Eagledad

Blasphemy? Is't it like saying the Ten Commandments don't apply to everybody. Or "Do unto "most" others, but not all." When we start to RE-define principles with our personal exceptions, then we put ourselves in the grey area of judgmental. Once we do that, the compass of moral integrity starts to sway back and forth as the young person finds himself in places of difficult decisions. Even your explanation says a scout is obedient to those he is supposed to be obedient to. Who picks and chooses who we are supposed to be obedient to? Yah, try to explain that little side bar to a scout. I was advised when I was young to read the bible to understand life, and live life to understand bible. That is, without a doubt, one of the wisest words of advice I was given in my lifetime. And lucky for me, I was young. How about "Obey the Scout Law to understand life. Live life to understand the Scout law". It's simple and it works because you don't have to provide your personal exceptions to fill in the other person's grey area. Barry

Eagle project reviews (approvals) are intended to verify that all the parties involved know what to expect, and that the project is within the BSA recommendations. You would be surprised of how many scouts just take off and start a project without informing the beneficiaries of the project. And because some scouts take on more than they can handle, there are a few half completed projects littering communities. I remember one member many years ago explaining that their district was pretty tough on accepting projects because the local new paper had written a couple of uncomplimentary articles of unsightly uncompleted Eagle projects that left the community dealing with the cost for clean up. Reputation can be a tall hurdle to bring down. Not and Eagle project, but the Canadian Border Agent that our crews had to visit before continuing through the Canadian side of the Boundary Waters had a book of pictures that showed the destruction of Canadian boundary water camp sites from the Boy Scouts. Now I could tell by the pictures that many of the sites weren't from Boy Scouts, but there must have been at least a couple of incidences that created the bad blood leaving the other 99 percent of the scouts suffering the long lecture by the Border Agent. Barry

Sorry, I couldn't read the rest. Starting out with words like pandering, fear and bigotry all in the same sentence can only intended to attack a segment of readers to which you don't agree. Talk about unscout like! I am curious, did you really want to have a mature intellectual dialogue, or were you just trying to find a clever opening? If you are wondering; yes I also corrected scouts who used the same manner of dialogue. I pushed them to practice a mature form of communication so that listeners would feel encouraged (and safe) to consider or reason their words instead of being repulsed by a rancor tone. Barry

Good suggestions up to this point. Imagine doing 12 hours of work a day in 8 hours. And imagine the software developer with mediocre skills doing advanced development. I know this because I spent a lot of time asking the BSA software developers to develop software for making our lives easier. I can't remember all my request because I approached them with a lot of ideas. But I found that it's not like these folks are waiting around for Col. Flaggs to approach them with great wonderful new ideas. They are overwhelmed with the development already at hand. Not that you shouldn't try to push the ideas, I sure did. Who knows, the software you guys are using now might have some of my ideas as we speak. But I did learn how to work with them instead of over them or at them. This discussion keeps turning into a grip session at the enemy of the everybody outside of our units. Trust me, there are a lot of reasons why District, Council and National aren't performing to our personal standards, but in most cases they are trying. And it's not like I'm a company man defending their every action. I give National full credit for the mess we have now. But lets be reasonable. I spent several hours working with the BSA software developers and I found them to very patient and polite while listening to some yahoo from Oklahoma who thinks his idea will save scouting, and yet is overwhelmed with the task he was hired to perform in the first place. Another idea is you could try and develop your own software on your own computer and donate it to District for proof of concept. Of course then you find that once you leave the program, there is nobody willing to step in and maintain the software or hardware. Hmm, how do I know this! A lot of good ideas and I think many worth pursuing, but my experience of pushing new ideas in a volunteer organization is approach those you are asking for help, or to help, as your friends, because even the worst of us sense condescension and contentment. I do have one story on the subject. One of our parents was a hard working prestigious lawyer and Eagle. He once approached us complaining about the difficulty of his son finding qualified MB counselors outside the troop. He came from the more traditional days of looking for an expert in the specific field and developing life long memories and relationships from the experience. That is what he wanted for his son. The irony is that his specialty of law was the reason the BSA was having to clamp down tighter on MB counselors. Maybe NJ can help me here, but this father also liked to threaten our troop with litigation when he wanted something changed in the program that he felt was not appropriate. In many cases he was right, we were a young troop learning to mature. But he never just asked, he threatened with litigation. And we never saw him accept when he wanted something, so we cringed every time he walked through the door. Now he was asking for a policy that was changed in recent years because of the style litigation that was making him rich and prestigious. I've learned a lot about people from my scouting experiences. Sorry to get on a soap box. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm and idea person and the more the better. Keep bringing them. Barry

