Eagledad

>>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 may not act to our personal standard of scout like behavior. Disappointment hurts and confrontation is scary. Let him know you understand and agree because you were there once and still deal with it to some degree. But from now on he is going to run into a lot of similar situations as he gets more independence and you are excited to help him build the confidence for it. Honestly as a SM, I was excited because it was an opportunity help a boy grow just that much closer being a confident man. Sit down and come up with little ways of gradually getting him more comfortable. Something we do in our troop is we require our scouts to call and set up appointments with all the MB counselors. It is a BSA policy, but building confidence with adults is the reason I encourage it. And you know, it only takes about three calls and its no big deal. You might pick something as simple as you standing on the other side of the room while goes up to ask the adults a simple easy question or setting up there next in a more neutral atmosphere. You will know better than us the best way to handle it. But, the main point here is use this situation as a red flag that your sons needs to mature in this area. As I said, just about all boys go through it. So much so that our adults are prepared to help. As for the adults, I would bring it up to the SM in a: Oh by the way kind of approach. Then I would throw out a couple very small suggestions that might give him ideas to approach the adults. I would not make a do or die thing about it because to be known as a problem helicopter parent. The objective is to realize this is common and the adults need to prepare for it. As for the fire starters, it sounds to me like the adults acted silly. Good luck and let us know what happens. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

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 both groups of boys continued in scouting the next year after they crossed over. That was a change from 30% before and very few other units could brag about that. But the main point is the changes were intended to require less effort from the adults, not more. So they were easy changes to hand over. I understand most of those changes are still in the pack. I also learned a little bit of how National approaches their changes. I once met one of the writers of the present Scoutmaster Specific course. I told him that I liked teaching the course, but found it to be a bit confused because the book didnt exactly match power point. He said that made sense because there were three writers who did their own separate part, then sent their part to be assemble in whole by the National. Even when I was talking to him, he still had not seen the syllabus of the whole course, so he was excited to hear my opinion, especially of his part. That was a little strange to me, but he said National was trying to meet a time table. I have heard rumors that National has been working toward a very long range plan. 2010 makes sense because I have been hearing about it for a long time. I will be curious to learn just what that plans are. I dont like to call myself a traditionalist because I think myself as very open minded. But I am looked at as a traditionalist because after trying different styles and methods through the years, many of the traditional styles of scouting gave us the best performance. I found that Traditional programs are typically simpler. I believe in simplicity and I have found that National tends to do just the opposite out of necessity. For example, National wanted to change the tradition of boys joining Troops from individually joining to moving all the Webelos over at once. The idea was more boys would crossover if they had a friend and I agree. But, that led to Troop Guides and aged based patrols. That has led to more adult run style of program, which has led into issues of leadership development. In my opinion that has changed average age of a Patrol Leader is at least 2 to 3 years younger than 25 years ago, which means less older scouts staying in the program. The younger Patrol leaders also led the adults to rely more on a JLT style of leadership development. All that leads into a more complicated program for adults to manage. After doing this for a long time, Im convinced that NSPs change made the Troop program much more difficult for adults to manage. And, the numbers haven't improved enough to say it was a success. At least not five years ago. And that was a little change. You can imagine the effects of bringing women leaders into the program. Im actually scared to see the new program. Im glad my sons are adults now because it will be very easy for me to bail out if it gets harder. Maybe it really is time for a new generation of pop culture adults because thats about all who will be left to run the units. I can still barely text message. Barry

>>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 this scouting stuff. Barry

>>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 over the place. As a youth, I really appreciated the "outward boundness" of my troop's high adventure experiences because I learned that despite being a non-athletic kid, I had no physical limits that weren't imposed by my own brain. I would think a good coach would be able to foster that same thing with young athletes. Thanks... Guy

>>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?

>>One of the most popular threads on Sean Hannity's forum has over 7000 posts concerning the birth certificate conspiracy theory.

>>And really, does scouting really give most boys that much "better direction for the rest of their lives"? Some of this is wishful thinking on our parts; a perception not necessarily shared by many scouts or their parents.

>>I truly wonder what the thoughts may be on this, or if the usual combatants are too shallow to address it.