. I have been suggesting that for a long time. But it has to be done right. The previous WoodBadge put the participants in ideal patrol method environment and it failed. Adults were going back trying to duplicate their WB experience, not philosophical basics of the patrol method program. Adults need to understand how making independent decisions in the patrol environment is the driver to character growth. The main issue is boys go into the patrol method stupid. Adults go in with life experiences. Adults know how to build teams that work where young ignorant boys have yet to work that in their mind. The stress of learning to work within the patrol method process is the catalyst for character growth, not the scout skills actions themselves. Adults fail because they don't let the patrol method work to the point of stress. One idea I would like to try the is unit coach idea. The coach is an experienced Scoutmaster who works with the adults in the troop to understand how and why the program works. Barry

The BSA has for a very long time been a target rich environment for predators. The outdoor arena along with a patrol method theme are tempting to those looking for quiet one-on-one opportunities. I've been told personal stories that go back to the 1950's. And we had some recent local situations as well. Now throw females into the mix along with cultural diversity issues, and you have a nervous population trying to push past it's fears. My personal experience example as far as women in scouting are concerned goes back to the cubs. When I was working to increase our Webelos crossover from 50% to a goal of 75%, I found the biggest part of the challenge was keeping the moms in the cub program. Moms had no trouble running the Wolf/Bear den meetings because they are basically arts and crafts. But when they grabbed the Webelos handbook and saw how much of the activity themes were outdoor skills and camping, they bulked. Add to that most of the Bear leaders where burning out, and you have a mass exodus of adults for the Webelos program. I learned that the Webelos age part of the program have always had this issue, but the scouting community expected dads to take over the dens during their sons Webelos experience. That worked fine for a lot of years. I'm not sure when, but the dads started backing away leaving the moms stuck. Huge drop outs after Webelos is the result. The average mom doesn't have any outdoor experience and isn't really interested in learning to tie knots. Yes, the BSA offers training to help Webelos leaders build confidence in those areas, but that requires an a couple days of learning to tie knots along with sleeping in the woods overnight. Are you starting to see the problem? Yes, there are some mothers out there that are attracted to the adventure side of the scouting program, but "Not Very Many". My wonderful beautiful Mrs. Barry didn't mind camping with my also lovely daughter so long as the Girls Scouts camp provided Air-conditioned cabins and cooked meals in an Air-conditioned mess hall. She didn't even like calling it a mess hall. Cafeteria is more to her liking. One of the reasons I'm against coed scouts is because my experience with several female Scoutmasters hasn't given me much hope that they will push Patrol Method or an Outdoor program. We got along great and I enjoyed working with all scoutmasters. But the reality is that most adults don't push past their fears or uncomfortableness (if that is a word) of situations. Adults without patrol method or outdoor experience rarely develop the troop program much past a Webelos type of environment. The program is pretty adult run at the very least. That is real world, not hypothetical apprehension. I was one asked to advise a new troop of five female leaders with 40 new scouts. That troop after a year wouldn't even rate as a good Webelos program. Bringing in coed youth will bring in more coed adult leaders and dilute the experience base. The program will naturally get farther away from outdoors and patrol method. Not only have I watched this happen, the engineer in me says it's just logical. Barry

Nope, she was frustrated of posters who interrupted discussions of pragmatic world dialogue with speeches of idealism. Idealism is the vision. Experience is a pragmatic measurement for correcting course back to the vision. Preaching idealism to the chore is not pragmatic, it is an emotional outburst. She was a college level teacher. Her point is that preaching without the balance of pragmatism forces the vision farther away. Barry

Over time we found this to be quite frustrating as well. We tried several camps and they all work about the same. So we asked the patrol leaders to kind-of retest the scouts to get a book sign off. I know that is a big taboo on the forum, but it helped our program by shifting the integrity of the skills onto to us. We also don't push advancement at summer camp, we push fun. The new scouts still take some of the skills classes, but don't feel pushed to earn rank by the end of the week. Our program typically provides skills sessions on most campouts all year long for any scouts who request, so there is no do or die expectation needed at summer camp or MB fairs. Also, along with a couple badges like swimming and camping, we ask scouts pick jsut plain fun MBs. And we find that new scouts typically add a couple of easy fun badges during the week as they find their schedule will allow. Summer camp for the adults is more about patrol method than advancement. Summer camp is typically the first time boys are given the independence to make choices and to learn by those choices for several days at a time. I've told the story before about the new scout who skipped all his classes for stuff that was more fun like swimming, biking, and so on. No big deal to us, but his mom volunteered next year to go to camp and make sure all new scouts went to all their classes and come back with some kind of rank advancement. She was not happy that her son, who Eagle two years later, was behind most of his friends in advancement. She was kindly asked to stay home. LoL Barry

The average patrol leader back then was either driving or in drivers ed. So our scout leadership was very mature. We always had a lot of dads camp with us, but we rarely saw them. I'm not sure what they did all day. But scouting back then was different. It was a guy thing where even the dads like to hang out. The program was more boy run as well because adults back then trusted youth independence. Parent didn't worry about kids back then the way they do today because the community as a whole was safe. We talk a lot of idealist patrol method today because so few adults work that kind of program. But that was more of a default program back then. Boy run wasn't a buzz phrase because boy run was the norm. Barry

Same here, only our bus was orange. Had all the windows down driving to Philmont. I don't remember it being cold, but then Oklahoma doesn't get as cold as DC. Barry

Ah, I see. Thanks. Sounds interesting. Barry

LOL, I remember a few years ago on this forum another liberal scouter expressing her frustration that members here were incapable of pragmatic discussions. I guess she was right. Barry

