Eagledad

This all may true. I believe Scouts will survive at a minimum as just an outdoors program. The problem is when a program is only focused on activities without the virtues of behavior values as a by-product, the adults will turn it into an after school/weekend activity program. Basically a babysitting program. The hallmark of if giving scouts the independence of running program will fade away. We struggle with adult intrusiveness now, making values a lower priority will finish if off. I understand this is what happened to Canadian Scouts. Barry

For me the Eagle Conference was different for each scout. It's a bit of a review and a bit of future expectations of being and Eagle. I don't make a big deal of it really because I've had several conversations with them in the past. I have invited the parents now and then to review what their son can expect from the EBOR. Some families get anxious about it. A few relatives of one scout's flew in from another state. I try to bring calm and do a little bragging in all the conferences. I have done a couple conferences during Backpacking hikes. I think it is important to treat the discussion as tw

Agreed. It hints of an emotional bias that takes away any integrity of reasoning. Barry

I have not read them in the last 10 years. The 50 year old ones are better, I used them to develop trainings. But the ones I used 20 years ago were fine for a basic starter to running the program. The challenge will be with the adults because they will want more. And eventually so will the scouts. But, the handbooks are purposely basic so different unit characteristic will fit in the model. Once everyone has the basic understanding of the model, then they can make changes and additions to improve the program. The best part is the scouts and adults work together as a team to determine the

This is what the scout learns by observing routine leadership before becoming a leader. We've had long discussions here defining leadership. It's complicated to define, but very simple when basically duplicating what has been observed over and over. Scouts don't really care what leadership is so much as they want to make positive decisions in each situation. They know what the goal looks like and they know how to get there. They just simply do what they've observed done before. Where leadership gets challenging is when the scouts are confronted with a situation they haven't seen before. That i

I agree with the disconnect of training. There are resources, or were until recently, the scouts could use to run their program. The BSA published the Patrol Leaders Handbook and SPL Handbook 20 years ago that was pretty good at giving scouts direction in leading and managing their program without additional training. Strangely, I never saw it encouraged by National, Council, or district in adult training. But, I knew their value and I required the adults to purchase those handbooks for my adult classes, and I even purchased several to give out to new Scoutmasters. I also required them for our

It's one person's opinion. He may be right, but it is much more complicated than virtues taking the organization down. Through the whole process of challenges the last 25 years, the core of the organization, the volunteers, were never pulled in, queried, or even told what the folks at National were thinking. Even now they are a mystery. As some have said here, when they threw out the new Aim of leadership recently, they exposed their ignorance to the principles and virtues of the program. What are they thinking? How can there be compromise if the guardians of the program don't even know the i

Well in that context, I agree with you and Ynot. Barry

I don't agree at all. Fist year scout dropout rate is the highest of all ages, but not from leadership, it's from the sudden cultural change of following adult guidance to self responsibility. I certainly don't agree that the organizations disjunctions are from boy led scouting. I'm not even sure what that means. Leadership development is not about developing great leaders, but developing leaders to use the values of the Oath and Law in the decision making process. Basically a servant style leadership. Barry

The technique of learning leadership, whether naturally or actively doesn't matter if the mentors, coaches and role models are bad leaders. Watch the youth leaders of any troop at your next summer and notice how much they mimic the adults. Actual leadership experience only improves leadership skills when the leader has to change a habit as the result of a bad decision. I found that leadership skills learned by passively observing other leaders pushes program maturity because new scouts observe the good habits learned by previous leaders who change their habits made by bad decisions

I guess I can't take this discussion seriously because nobody mentions taking out Advancement and Adult Association, which are the conspirators that drive adults to teach leadership. Taking out leadership will only make units more adult run. Barry

Well, my PLC insured we had elections and clear expectations of leadership. They also took responsibility in giving leadership opportunities to all age scouts with all maturities. For example, our PLC looks for young less experienced scouts to lead small service projects with PL and SPL Very impressive actually. I'm wondering how your PLC does for leadership? Barry

And when was leadership- a marketing problem, 1933? As I said, a scouting experience was a valued resource in WWII because of the leadership image. I think you are wrong to look at leadership as a skill for scouts. LEADERSHIP IS AN IMAGE of scouting. In fact, it could be argued that leadership is as much of an image as adventure. If the problem isn't enough adventure, which I might agree, then lets fix the marketing of adventure. Barry

