Eagledad

Yes, while I dont agree with BP to what makes a Scout unit successful, I do agree with him that our Council struggles with the Venturing program. BP says its a Council problem, not national. Maybe, but Ive been shown otherwise and havent seen anything new to prove different. I only say that to suggest that program quality flows down hill which suggest the possibly that National is struggling with Venturing and it's bleeding into the Councils. My experience through the years has convinced me that the success of younger scout age units is dependent on the quality of the older scout age program. I would like to learn more about BPs Council. Whats the name of your Council BP. Barry

>>Or do you consider Tenderfoot requirement No. 1 a lazy and impatient requirement?

>>If anyone from National told you crews are folding faster than troops are full of it, the facts show otherwise.

>>Barry I am willing to bet that your failed crews were probably run by former scoutmasters who ran them like a troop keeping all the power for themselves,and the teens got bored and left. If a Venturing Crew is run like it is outlined in the VLM and you let the teens REALLY lead and organize the program to their interests then you will be successful. Your area is not typical of Venturing in most well run and Venturing friendly councils. A Venturing Crew and a Boy Scout Troop are really very different programs in scope and purpose.

Normal for that age. You didn't say but its also normal to see a changing attitude of the uniform. This is the age where young men are finding themselves and the changing seems to stabilize between 15 and 16 years old. And in general, you will see him start to behave in many ways like his parents. Barry

>> IMO, if the boy scout program had more of the Venturing methodology incorporated into it the BSA would not be losing all the boy scouts it does each year currently.

Personally I don't think the BSA is sitting between a rock and a hard place, I think they are in good postion. Moose and most here on this forum sensitive to the more liberal causes are examples of while many folks don't agree with all BSA policies, they are joining for the other benefits because nobody else does scouting as good or better. They aren't willing to throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. Oh I'm sure there is a small group of folks willing to let the issues sway them away, but I personally believe most of BSA's membership issues are a result BSA internal problems. Barry

>>I know you're obsessed with your rants against "helicopter Scouters," but you might try actually studying the Scouting program first

>>That was a group that was on one playing field, and jumped to the other playing field. But not a group that both conservatives & Liberals agreed at the same time was running things just fine..

>>Problem is there is no middle ground.. Pick a side, and the other half of the world will hate you

>>Uniforming offers the most obvious target for nitpickers. The Scout oath also recommends being "helpful, friendly, courteous and kind," but these recommendations are frequently ignored when the nitpickers choose to indulge themselves.

>>When I was with the federal lab I was a team leader. I didn't much like it though. I had to deal with too many team members who were too much like me (obstinate, contrary, loose cannons). The worst of it was that most of them were contractors so while I had to make sure the work was done, I had no direct influence over them. They knew it and told me so...the federal employees often had to take up the slack. To me the 'privatization' of this function was a terribly destructive idea.>I guess I'm willing to accept that a real leader might have an innate leadership skill. But I think that most times, it takes some perspective and experience, even if the latent skills are present, for a person to be a great leader.

We dumped this on the SPL, meaning that he was going to be responsible for the solution we came up with together. The SPL didnt have a problem with stricter guidelines in this area because he was also dealing with bad behavior and lethargic scouts from the junk food problem. Most of what we discussed was information (ammunition) for explanation of his changes. This is going to sound corny, but I presented him with several sources of BSA literature that stated the adults were responsible for the scouts health and safety, and nutrition is part of the responsibility. If the boys couldnt handle the responsibility of scout health in their boy run troop, the adults would be forced to step in the troop would be less boy run. As I said, none of this was difficult for the SPL because he wanted to deal with the problem, we just needed a way to approach the problem so the scouts would be part of the fix. The discussion then went to how we could keep the fun side of eating without it getting out of control. We came up with guidelines like only two liters of coke for the whole patrol on the whole campout. This force the scouts to plan which meal they wanted the coke. Same goes with the other junk food. Strangely we found that the patrols didnt bring coke much after that because even though we are talking a car camping problem, we are a backpacking troop and still had to pack the liter bottles to camp which was a pain. Everyone can pack a can, but a liter? Now I know this doesnt fix the problem with individuals bringing more food, but it helped a lot because the scouts actually understood the problem and the parents wanted to help the SPL as well. BUUUTTT I want to add that we had an experience at one campout several years ago that change most scouts attitude of bringing personal junk food. It was a loud girl like shrill one night from a scout running from his tent as fast as he could. A skunk had clawed through his tent to get his snacks in his pack. After that, the PLC for years-on basically warned all new scouts of the risk and would relate that story to any scout who contested the wisdom. And we didnt have much of a problem anymore, at least with abuse of junk food anyway. Good luck. Barry

>>Again, a heart-to-heart about it over a campfire or coffee is more important than reading some chapter and verse on "BSA is this" or "BSA is that."

