Eagledad

>>I cannot believe that something like this would be a woodbadge project??? Let me take that back, with the type A personalities I met there, I am very sure they would not risk a thing as important as advancement to mere boys. Back off let them work the program as laid out in the book

High school is about the age when a boy realizes if he is good enough to invest the time to compete. Sports are no longer recreation at that age, they are work. Barry

At all ages, boys perceive their next year of scouting to be as enjoyable as this year. If they look forward to scout meetings this year, they will be in scouts next year. If not, well they are just waiting it out the end because that is easier than trying to explain to all the adults why they don't want to come anymore. As for parents, I have always said of Cub Scouting, "make the parents happy and their sons will be happy". Parents don't like hassles. If they have to beg and plead to get their son to the scout meeting, that is a hassle. However, it is rare to hear of a parent not wanting their son to continue scouting when he looks forward to every meeting. How the Webelos perceive their next year is a good indication of how well the program is doing is doing this year. Barry

>>Scout skills have served me well over the past 50 years and to think that GPS is going to ever replace my trusty compass, it'll never happen.

>>Back to my original question, are scouts allowed to bring their own (2-man) tents or prehaps a lighter tarp than those provided by Philmont?

Philmont is a mountain top experience because of the whole program during the trek, not just the trek itself. Philmont also has to contend with 40000 backpackers of all expereinces (or not experiences) every year and that number has its challenges. I honestly don't think that using a tent instead of a tarp is going to degrade your overall experience. It will just make it a little different. There will be other practices at Philmont you or your crew might question as well as far as a typical back county experience, but if you just accept it as part of the Philmont program experience, you will have a great time. There is no other experience like it and Im confident that you will come home wanting to do it again. Barry

>>What troubles me is that more scouts would have liked to have skipped the first year program and actually do something...perhaps they didn't know they could say no. Or they tried and it was disapproved. Very sad.

>>But doesn't that open the program to abuse of the MB's? where is the incentative to be with the same troop? how do you verify the signatures of completed requirements?.

Even if Kudos vision of retesting (not criticizing) became part of the program, I agree with Dan that many of the scout craft skills are difficult to practice because they dont fit with most modern equipment. In fact, this part of the discussion was brought up many times by participants in my Scoutmaster Specific class. I see the solution is either force scouts to use the same equipment I used back in the 70s, or create new scout craft skills such as the proper use of bungee cords and duct tape. By the way, can someone tell me when the No Retesting thing was added to the program? Must have been between the 70s and 90s. No testing made a dramatic change to scouting. Barry

>>Barry, Think I had a rant about training a month or so back! I'm not ready, just yet for another.

>> Shaking one's meaty fist in the air and shouting "I REFUSE TO COMPROMISE!!!" is hardly statesmanship, whether you're talking about a no-tax pledge, preserving government programs as they are, or some other point of view. For that matter, neither is cheering the trashing of America in the world market, but I digress...

>>How difficult has it proven to get leaders to come out for the SM specific training? How difficult is it to get a full roster for Woodbadge?

Are we expecting more from that adults than we train? Should we expect more from the adults than we train? It used to be that the majority of leaders were boy scouts in their youth, I think that has changed a lot. I know the adults I had the most trouble in teaching boy run were the ones that didn't know what boy scouts did other than what they read in the hand books. I do agree with the instant gratification theory because adults in general want to know how well they are performing in most things we do, even as a volunteer. But scoutings goals are long range and its hard to know if we are succeeding in building character after two just camp outs. Unless the adult has the experience of scouting as a youth, it is difficult to understand success three years down the road. Its much easier to be motivated for next month by feeling good about the successes of this month. Does training give adults a good long range vision and the many small, but successful, steps to reaching that vision? I don't know because I came into scouting as an adult with a lot of experience as a youth. But I've said before that adult leaders with a scouting background as a youth are a couple years a head of adults who don't have that experience. And we seem to be getting more and more of those inexperienced adults. Is our training good enough, I don't know. Barry

>>I merely wonder why bother with a galvanized container in the first place? Why not aluminum or stainless steel for cleaning. You'll never have to worry about rust for either of those and you can use the stainless for cooking to boot!

>>I have seen Troops make "trash-can" Turkey where they take coals, a turkey on a spit, and place a trash-can (which I presume is galvanized steel straight from China) over it. Cooks for hours. I know the trashcan gets too hot to touch. Is there a zinc hazard there?

We had the same experience once at a boy scout summer camp. Food was a panic issue because two troops brought 80 more scouts than was expected. But for the other problems you mentioned, well the short story for us was a CD wasn't even found until a month before camp opened and he didn't start recruting staff until two weeks later. The CD had never done the job before and it was a mess, at least for those of us who arrived the first week of the summer. It was so frustrating for the staff that some of them quit that first week. Council had a real bad summer that year, but they did recover and did a lot better the following years. Barry

Folks have asked the same question with the scripture Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesars, and unto God the things that are Gods. I had a similar experience to Packsaddles while traveling through a very poor village on a Caribbean Island. A passenger on our bus started tossing quarters to the children walking home from school. The bus driver clearly showed his displeasure and once we were out of the village, he at the risk of loosing his tip, explained that the children only see the money for a moment because the adult close by will take it from them as soon as our bus is out of site, possibly to the childrens harm. Even worse, he said, only American dollars work on this island; quarters are just trinkets and have no value especially for the risk of the children. Barry

>>For most council camps I have seen to be used for distributed troop camping -- patrols far enough apart to have some change of independent experience -- the troop would have to rent several "troop sites."

Do they meet at different times? If so, join both and let him figure it out. My experience is new scouts 14 and older don't usually stay in troop programs very long for the same reason older scouts don't do well in troops that make a big program changes. Barry

I'm with Acco in that the scouts develop the schedual, but I hold them accountable to it. Nothing teaches discipline, skills and time management better than holding to a schedual. The partcipants of our Council JLTC where told to build the course schedual for the whole week. They were required to include 4 hours of class time, two pPLV meetings, three meals and a campfire, but other than that, it was all up to them. Typically the day started with breakfast around 9:00 dinner finally fitted in around 7:00. We rotated a new PLC everyday with new PLC tasked to develop a new schedual. They can keep the previous PLCs schedual or make a new one. Usally a new one is made because starving scouts were tired of waiting so long for supper and going to bed late trying to fit in 6 hours of free time with 4 hours of class, 3 hours for meals, 2 hours of PLC time and 1 hour for campfire. Scouts can learn a lot by being held to their schedual. Barry

>>I got rid of thousands of illegal, discriminatory BSA units chartered to public schools; are you going to do anything about this, or just whine?

Our troop did two annual planning sessions each year where the PLC first picked a theme for each month, then a campsite location for that theme. The whole month is planned around the theme. That is how we taught it at our then Council youth leadership development course, JLTC. Barry

>> You are talking like an Irving executive who deals with membership dollars and not a Scoutmaster who deals with boys. I feel deeply sorry for that callousness, and that of others who refuse to see the real pain that this policy causes to real, live boys.

>>I strongly disagree.

>> I would be much more receptive to having him attend a committee meeting or meeting one-on-one.