Did you grow up in Bethany Ok? Sure sounds like the same troop. Barry

One of the goals in our program is to continually challenge the scout so that he continually matures. Most or our scouts have matured by 15 or 16 years old to where they need the kind of experience that desertrat describes. We even had a couple of 14 year old JASMs because their maturity warranted it. It wasn't a right of passage, but more higher learning. I don't think we had the JASM position in the 70's and I don't remember what we called scouts with JASM level of maturity. But I had so much respect for them because they were super scouts to me. We were a big troop, but we didn't have a lot of Eagles. Back then it was Arrowmen and JASM scouts who had our deepest admiration. Barry

Ahhh! Music to my ears. Barry

Yes, we all have theories of how National is going to change. Honesty, I am so tired of discussions of how National is going to change. Can't they just lay back quietly fixing the internal problems for a while and allow the dust to settle. Sheesh. Barry

Ok stosh, thanks. Barry

They also get really hot in the sun. The discussion has been mostly focused on the water and mud part of the treks, but the feet are also exposed to the hot sun during long paddles between portages. Barry

I'm wondering if the town halls are really more about telling than asking. Barry

We have a small trailer donated for our high adventure trips. We found that the gear coming home smells so bad, a trailer is preferred. Barry

This is interesting; that is a lot of conferences. I have a completely different perspective about MBs, so I'm curious what you discuss with the scouts before and after they complete the requirements. I used MBs as a tool for scouts to practice making independent decisions and working independently with other adults without Scoutmaster oversight. Of course I work with new scouts to insure they understand the process of finding counselors, communicating with them and filling out the paperwork properly. But they pretty much have that down after two or three badges. After that, I'm pretty much out-of-sight out-of m-mind. I personally think the Scoutmaster signature shouldn't be required after a scout completes the requirements because why should Scoutmasters care? I'm not saying my approach is better, just different. So I'm curious to learn what you discuss with the scouts before and after they complete the requirements. Especially the more experienced older scouts. Barry

This is a good discussion. The forum used to have many discussions about ranks and awards way back and they are a good review of what the books say instead of what we often assume. Thanks for the review, qwazse. As a result of these kinds of discussions (reviews), I got in the habit of calling Star through Palms "awards" instead of ranks. Award just seems to fit better to me because scouts in our troop are respected by their maturity and experience, not their rank. Not that rank shouldn't reflect a scout's maturity and experience, but sometimes rank is thrown in the mix of requirements for an activity or position of responsibility simply because it implies a seasoned well experienced scout, when in reality the "award" only acknowledges completing a list of requirements. The Eagle "award" is highly respected in our troop, but we have a lot of First Class, Star and Life scouts who are very respected for their experience and maturity. I hope we haven't brought any less honor to the Eagle and Palms than they deserve because we sure have a lot of them. But at the same time, those awards are not perceived as the pinnacles of our program either. Barry

If the adult leader is asking a forum for the answer, I would guess nobody is reading handbooks. Barry

I'm comfortable with the lessons I learned from our patrol method program. But as always, I will be open minded when you report back to us after a few years experience of scoutmastering 50 or more scouts. Barry

Managing money for a volunteer organization is as much a learning experience as learning to manage a boy run program. And, managing funds for a troop of five scouts is nothing like managing money for a troop of 50 in a single patrol method troop program of independent patrols. It just isn't the same. As the adult side grows and matures with patrol method in a large troop growing larger every year, the units philosophy of funds and savings will change as well because experience tends to push toward improving and streamlining the process. This goes as much for the scouts as the adults. My advice in these kinds of matters is for the adults to sit down and discuss what life lesson they want the scouts to experience. Then work from there. How does the troop expect to raise funds and how will the money be distributed among the scouts, troop, equipment, and so on. Each program is different. I have yet to see a troop that didn't change part of the process every couple of years to accommodate for changing needs. Our troop grew from 15 to 100 in seven years. Managing money in a boy run program that large requires understanding of goals and process of applying the funds because the unit that size handles A LOT of money. Whether it's the patrols or the adults doing most of the managing, everyone (parents included) needs to be on board of the process. Barry

My experience is different. Parents want the Eagle, once that is accomplished, they pretty much back off. But some scouts enjoy completing MBs and keep going. I think bling is condescending because it implies a reward without effort. The effort to earn a MB is the same after Eagle as it was before. Personally I'm glad each scout finds his ,so called bling, in our program because he is doing scouting stuff. We had a couple of scouts obsessed with having the lightest back packs. Another obsessed service projects. One scout loved planning activities and another liked creating outdoor recipes. They were going above and beyond everyone's expectations for their own personal enjoyment, IN OUR SCOUT PROGRAM. Is racking up a lot of MBs really that hard to understand. As for the National's recognition change, I wish they would leave well enough alone if for only the reason that a scout could have the same experience (bragging rights) as his grandpa. Of course Eagle requirements have changed over the years, but it is still pretty cool to see three or four generations of Eagles from the same family standing together. Barry

This is the same reason we prefer jungle boots over hiking boots. Jungle boots are typically designed to drain moisture out of the boot, most hiking boots do not and may or may not repel the moisture at all. I will say that cheaper the hiking boot the better for draining, but we have had scouts come home with their Walmart hiking boots being held together only by duct tape. Socks are just as important (if not more) for repelling the moisture away from the foot. Your feet will likely always be wet, but at least the skin will breath compared with cotton socks. I personally like Smartwool socks, but there are many brands of socks with materials designed specifically to push moisture away from the skin. They dry faster as well. Barry

It can be argued that when cynicism is pointed at other people, it is not being friendly, courteous or kind. It's nice to know we have a place to dump when we have a bad day, but there are limits to that as well. Barry

Hammers looking for nails This post came at a time I needed a laugh and I'm still laughing. Thanks Matt Barry