Back in the mid 90's when forums and discussion groups were just becoming a tool for the interest they represented, I remember the Canadian Scouts basically dominating the Scouting Web with the discussions and resource sites to find just about anything a scouter needed to improve their program. Canadian Scouts at the time was considered by all the best of the best in scout programs. There were many discussions from the American scouters to how the BSA could change and follow some of their examples. Then all that changed overnight. I remember clearly the Canadian Scouters announcing their exit of the forums because their organization was making major changes in the program. I don't remember the particulars about it, but politics and activism was given all the blame. As I read the little bit of information of this story, I can't help but feel that the tail is still wagging the dog in Canada, and now at another county. So this is Globalism. Barry

There is no conspiracy as some seem to imply. There are two major requirements to a list, someone to develop the list and someone to maintain the list. Have you ever tried to maintain a list of hundreds of people who make no effort to join or quit. If the list is not at least maintained by a computer, it will struggle in a volunteer system because the integrity of the list depends on the efforts of a volunteer. Our district attacked the problem of creating and maintaining by providing a MB Counselor training course each year. A counselor didn't have to attend, but it was an easy way of getting the Youth Protection out of the way and learning how they were expected to do their responsibility. I would say 50% of counselors attended the training. That works real well provided SOMEONE organizes training each year and develops the list. The reason it worked well when I was on the district is because the leaders of one Troop headed the training and the list. Sounds like a good idea, don't you think. One SM on this forum seems to blame all his ills on all adults outside his unit, this sounds like a good place to show off his, um, abilties. However, the flaw in units doing the heavy work for multiple units is what happens when that unit changes leadership. I have watched countless district AND COUNCIL programs and activities just suddenly stop because that person who organized it for so many years left. OK, District should support it, but they have a lot on their plate as well. And in our cause one skill that is sorely lacking at our district is recruiting. If they can't recruit, they are limited in their ability to manage responsibilities. MB Counselors are always way down the list of things that have to get done by district. Which leaves the advice I give troop leaders and works pretty good; find a couple of troops near your location and build your own list among the those troops. You get the bigger list than your own troop, but not so big that it can't be managed. Once the counselors work with a couple scouts from other units, the system start to get momentum. MB Counselors didn't seem so hard before BSA required registration and YP, but National was forced that direction when most of the YP violations reported involved counselors. The BSA had to show an effort to not only protect the scouts, but the adults as well. Barry

It's a little corny, but our PLC tried bingo after one COH. They got prizes donated and it was a huge hit with the parents and siblings. Did pizza at another one. Their ideas for making them less boring.

The SPL did this with our PLC after every Troop meeting and camp out. And I had a motto: if it's boring, change it. Scouting should be fun. Barry

As a DIY myself, who says? DIYs don't typically know or check code. Maybe they should add "Verify local code for this application". Barry

Stories of scouts who earned these awards was one of my favorite articles in Boys Life magazines back in the 60's and 70s. In fact, I learned several life saving techniques from those articles that I passed along to my scouts. The process is long and very detailed. Start it soon while the experience is still fresh on everybody's mind. Barry

As has been said before, history does not favor a more inclusive policy to increase membership. I know it appears a contradiction, but moving the Tigers (and Lions) out of the Cub program would be a step in the right direction. Barry

I'm in awe of the dialogue jousting lately in these discussion. A few posters are using cleaver twist of words, facts, and history to imply they have an upper hand with the other (opposing) poster. I admit I'm perplexed why these posters ignore the many many years of scouting experiences of the older scouters on the forum. No respect at all. Reminds me of an article explaining why some people are more hostile with politics. One "opinion" is many of these people identify personally with specific political party beliefs instead of viewing politics on the whole as an impersonal process for defining government. They feel any kind agreeing trend against their belief is a "personal" slap against them, which justifies actions necessary to gain a personal upper-hand. I kind of see it here; some twisting of words to slant the dialogue so as to imply a superiority of the discussion. The technique is risky because it only works if the other posters don't have much knowledge of the discussion or decline to go on the defensive. OK, we all do that from time to time, but the intent of these posts lately appears to be more about gaining a victory rather than passing along ideas or thoughts to brother/sister scouters. I personally find it strange and juvenile. Is this our future? Barry

