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HICO_Eagle

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Everything posted by HICO_Eagle

  1. Congratulations. Glad to hear the young men chose to recognize you.
  2. You must be much older than me. We were able to work on T-2-1 requirements simultaneously in 1978. What you COULDN'T do was earn Second Class before achieving Tenderfoot or First Class before achieving Tenderfoot. While I keep an open mind that SOME 12 year old might be mature enough with natural leadership abilities and work hard enough to get Eagle in 2 years, it would be extremely rare and I am rather skeptical about earning 71 merit badges in 2 years.
  3. The troops I've been involved in have always been small and therefore always ran on the cash model for activities anyway. Our charter organizations provided a place to meet and (sometimes) to store equipment but that was about it so the new model would work for those troops (if they still exist). Liability insurance is the real kicker. I would not trust Council with my unit's money (if it had any worth speaking of) and I *like* my local Council. I've just seen too many broken promises and shenanigans as execs and directors change out. I wonder if a trust arrangement could be made to spon
  4. Extremely disturbing and disappointing. I have been going through extended discussions with the wife of one of my cousins who accused BSA of having a "rape culture" and homophobia. Nothing but redirects when I pointed out the assaults over the years were almost exclusively man-on-boy. I just *love* discussing these things with people who think 2+2=9 because that's what they've been told in the newspaper, on TV, on Facebook, etc.
  5. As I recall, the consensus of the longtime Scouters I knew was that it was a MB that didn't do any harm, might help some Scouts, but that it was ridiculous for it to be Eagle-required. This DI&E MB is Maoist or Stalinist indoctrination IMO -- utterly ridiculous. Citizenship in the Community could have had a few requirements added to address an expanded view of "community" but creating a whole new MB -- much less making it Eagle-required -- is more social justice nonsense from the folks in Irving that have been destroying Scouting from within for the last decade or two.
  6. I understand your friend not wanting to donate the land unencumbered. I've seen too many shenanigans at the council level trying to get around encumbrances in order to turn land donations into cash even when the land donation paid for itself in terms of cash flow (i.e. program fees to use the land were enough to pay taxes, utilities, fees, and improvements). An enduring trust that gives your local unit first right of refusal to use the land for activities or something like that might be the way to go but it does require finding a trustee willing to do all of the work.
  7. FWIW, Pikes Peak Council incorporated knife and axe throwing into its annual Shootaramas 4 years ago or so.
  8. There have always been girls who have been interested in the same things as boys. We used to call them tom-boys. BSA's insistence on staying focused on single-sex operations was not to deny these girls outdoor experiences. It was because there weren't enough of them to justify taking on the additional costs and logistical burdens of incorporating them into the program. A lot of camps were built with little to no privacy in hygienic facilities. I remember the back-to-back latrines at Black Mountain Camp down in Philmont -- being back-to-back was the only privacy you got. The more vari
  9. As with many class action torts, the lawyers are incentivized to get (or create) as many presumed victims as possible. Some of the abuse was real but how many of the supposed 90,000 cases are mixing things like teasing by other boys in group showers with pedophile cases? How many of them are a result of the lawyers getting the now-men to attribute their current problems to "abuse"? If the count vastly exceeds the so-called secret files (at least some of which were unproveable and maybe even innocent people), just what were BSA or the adukts involved supposed to do with cases they didn't eve
  10. I'm going to disagree with the premise that the fact the brain is still growing means they don't have the physical structures necessary to start thinking like adults. If we want youth to start thinking like adults, we have to start treating them like adults. Yes, you make allowances for their age and inexperience but you don't coddle them. They aren't infants. Heck, the term "young adult" USED to refer to this particular age group (as opposed to 18-25 year olds) -- and I think still does in the book publishing world. One of the reasons I said that the skills needed in years
  11. That is precisely WHY they need help forming that brain early as teens and the coddling needs to stop. I would argue the skill set needed for a 15 year old to succeed in 1865, 1929, or 1941 was greater and more complex than today. We've been dumbing everything down for the last 30 years. Teens today don't even try to remember simple things, thinking they can just Google it if they need info. Youth in the past needed to know a wide variety of details and tasks (examples: how to handle and care for animals, grow crops, make their own clothes and footgear, fix a broken wagon wheel, etc.).
  12. Yeah, it was late last night when I wrote that and I held off posting but yknot's post brought it back to mind and I neglected to QC. I do recall we had an issue once where we couldn't put a newly graduated 18-year-old in as ASM, I think we had to put him in as the Advancement Chair or something like that until he turned 21. Regardless, the point I was trying to get to is that we as a society (not necessarily Scouting as an organization) need to stop prolonging childhood. The youth often don't grow and mature until it's demanded of them. I just read a news story about staffers at Pengu
  13. I hate to detract from the OP's excellent historical review but I see no real reason to extend the membership age to 21. One of the biggest problems I had was keeping promising older teens in the program after they got a taste of car fumes and perfumes. At 18, a Scout who still wants to be a part of the program can become a Junior ASM -- and I've had a few of them (even was one when I got home from my first year in college). As a JASM, s/he is a useful bridge between the generally older Scouters and the Scouts themselves without losing the respect of being an "adult". Extending the mem
  14. In my experience as a Scout, we changed SMs pretty regularly, probably due to overwork although it was invisible to the Scouts. We just kept on keeping on. The SM who formed the first troop I hooked up with as an adult Scouter only left because of a job in another state. Another father stepped in for him for a little over a year but had to resign because he was working an hour north and it was just too rough on him to get back down in time for meetings, much less everything else a SM has to do. The third SM lasted about 4 or 5 months -- he took it personally when members of the committ
  15. That right there should have disqualified her from any position of responsibility if National wasn't so disconnected from reality. I know some excellent PhDs but no one I've met with a PhD in "education" has seemed to know a dang thing about teaching. Field experience should be the first and foremost thing they look for at National. When you look at who gets selected for the Board or President positions in the past 15 or 20 years, it's almost like the organization wanted to destroy itself.
