Eagledad

Well said, and very clever.

I once witnessed a scout ceremony that involved the use of torches. All was fine until during the ceremony an adult tried to add some Coleman fuel to a torch that had just about gone out. Well a little fuel spilled on the ground and the lite part of the torch set the fuel on fire, including the fuel that splashed onto the adults sleeve. In very quiet manner, two other adults put the adult and the grass out. All was fine I thought to myself, a lesson learned. So I thought until not a few moments later the same adult repeated the exact same exercise to another dying torch with the exact same results. What did the scouts learn I wondered? Every adult has their own style of trying to influence others such as in teaching. One mans educational style is another mans style of deceptive. I have even seen deception used and taught at a professional level management training sessons. The crime of this style of influence in scouting is that the program puts a high value of role modeling on the scouts' growth of moral decision making. Some boys get it, many don't and they go on into life repeating Mr. Johnsons method of teaching (influence). The problem is in the old statement that people don't change. Perdidochas's ASM will continually behave in his style. As a SM who had to hold adults accounble for how they role modeled in front of scouts, I hated that part of the job. Not that SMs don't have their own faults, but someone has to set some kind of bar. I'm not throwing out advice here, but I would approach the ASM. Barry

I had a different theme every month. I typically tried to create ceremonies where everyone participated like to cheers, stomping feet or whatever. One of our families was American Indian, so we got together and made a ceremony using a basic dance of his tribe. We had everyone dancing and the parents talked about that ceremony for months. Where packs go wrong with ceremonies is that boys HATE to listen unless it's a story about with action. They absolutly hate speechs. Barry

I've told this story before about my first year as a CM, just before I was about to send our Webelos across the bridge to the troop they choose, I asked them why they picked this troop. They all said this troop had the best game at the troop meeting. All eight of those boys quit the BSA inside of one year. While I agree that the boys need to have input in their selection, I also think it's naive to assume they always know better than the adults. As a SM, I asked parents attend with their son so that their family made an educated choice based on all the information. Barry

What triggered the rules was image of the knives. The BSA was trying to get away from a military image and the larger fixed blade knives of the pop culture movies didn't fit in that image. As a result, all fixed blade knives were caught in the wave of no tolerance. One of the benefits of scouting in the past was teaching scout how to safely use the right tool for the right job. No tolerance policies don't encourage growth or education, they instead continue emotional inaction from ignorance. Teach the scouts the advantages and disadvantages of the different woods tools and let the them make their choices. Barry

I admit it is a bit of a risk, but out of my 16 Webelos who moved into troops, 12 got eagles and 14 aged out. So it's not a matter of can't, it's a matter of how. And that is what these forums are for. Barry

>>This is all theoretical, I'm Committee Chair and Wolf Leader<< It may be theoretical, but that is almost exactly how I handled my Den of 16 Webelos. Because of the size and planning required, I also change from three 1 hr den meetings a month to two 1 hr and 30 minute meetings a month to give me more time to plan and allow more room for program. I need more time because I planned two activities at the same time and had the switch after 20 mintues. On top that, I required two parents become assistant den leader, and two other parents to run the monthly theme activities that they planned. It was a close group so it worked out very well. I would not recommend it to anyone unless that is the absolute last option. As to the original question of Den size, I tried to keep dens to about eight scouts. Barry

Per, I had friends in the Canadian scouts at the time, it was a direct relationship. And there have been many articles since about it as well. 65% loss! The Canadian Scouts of today is nothing like it was in 1995. It's more of a YMCA type of program now. It lost it's soul. I can't say the BSA has or is going to fall that much. I'm pleasently surprised it's only 6%. But I have experience with collecting national membership data and it takes at least 18 months to get an accurate count on a single scout because it takes at least a year to take him off the council roster, and he may had signed up for that year several months before. Plus, there is not a National deadline for membership signup, each council has their own timeline and process for registration. If you have every followed BSA data, you know that it takes about five years to identify a trend with membership data. Barry

You guys are so funny. The Girl Scouts and Campfire Kids took a huge hit that they have yet to recover from when they allowed gays. The Canadian Scouts are somewhere around 35 percent of what they were when they allowed gays. But the BSA's cause for the membership drop after the admission of gays is "program"? LOL

Structure is always a problem for parents in boy run troops. You need to get your son to hang out with the patrol to really see how it works. I had a mom once visit us four meetings in a row. Her son liked the troop, but she was less than pleased because it appeared to lack structure. She tried with the last three visits to convince him we were not right for her son. I felt sorry for her because she admitted she was not comfortable with our troop but needed the visits to convince her son. She was pretty embarrased. Long story short is that all three of her sons aged out of the troop with an Eagle. And she was the best CC we ever had. See if your son can slip in with a patrol to follow them around. That will give him a real idea of the troop. Barry

Well, some troops are better than others with visits. And some days are better than others for troop programs. Give the troop another visit if you really want to consider them. But how to handle another troop if the same situation happens again is ask the SM if you and your son could meet the SPL for a few moments. Then ask both of them together some questions you would like to know like "Is this a typical troop meeting?". After you run out of questions, look at the SPL and ask him for a tour of the patrols to meet the patrol leaders. If he is too busy (likely), ask him if he could ask another scout. I think that is a non intrusive way of learning about the program without disturbing their meeting. And those few small actions will let you see how the boy run/ adult relationship works. Have few key questions you want to know ready before the meeting. Barry

You missed the whole point stosh, but the editor isn't working now. Another time maybe.