How many new adults come in with the instincts of "train them, trust them, and let them go." The whole reason for this discussion is adult instinctively take over. So, I feel the idealism being presented here is missing the point. Adults have to have a goal and a plan just to keep the program out of the gutters. My point is if you take leadership out of the plan, the adults will take leadership out of scouting. Leadership has always been part of scouting. IF you want to keep leadership in scouting, even if leadership is a by-product of just participating in patrol activities, leadership

Well, changing Methods is another difficult discussion. Take out Leadership Development, I am all for taking out Adult Association since that seems to be the real problem here. The problem here is that the public does believe leadership is part of the program. I know of several single parent moms that put their son in Scouting to get that development. If you take leadership out of the core of scouting, who is to hold it accountable. Maybe the problem is that adults need to learn not to take any responsibility for the methods. Methods should be a checklist for PLC to insure they are f

Taking Leadership Development out of Scouting would be like taking the creamy white filling out of the Oreo cookie. Barry

This reminds me of a campout the PLC planned where the patrols would went on a course with a 3 mile hike, 5 mile bike ride and canoeing navigation course. The patrols had 15 stops where the had to do a skills competition. Very complexe and we thought it would take the whole Saturday. All the patrols carried lunch with them, but in the end, all 6 patrols completed the course by noon and eat lunch in the camp site. But, the story in the story is I got a call from a pack leader a week before asking if their 3 dens of 23 Webelos could camp with us to check out the troop. I wasn’t sure how we

Our PLC planned at least 2 hours of free time each afternoon on weekend campouts. I once got a call from a new SM with no youth experience ask me how to keep the scouts busy on campouts, He had run out of advancement activities and needed ideas. My first advice was two hours of free time. His reaction was that it was two hours where the scouts would get themselves in trouble and immediately discounted the suggestion. Adult leaders without a youth scouting experience are 3 years behind adults with a youth scouting experience. Even then, they need to see patrol method in action during those

When made adventure and patrol method the two highest priorities of the program. We started with 15 scouts and 10 years later our troop of around 100 scouts was producing an Eagle every 2.5 months. The average age of the scouts going through their EBOR was 16.5 years old. Like your troop, advancement was not a high priority. But, when the scouts enjoy a fun program in the outdoors, advancement activities are a natural by-product of a healthy patrol method program. Most of the Scouts didn't even realize they were close to Eagle when they started to look at it seriously. When puberty

I always struggle with this explanation because it's not about female that set the program back, it's the large influx of adults without any scouting experience. I was there, so I know the passion and enthusiasm moms brought to the troop program. I personally trained many female Scoutmasters. But, like just about all male and female leaders without a scouting experience, they didn't have the experience as a youth to guide them into what drives youth to scouts, ADVENTURE!. Adults by their nature look at stature as the goal of their adults decisions. Adults strive to be better at everythin

The majority of alumni big donors didn’t stop their donations around 2000. Barry

I believe the pros at National did loose focus on the boys and the ideals of developing character. They lost the concept of scouting and it’s values, so they justified their existence with Greed for money and members and change the program in two areas that hit the program hard. First, they went after first graders to increase cub recruitment. That blunder brought in boys with a toddler maturity, which didn’t mix well with the advanced maturity of the rest of the age groups. The increased overhead pack management burned out the adults and they left. Second, National brought in femal

I agree, but the killer is Tigers. Most of the Tigers are still Toddlers and should be split from the Pack program. The difference of listening skills and reading skills is night and day. That one year of a classroom experience creates a night and day difference for behavior between the two ages. In fact, we did reduce our Tiger program to just two meetings a month and our membership retention rate went from 30 percent to 95 percent. Ironically, the Tiger program demands so much adult management that is drains the adults resource pool to the point that adult burnout is the main cause of

I'm not sure what you are saying here, but the discussion of this rabbit trail is about the ideological images of scouting, not the activities of the program. Most scouts also haven't heard the BSA Mission, Vision, Aims, and Methods. But, those ideals and program strategies hold the program on the ideological course of developing scouts to make confident decisions based from the Oath and Law. I do agree you that many scouts have been disappointed by a program that isn't presented in the FUN of outdoors as they were expecting. But, that is different discussion. Barry

Hi All. I rarely, rarely ever disagree with Fred, but I believe he is not looking at the leadership image correctly. And I really don't think we are disagreeing, but I need to express my opinion on the Scouting leadership image. I will start off by saying that if one were to poll the average person outside of the BSA of the 3 most important traits a scout gains from the scouting experience, the majority of the that polling would say leadership is one of the three. Leadership IS an image of the scouting program. Leadership is the image of a Scout. The image is so powerful that the des