  16. BSA as a group didn't molest children nor did it protect child molesters as a group. Some individuals feared publicity would harm the organization but the organization in general tried to keep people with that predilection out. You can certainly argue that it was too sweeping with the bans but just what guidelines would you propose absent criminal records (which WERE immediate disqualifiers depending on the crimes)? Unfortunately, BSA is on a course toward settlement. IMO, settlement will not end this because ultimately, it's not what the activists want. This has been a decades-long f
  17. The problem is that many people/organizations -- including the Washington Post -- have been trying to destroy Scouting and other societal institutions for decades as part of their agenda for change. Looking to WaPo for constructive ideas to preserve the program would be like looking to Karl Marx for ideas to preserve capitalism or Cortez for ideas to preserve the Incas. Nothing we suggest to preserve the program will be sufficient for them because destruction of the program is their ultimate goal. BSA would have been pilloried for publicly "outing" people it suspected but had no hard ev
  18. So does National expect councils to go DRAFTING "youth of color" and girls to get their percentages up? These kinds of mandates are what drive phony registrations -- something that should be a warning sign. I am so glad I've retired from Scouting because National gets dumber and dumber every year, just like the mainstream media, public education, and Hollywood. Quotas are inherently unAmerican. When I was in the National Capitol Region, one of the best-behaved, most disciplined troops I'd see at Goshen was an inner city troop from DC but we rarely saw "youth of color" express any int
  19. Just what do you think they need? Not want, NEED; these are not synonymous. The answers being delivered up are observations that some of us think they need. One of the reasons so many of us think traditional training and organizational structure are the answer is because they worked. Do you honestly think families today are more broken than families in the 1920s and 30s? Scouting got its reputation because it provided not just outdoor skills but genuine leadership training, the ability to plan and deal with the unexpected, etc. The growth of companies like REI, EMS, etc. tells us
  20. Agreed. A lot of us predicted overall loss of membership due to parent burnout when Tigers were announced. One of the points I tried to make at bridging ceremonies was that we were maturing the boys and while we wanted parent participation, they shouldn't feel they needed to be at every activity or every meeting. I would close with a recollection that in my time as a Scout, some of the best campouts and hikes were ones where the parents were as far away as possible (usually got a laugh). Okay, I don't regard patches and t-shirts as "bling" -- they're simply recognition and so
  21. Um, no. Yes, Scouting has a lot of bling but no, it's NOT part of "the culture" -- or wasn't IMO. There are always people who want to show off but elements like knots instead of letting adults wear the Eagle badge itself were an effort to tone down the bling. Skill award belt loops weren't so much bling as a display of credentials. For the most part, the only things I put on my uniform as an adult were the Eagle and AOL knots and the Trained badge -- and those were just to show my experience and credentials. Anyone who knew me already knew my background and experience and those who di
  22. I used to have the opposite issue with medications roughly 25 years ago. This was a period when it seemed boys who didn't act like docile little lambs were diagnosed with ADHD and Ritalin was handed out like M&Ms (from what I could see). In the 2 or 3 cases I can recall, I think the parents tried to be "buddies" with their sons rather than invoke any kind of discipline. In contrast, I made it pretty clear with the boys as both ASM and SM that having fun was great, jokes were fine as long as they didn't result in injuries or property damage, but that I wasn't going to put up with misbeh
  23. TL;DR The value of Wood Badge varies based on your background and experience, primarily with leadership/management skills and techniques but also with Scoutcraft and the Patrol Method Before I retired from Scouting, I saw a vast change in the adults involved in the program. When I first became a Scouter (after graduation from college, commissioning in the USAF, and completing initial job training), most of the adults I saw had prior experience with Scouting (in many cases, LONG prior experience as Scouts and Scouters). By the time I left, I would say over half the adults involved had lit
  24. FWIW, I fully supported and encouraged troop shopping when I was still Scouting. I told prospective new parents that each unit had its own persona and style and that different boys would fit in with different units. IMO, it shouldn't set up an "Us vs. Them" mentality if the troops are participating in Roundtables -- the goal is to get the boys (and now girls) situated in an environment that best develops their skills and meets their needs to be productive members of society with a healthy appreciation for the values and heritage that Scouting brings (or used to). In addition, I very muc
  25. To some extent, I think a lot of this has been part of a long game to destroy the pillars of Western society and that while the aim of individual lawyers may have been money (for them or for the victims), the ultimate and primary aim of a growing segment of activists for decades has been to tear down "the Church", the BSA, the military, the police, etc. Tearing down the organizations does nothing positive for the current and future generations who could have benefited from the programs and teaching. All it does is leave a vacuum that various nefarious powers are just drooling to fill (and al
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