>>The rub comes when responsibility is delegated down a level and no authority goes with it. This is the #1 problem with the management style.

No figuring it out sadly, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I can separate paragraphs, most times everything runs together. Cut and Paste is the same way.

Wow, woohoo! one finally came through.

The last few post have got off track to the reality of the BSA scout program. Kudu is not a fan of the BSA, so he uses these discussions to bash the BSA and lace it with a little wisdom of experience. You have to really dig for it, but he does have some good stuff hidden in there. OHTERS here use him to piggy back their there own style of BSA bashing. One of Kudu's points that I do agree, but is out of place in this discussion is don't let the patrol method set the program back. What he was saying is Don't risk an election of 10 years olds when the obvious leader is the 16 year old. But since there was no discussion of an election, Kudu's example was out of context and only confused the discussion. And it is true the Stosh and Kudu have admitted many times that they don't care for what stosh calls Top Down Management system of the BSA program. Problem stosh is that it's not a hierarchy of management OR Leadership, it is hierarchy of responsibility. Very different and works very well for a "Boy Run" type program because it places the appropriate amount of responsibility with a scouts experience and maturity. And it gives the SM (good guy) a lot of freedom to add or reduce responsibility to insure the scout is challenged without being overwhelmed. I think it is important for everyone to understand that Kudu prefers the Badon Powell patrol system where the SM hand picks the leaders. That is not the BSA program, so it becomes and apples and oranges in these discussions. What I keep reminding both stosh and Kudu is they can be as idealistic as they want, but normal down to earth adults still have to run the program and if the program isn't intuitive and simplistic for the average person, it goes off in the gutter. There has to be a system that the average adult can run without loosing control. I happen to think the BSA has given us exaclty that. I have the experience to back that up. Getting back to "this" discussion and the simple answer of what I was trying to explain to stosh is that the title for this 16 scout doesn't matter, the program is so narrowly defined at this point that the SM's and scout's roles and responsibilities will be the same. There isn't enough maturity in the program to give them room and flexibility to go very many directions. I suggested JASM because it is a position in the this BSA program that the SM can appoint. But it doesn't matter if the troop calls him Chief of the Watch, he will still do the same job. I do appreciate stoshes and Kudus idealistic concepts to the boy growth of scouting because they similar to mine, but as much as they may hate it, THIS IS THE BSA and they are NOT going to change it. It is far better to work within the system we all have to use to accomplish the same performance. I know it is possible because I see great performing troops all the time. Sorry for the long post. Barry

Not sure what poll numbers have to do with anything, but I think we agree. By the way, I know several people who home school so that they don't expose their kids to different moral lifestyle until the kids are at a mature age. Still, I think it's hypocritical for anyone who doesn't have the same belief to suggest any other motivation of a different faith. At the very least it's self rightous because who is anyone to make such a comment (judge?) simply because that person doesn't follow the CO's religious leader. The best one can say is that they don't understand the other persons choice. I am not a Catholic.

You are wandering around again Moose, you implied the decision to decline membership was political because the church leader was OK with it.

You are just being argumentative. COs didn't set the condition of homosexualtiy because it wasn't an issue back then. Plan and simple. If you read on google that a friend of a friend's son of an aunt was asked to leave, it was because homosexuality was not acceptable by community standards. Not some high and mighty church. You imply that homosexuality was normal back in the 60s and the conservative forced gays to go in hiding by the 90s. Surely you don't really believe that. Are you doing this just so you can say it's different today? OK, let me help keep the discussion pragmatic and move on; it's different today.

Jesus said the same about all sinners Sentinal, but that doesn't require believers to spend all their time with them. Its a bit hypocritical of those here who admit don't believe the bible is the living word of God to suggest that those who do follow the bible are just acting from politics.

I don't understand what you just said, so I'm sure I didn't say anything about it. The 20s, 30s, 40s, all the way through the 80s is irrelevant to this discussion because homosexuality was culturally taboo. Why would a CO have that as a condition for the BSA?

No, the churches were COs for many many years. The recent membership change was the reason behind their decision.

I don't agree. The BSA moved away from these concervatives, not the other way around. Church COs bailed on the BSA after the changes, not before have forced the units to move. Organizations have to stand for something. I know a lot of scouters who just want more freedom to run their program like traditional scouting program, much like Kudo. I don't think TL fits that type of program, but we will see. I heard of a few people who were talking about organizing scout units specifically for gay scouts as kind of a sanctuary. That's not pluralism, that is political activism. And for that reason, I don't think they will get enough interest. Barry

Good point Mike, we will have to see how it goes. What I think will slow their growth is TLs strict use of using religious institutions for COs. Barry

I see a lot of opinions of why folks are leaving the BSA for Trail Life and likely they are all correct depending on the unit. The local Trail Life near me organized as a result of the BSA membership decision. There was no thought of changing before. I know of a couple of Texas units considering Trail Life because the church has asked the BSA units to leave. I know of another boy run unit looking into Trail Life to get more freedom in there program. I don't think there is one main reason. But if Trail Life can get their feet under them, they might make a go of it. I don't feel Trail Life will hurt the BSA program. But it might keep them from going more liberal with membership like allowing atheist. Barry