This is a great discussion and I will learn a lot from it. It's also exciting to be a friend of someone on a hostage negotiating team. Pretty cool! Everyone has already contributed some great stuff and I'm really enjoying it. My observations of natural leaders is they make us willing followers. Barry

>>I figue the best way to do that is not so much stepping in with the scouts directly ( unless real harm is immenant), but maybe taking the PL aside and saying : " Hey, maybe.....".

Every SM has their own style giving SM Conferences just like giving SM minutes. Its OK to be different. A SM should know the scout well enough to feel the Scout ready for a BOR, but not so well that the scout has everything signed off. The BORs responsibility is make sure the scout has completed all the rank requirements. The SMs responsibility is to make sure the scout knows the skills. First thing I do is check the scout book and make sure it's filled out correctly. If not, we talk a little about that then I have a nice chat about are mutual interest in scouting. If the book is fine, then I'm like Stosh, I try to guide the scout himself to figure out if he is ready for his BOR. His book will get signed whether he feels ready or not. But I also understand many adults can't do that style. I would not use the method the OP is talking about, but we can see just from this discussion that there are a lot of opinions about this. And every adult has there own way of relating to a scout. I think what we need to understand is what the main object of a SM conference compared to a BOR. Remember the BOR is a check on the SM's program. I do feel that if scouts are intimidated by the SM conference or BOR, then that is not the right style. Barry

What is an "an experienced popular boy"? Barry

Thanks Eagle92, I'm glad to hear its true because I told that story at the begining of our annual Troop JLT. Our course staff (all scouts) gave me exactly one minute to say a few words to the participants before they started the course. That story takes less than a minute to tell and nothing needs to be added for the impact I wanted to deliver. Barry

I was having a discussion with a historian about WWII and he told me that organizers of D Day went looking for soldiers who were Eagle Scouts to storm the beaches because they knew first-aid and could immediately step into leadership if their superior was taken out of action. Now he didnt say they werent officers, but I took it that way from how he told me the story. Barry

The boy run program cant go bad, just the administrators of it. In fact Im a little weary of adults who think in the possibility of a Lord of the Flies moment because they are already skeptical of a proven style of youth development. Those adults tend to interfere with scouts decisions before the scouts have time to experience the repercussions. Yes, the adults waited too late to intervene but I know from experience that sometimes the adults mess up. Im sure these adults will do better the next. But I wonder if the experience will scare them away from boy run or if they will learn how to ecoruage a different attitude torward these kinds of behaviors. Running a Scouting program is always learning process for the both the adults and boys. In fact, I teach in the SM Specific class that adults need to learn faster from their experiences than the scouts in a maturing troop or eventually the scouts will outrun them and the adults will end up being obstacles to the scouts' growth. Adults also need to push their comfort envelope enough to give the scout enough room to have to think about the reprocussions of their decisions. In the long term, the troop will eventually mature enough to where the scouts act more adult than the adults. One of the attitudes that has to be encouraged and develop in self independence program is everyone is responsible for all the behaviors in the troop. My personal motto that drove the way I ran the program was If the adults didnt show up today, would the scouts do it differently?. And if I felt the answer was yes, then we started working on the part of the program of which I was uncomfortable. If I felt that a scout could get bullied in our troop, then I would be concerned that some scouts observing the bullying would not for whatever reason step up. And I would start changing that environment. In our troop, if a scout behaved in correctly and wasnt stopped by any scout near him, all the scouts who observed the misbehavior would be included in repercussion of that bad decision. Eventually our scouts learned that if someone didnt speak up, everyone would be held accountable. Once you have a safe environment like that, the scouts would behave the same whether or not the adults showed up that day. Barry

>> I'll be honest, I do like the fact that the members of the troop elect the SPL. It reminds me more of our democratic republic format, i.e. the PLC= Congress and the SPL=President. It's just that the SPL also presides over the PLC. IMHO, it reinforces the concept that you must elect good leaders.

>>It is possible District folks have the positions they have because no one else will take the job.

>>Eagledad, I'll grant you that many unit leaders need training and are headstrong...but frankly, I expect district and council folks to be a little more astute in how they handle this.

>>To often I see the SPL being commander in chief (if not the SM) and everyone has to do what they are told. Tyranny at it's worst. Thus one gets the popularity votes for SPL and other politically run troops rather than a incubator for developing leadership in the small groups of the patrols which Boy Scouts was originally founded as.