Interesting thread. It has appears to be a condescending response to the discussions of BSA changes. OK, I get it, frustration drives the need to resist the resistance. But I'm curious about the instant recognition question (statement?). I have been in scouting since the 60's and I can't recall instant recognition ever being an issue. What is your concern? Barry

Until Joe and the other boys go to the camp showers together or in a tent changing. Oooops! I firmly believe everyone involved should be given the respect of choosing to be part of this family's drama, and possibly child abuse. Barry

Again...Hypothesis or theory? It doesn't matter how may different ways you say it, I still think it's a bad idea. Barry

Exactly! Now you understand the complexity of how membership can dilute the present quality of the program. There is no way around it. Your example isn't quite complete, however, odds are the woman entered the program with little or no adventurous experience. So in your analogy, the women was far more detrimental to the adventurous spirit until she got experience. At least three years. The problem is that as the program gets more inexperienced adults than experience adults, the program will change toward the greater membership demographic. The program will have less adventure, at least at the weekend camping level. Barry

Hypothesis or theory? All that dancing around of words just to say you want a national policy change for girls memberships in cubs and troops. We just have agree to disagree. Barry

Boy, you are asking a lot. I have written a lot about this very subject for over 20 years and I wish we could pull the archives. I will be brief. By the way, our pack averaged around 120 cubs. We did two approaches to bringing the parents back to the pack meetings. We made the meeting shorter than an hour (typically 55 minutes), and we made it fun for the adults as well as the scouts and their siblings. That takes some practice and some good planning, but you will find fun meetings for the whole family go very fast. And our scouts and their sibling were warn out from all the yelling, cheering, jumping and standing. Learn how to do audience participation for just about everything. We fixed den leader burnout by NOT letting them do anything else accept den meetings. Now, the program itself beats up den leaders (another discussion), but a start is not letting them lead, plan or assist any activity other than den meetings. Parents do the rest. If you can't find parents to do the other activities, then don't do the activity. Best way to find volunteers for ANYTHING is to ask personally. It's harder for them to say no, and they do feel some sense of honor that you are asking personally. Start by finding an assistant for the Den leaders. Then move down to Pinewood, B&G and other monthly pack activities. Do your annual planning in July so that the committee has time to find and recruit all their activities leaders by the end of September. Then have the CC ask for an activity update from the activities leader at each months committee meeting. Keep the pack activities simple and fun. They should be intended to help give the Den leaders a break, and fun for the whole family (so the parents want to come). Remember, each activity should be planned by a parent volunteer and helpers who were recruited personally. OK, that's a quick guide, which is rare for me. Barry

I fully agree in theory. In reality unexperienced adults need three years of additional guidance to guide a mature boy run patrol method adventure program. That opinion is based from my experience of helping and training adults in both packs and troops. If you think that is a bit harsh, I also believe adults with an extensive youth troop experience needs AT LEAST 3 years OJT to be a productive Scoutmaster for a mature program. Sadly, what programs like Philmont and Boundary Waters have done is given adults the idea that real adventure starts at 14. I would venture to guess that 90% of scouts today have never done a weekend backpacking trip with their patrol or troop because the adults are waiting for them to reach the right age. And while age is the excuse, it really has more to do with the inconvenience of the level of effort required. But hey, I'm excited to see a troop spend a weekend just fishing. Barry

