Eagledad

Yes, National hasn't helped either. They for-bided the up-side down Bobcat ceremony because it was hazing. That was stupid, it was a simply holding scouts up-side-down because it was fun for the scouts. Not for the adults. They could have easily said it was a safety concern and everyone would have agreed. I know I would. After holding a dozen scouts up-side-down, I was done for the day. But, National instead insinuated volunteers were purposely humiliating the scouts. They felt they needed leverage I guess, but it only makes National look irresponsible. And how far does hazing and teasing go. Some councils recommended units not sing the Happy Birthday song because it could embarrass a scout. Hmm. Barry

What? Barry

This post makes no sense. David’s post is just the other side. Barry

This is a a good point. There came a point when I was SM that I quit taking these types of classes because the refreshers were taking too much of my time. Also, I realized I needed to stop being the go-to person for every activity, but the continued training was a pain. Barry

Yes, but the United Methodist Men's Foundation group that supports the BSA is not part of the Church leadership that is liberal. So, in a sense, there are two groups. While the leadership isn't directly involved with the church BSA support, they wouldn't mind if that part of the program fell by waste side. Barry

Correct, and that is where Youth Protection policies and procedures and training guide the adults. You are certainly right. The adults can have a good mentoring relationship under the YPT guidelines. Many of my Eagle Conferences where in the middle of camping and venturing activities right in front of the whole groups. I did one while driving to Philmont. If you were to ask the scouts, they would probably say they weren't even sure it was a conference because we had so many casual conversations in the those settings. I remember buying a ice-cream bar for a scout while doing his 2nd class SM Conference at summer camp. The review board told me later he didn't know that we were having a conference. But, I feel like the YPT is appropriate for the intention of protecting the scouts, as well as the adults'. The adults just need to insure everyone is held accountable to following the guidelines. In life, most behavioral habits we grow to learn come from consistent expectations of the adults. I'm sure your troop worked this way. Most do. The reason many kids struggle today is that many of us are afraid to speak up when they see something that appears wrong. I found that adults and scouts are afraid to speak up when they see an action they want to question because they don't like confrontation. I taught on this very subject in training because I saw so much of it in both Packs and Troops. But it's still hard when instincts push a person to stay away from trouble. YPT is good enough to protect the scouts, but maybe both the scouts and adults need to be trained that reporting something suspicious is OK and expected. But, saying that, I know it's hard. Barry

Good luck. What everyone is basically saying is grooming is a process of Living the Scout Law. Are we going to turn Friendly, Courteous, and Kind into suspicious behavior now? it would be easier to keep the adults 100 yards away from the Patrols. Barry

I'm skeptical because scouts already join for the outdoor fun and adventure. That part of the program is fine. The adults are the ones that turn it on its head, and I'm not sure how that can change. Where I disagree with Fred is he wants to simplify the program so the adults can do a better job. But, if we take away goals, adults by nature fill in with their own ambitious desires. I don't believe that adults will allow scouts to lead if leadership is not part of the goals. I've watched to many adults fill in their self-desires where they see gaps in the program. An afterschool outdoor program fits because it doesn't matter what the adults do, it's part of the program. I also don't believe older scouts stay in the program for fun and adventure. I have actually polled our scouts on this. Only 1/4 of the scouts 14 and older hung around for the outdoors activities. If you can get an honest answer as to why older scouts stay with the program, you will learn they enjoy adult mature responsibilities of running a complicated program, mentoring the younger scouts. You don't see older scouts in adult run troops for two reasons: First, they have been doing fun and adventure for several years, it's not a draw anymore. Second, the only responsibility that have with younger scouts basically comes down to babysitting. That is not the same as mentoring. Barry

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 two equal adults having a discussion. It's hard because you are the scout MASTER evacuating the SCOUT. But, try to imagine the conference as more of two mentors comparing notes. Barry

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 changes and additions. Not adults pushing their ideas on the scouts. Barry

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 is when they often make the wrong choice. That is when they will need someone to discuss their decision. Someone who just basically listens, ask a couple of questions, then leaves the scout to think it out alone. A mentor. Barry

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 troop, district and council level Junior Leader Training courses. Don't tell my wife, our finances were tight at the time. I have said here many times that I believe that both the adults and scouts could run the correct troop patrol method program if they used just the PL Handbook, SPL Handbook and Scout Handbook as the program guideline. Imagine the PL or SPL giving the SM a page reference in the Handbook they all use of why they doing what they are doing. They handbooks have pretty clear instructions for the basic framework of the program. They may give the scouts good direction for their unit or patrol, but they also hold the adults in check for their part in the process. Adult leader training could fill in more of how to work with scout behavior in a boy run troop environment. The two most asked questions in my courses requesting help in of dealing with scouts was discipline of bad behavior and uniform. At first those two questions seem like a strange pairing. But both are dealing with scouts making independent choices. Giving young inexperienced adults the freedom to make their own choices is challenging for adults because parents in general don't like their kids making bad choices. The adult instinct is to confront bad decisions head on and quickly. The problem there is that when the adult confronts a scouts bad decision without dealing with they why the scout made the bad decision, they are telling the scout they are a bad person instead of encouraging them to look at why they made the choice. Of course had behavior has to be confronted, but the person should admit the behavior and make their own choice to change. And you know, once in a while the adult finds out that the scout didn't make a wrong choice, it just wasn't the choice the adult would have made. The uniform is actually much more challenging because the scout has decided wearing a uniform properly isn't important and a wrong choice is acceptable. The leader has to reason with the scout's acceptance that some wrong decisions are acceptable. It's not about the uniform, it's about the acceptance of purposing making wrong decisions. This is the area where adults could use additional training. Barry

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 idealistic structure of the program? Who are these guardians? How did they get in the position of being a guardian? Most importantly, how are they held accountable for their performance? Barry

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. New leader are generally starting with a better set of skills than their previous leaders. That can be a constant challenge for adults to make sure each scout is growing from their experience. I became the Council youth leadership development chair because our troop developed the reputation for good youth leadership. Ironically, I shouldn't have gotten the credit because it was the boy run program itself that lead to our program leadership maturity. We adults just stayed out of the way. That being said, we fully understood that leadership is the most stressful action in the scouting program for developing character. I find that units with toxic leaders don't mature much, if at all. Barry

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 has to be in the plan. The solution isn't taking leadership out of the design, the solution is figuring out how to keep adults from abusing the design. Barry

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 following the BSA program. Barry

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 could add 23 scouts and their families to the weekend, so I gave the pack leader our SPL phone number. He said yes, assigned some some scouts to organize each patrol to share in helping take care of the Webelos and their parents. The webelos and parents participated in the triathlon activities and had a blast. But the real fun came after lunch. Since the triathlon went much faster than expected, the rest of the day was free time. And just about everyone rode bikes all over the camp for several hours. The web parents were very impressed by the scouts planning and taking full responsibility and care for them. They were also surprised how little they saw any troop adults. The funny part of the story is that everyone was sore and tired the next day. Our troop still had several hours of planned activities they typically plan for Sundays. But the Webelos parents were so tired and sore that they just loaded up their sons and left before breakfast. We worried that we scared them away with too much outdoor stuff. But 2 months later, every scout joined our troop. That was a very memorable campout for many reasons. Barry