Eagledad

Lets fill in some blanks: What is your part in this? How many scouts in the Troop? How many of the scouts want the Venture and why? Why do you think the venture is an issue? What are the agenda items of the committe meeting? Who is the alpha leader, by that I mean who is the one person that will get their way with the the adults? Finally, I understand the goals you listed, but is there any one vision or mission that all the adults could quote? Barry

>>Jblake47, I acknowledge your point about the pioneers, but I look at it from the view of recycling.

When I was a young scout, we were taught not to eat the yellow snow, not to face into the wind when taking care of certain bodily functions, and dig our latrines 50 ft away. Back then we never camped anywhere that had built latrines or bathrooms and so each patrol dug its own latrine. We once asked out Patrol Leader why 50feet. He said because 50 feet is too close in the summer and too far in the winter. It seemed a good compromised distance. We had really good Patrol Leaders back then. I dont remember talking about which direction to face the door. Im not sure it mattered, our tents did

>>Also, the main reason the enjoy us around (be still my heart) is because we don't hover, we listen to their (all scouts)ideas and leave them alone and do our own thing.

I'm really not sure my sons would have worn their soccer or baseball uniforms to school either. My son hated the khaki pants he wore while on the school golf team. He put those on in the car from the school to the golf tournaments. So I'm not sure why we are making it a big deal with just scouts. As for the backbone thingy, they come to us to develop it. Barry

HI Scoutdad Im kind of anal about this, but all I see here is a great opportunity. Actually your sons situation is quite common for youth his age. UP until now, your son and most American boys his age have been sheltered from such experiences because we parents generally handle dealing with adults for our kids. I think this is your opportunity to introduce your son to the real world of differing opinions and communicating with people he is uncomfortable with. You only have to look at the Issues and Politics section of this forum to see that even adults who say they are in scouting

Well Im not sure Im viewed as one for change, but I will say that our troop during my time as a leader was considered very forward thinking at the time. Enough so that a lot of folks were scared of us. I hope you are right about the new team, but I still wonder what that means if they are. I can say that typically the changes we made in our units usually simplified the program and made it easier for both the adults and the scouts to continue toward the goal. A lot of that was in our Cub Scout Pack and much of what we did was simplify our Tiger and Webelos program. As a result, 90% of b

>>Don't think for a New York minute that Rush really has a deep caring for conservative causes.

>>Eagledad, If I sounded angry or what not, I want to apologize as that was not my intent

>>I have not yet heard Obama do the same to his opponents. Instead, he talks about why he disagrees with their ideas - not why they're bad Americans. In fact, heck, I believe he hosted a dinner in McCain's honor earlier this week.

>>Hoping he fails isn't a good start to working together for a solution.

Pretty Good Beavh. Three of my SPLs while I was SM were very active in band at the time they were SPLs. It almost killed them, but they were very good SPLs. All our good SPLs were active in other activities. Another bragging story is the local high school where most of our scouts belonged has a yearly student body election where they vote for the top eight leaders of the school. One year six of those voted were also scouts in our troop. The other two voted were girls. Im convinced that if we allowed girls in the troop, all eight would have been scouts in our troop. Ah I love t

>>It was George W. Bush who led us whole hog down the path of Socialism, with socializing the banking industry, the mortgage industry, the auto industry, and on and on. Where was Rush?

>>Based upon my experiences of going through Brownsea 22 and staffing JLT, these top level scout trainging courses ARE suppose to mimic WB.

This is pretty cool and I'm always in favor of searching for new ideas. However, National did this about 11 years ago with JLT, which resulted in some really good ideas. I didn't see any of the suggestions used. NYLT ended up being almost a copy of Wood Badge. I'm not saying that isn't the right course, but it isn't very innovative. Barry

>>YIs being subversive what you teach your scouts about citizenship?

>>Clearly, Rush never wore a scout uniform.

>>Barry, it's not about comparing mission statements and doing a "mine is bigger" check>The most incredible display of Esprit d'Corps I've ever seen was at a rehearsal of the OSU marching band. Any unit, scouting, military, varsity team, band or otherwise, would probably see a display like that and have chills running down their spine.

>>I've had the personal thought for some time that our council needs to tap the lodge as a resource for helping run the youth leadership training.

>>but I would still point out that Scouting doesn't have a monopoly on those and doesn't have a "moral high ground" in owning those values.

>>So what I'd like to ask you is to support your statement. Why do you think that Scouting is far and away better? You haven't really given a reason why you believe the way you do. I feel, as others have pointed out, that Scouting doesn't have a monopoly on certain values. In fact, the very first lecture I received on integrity came from my junior high school band director, delivered to our entire band. Integrity, leadership development, teamwork, citizenship, character development (I could probably run through the entire set of aims and methods)...those kinds of things pop up all

>>It will be interesting to watch how FoxNews transitions from the equivalent of Pravda (a propaganda tool of the administration) to the equivalent of AlJazeera (the opposition voice).

>>As a Scouter, I personally would not want to make a Scout's choices more difficult by placing constraints.

>>Could the same be applied to the avowed gay? Can't go camping, but maybe serve in some other function where their pedophilic ways wouldn't threaten the youth?

>>However, there is a ring of truth to it. The right wing scream machine is going to use every little misstep and misspeak to try to build a case for impeachment. Its all they got, so can you really blame them?