That is one good perspective. But actually National does have some control of the program and it starts with membership. I realize and understand the complexities of today's culture and the survival of a values program in the middle of it, but we have to be realistic with the sacrifices that come with large program changes. I got involved as an adult leader right after the induction of female troop leaders and I have watched the program continually become less adventurous. Not because women are considered the weaker sex or whatever, but because they were a massive induction of inexperienced campers and scouts. Lets be realistic, you can't teach what you do not know. Now there is a discussion of bringing in girls on another forum. OK, I understand that National hasn't said anything official, sometimes these threads just happen. And I also understand that admitting youth females is not about bringing in more inexperienced adults, but actually it is. Just like dads who like to be part of their sons youth activities experiences, so do mothers with their daughters. Bringing in more female youth will increase the percentage of inexperienced adults. Anyone who has been working with other units the last 20 years knows that leaders without a scouting and camping experience struggle to put on a scouting and camping experience. I used to work with the adults of those units. But when you see the number of units who struggle with putting on an Aims and Methods program, the over all affect is adventure is down over the whole BSA program. Our PLC in 2000 scheduled at least two patrol campouts without the troop a year. They could do more if they wanted and they could do it without adults. A troop can't plan a campout without adults today. Big deal? Oh maybe not, but it is symbolic of the trend. I used to teach an "Aims and Methods" course for adults, guess which adults struggled with the idea of patrols camping 300 ft. apart from each, as well as from the adults? Guess which adults struggled with scouts doing hikes without adults, much less 5 miles hikes? I remember adults walking out of the course in frustration because I kept giving them examples of how they could provide such a program even with all their ignorance and fears. True Patrol Method camping is hard to imagine if you haven't seen it. I am not turning this discussion into if girls should be admitted discussion. I'm only saying that National inadvertently drives out adventure with many of their program changes. As we get generation on generation of inexperienced adults taking over units, the expectation of adventure in the unit is being driven lower. I retired as a scoutmaster about 15 years ago now. The program has changed enough that I would have to change some of how we did things then. And not for the better. Some of our best adventure experiences are in our troop program. But a lot of that started from experiences the adults had as a youth. I'm not sure how to keep the adventure up for the future troops. I worked with hundreds of adults in teaching them how to do this scouting stuff and many just don't trust it. It's a lot of work getting adults to let their scouts experience adventure just on a campout. Barry

I have a lot of respect for BSA camp Rangers and look forward to learning new LNT techniques from them. Infact, we usually have two or three scouts who are Philmont Rangers each year. So I know what they go through. But sometime their maturity lets authority go to their head. During one trek, the ranger decided to show off his fire skills at the evening fire before lights out. He poured some stove fuel on his hand and ignited it to show (show off) how the skin of his hand would not burn. Ironically this was after he led a Thorns and Roses discussion. The crew was careful to how they responded to his demonstration of physics because they knew the adult was going to have some words about fire safety. I don't like pulling authority on youth authority (he was 19) because it turns the relationship from the Crew Leader of a Crew to a Crew Leader of a Crew and adult. And that is what happened here. This Ranger was really very good and a good role model for living in the back woods, but after my very few words about safety, he treated me different the rest of the trek. In a few words, scouting is about giving young people the confidence to behave adults. But sometimes the success of our confidence feeds over into our egos. Correction or our Egos hurts a lot worse than redirection of our confidence. I prefer a scout learn from his own mistakes without adult intervention because he learns the lesson faster if he doesn't have attend to wounded ego. But sometime humility needs to be fed as well to learn how to behave like and adult. I only have a couple stories about loosing my cool because I am pretty tolerant and laid back with behavior. At most high adventure scout camps, the Rangers typically inspect each person in the crew gear to insure the crew is prepared for the trek. We are a backpacking troop and the Philmont Ranger was impressed with our preparedness. But he still felt the need to show his authority, so he picked on one scout who brought a personal backpacking stove and proceeded to chew him out for bringing more stoves than recommended for the crew. Our crew knew about it and welcomed the extra weight of the stove because the scout's mom and dad gave him the stove for his birthday just before we left for the trek. We would have brushed off the Rangers suggestion except he made such a big deal over it. It wasn't what he said because technically he was right. It was how he said it. You could see it in our scouts eyes, he felt bad for forcing the rest of the crew carry the extra weight. I took the Ranger for a walk. Over the years of Scoutmastering, I developed the skill of not letting my emotions react before spending time to calm myself down. But that situation got to me and even the scouts said they had never seen my face so red. Sometimes the rangers don't always get it right. Barry

One reason I have enjoyed your posts Matt is because I'm reliving my Scoutmaster experience through them. I also spent a lot of time trying to explain scouting from the noble perspective of the end product. This isn't mine, but it is my favorite phrase I tend use for explaining what our program does for your sons. "Building Citizens of Character and Leaders of Integrity". And if I am asked, I can explain how in the most boring detail, so I'm told. Barry

Ok, I will give the benefit of the doubt. Barry

I've been doing these discussions for 20 years, so I'm not going to do the research, again! But from memory of youth scouting associations that made major membership policy changes: GSUSA, Campfire kids, Canadian Scouts, Australian Scouts and I think New Zealand. There are a couple of others that can't remember. Yes, but my point was the boys have not come back at the numbers the program once had. I guess it's a chicken or egg question. Barry

Ahhh, condescending sarcasm. Not very scout like, but .......... Barry