JMHawkins

Punish them for ingenuity...

No, no, not for ingenuity. For lipping off to the other scouts. If they finished their meal and did their own thing, great. (we actually have the opposite problem, with our patrols preferring to cook elaborate meals needing lots of time and even more clean-up). But if they're creating problems for other patrols, find 'em something "productive" to do.

Or separate the patrols even farther...

oh, I think that T2Eagle is right when he implies there are far worse ways to find the truth than the adversarial process, and relying on everyone being an angel is no way to run a legal system. But I do think the profession needs to reconize the inherent problems that the process creates, and try to keep them in check.

This certainly doesn't help the image of the profession:

http://m.usatoday.com/article/sports/55763638

"A New Jersey woman who was struck in the face with a baseball at a Little League game is suing the young catcher who threw it."

Hey, there's our new BSA sales pitch. "Join BSA so your kid doesn't get sued by someone picnicking next to the ballfield...

It you need to say one requirement trumps another, I'd call that avoidance because your saying to meet one requirement you need to throw out another.

I'll bring in an engineering perspective. There's an old saying in engineering: Good, fast, cheap, pick any two. Sometimes it three different parameters, but it's always three and it represents an inherent trade-off.

The basic idea is that the customer (or the boss) can specify what he wants for two of those three things and the third will be whatever it takes to meet the goals of the other two. It's like drawing a triange. You can draw the first two legs any length or angle you want, but the third one has to be whatever it takes to close the gap. You can't specify the third leg of the triangle, it is what it is based on the other two. If you want me to design you a car that's fast and reliable, it probalby isn't going to be cheap. If you want it cheap and reliable, it probably isn't fast. etc. I have to sacrifice something from the third leg to make the other two work.

So for a Scouting FC advancement program, the relvant trio is probably number of skills, depth of learning, and time to learn. You can specify two, and the third is what it is. So if you want the boys to learn this set of skills to that level of mastery, then it will take whatever time it takes for them to get there. With the current FC skill set and a level of mastery consistent with retention and practical use of those skills, that will probably be longer than a year. The basic message is master these skills as quickly as you can.

Or, you could specify the number of skills and the time frame, and then the level of mastery will be whatever it is to make the other two work. That's basically what FCFY does, it says the goal if for the scouts to learn these skills to whatever level of mastery they can in a year. The time and the quantity are specified, the quality is whatever it is, and my gut feel is it will usually be significantly less than what is needed to retain and make practical use of those skills.

I see some parallel failing in the national organizations for LL and BSA. Both are too wrapped up in their money and not investing enough in championing the activities they are associated with.

I think BSA ought to be involved on a national level lobbying to incrase access to open space. Public lands are getting expensive to use, and there's a disreputable contingent in the green movement perfectly willing to use influence with the government to create their own private recreation area paid for with taxpayer dollars, and roudy yout's aren't terribly welcome. BSA ought to be a leader in opposing what one of our adults called "modern day enclosure."

Likewise, LL ought to be about getting kids playing baseball, fighting against "off-limit" fields and the decline in sandlot baseball. But they're hooked on money. When I was a kid, we played league baseball in the summer, but now it starts in winter and runs through spring. By the time summer (and decent weather) is here, the season is over. Why? Best explaination I've gotten is that all the normal leagues need to wrap up by early June so the all-stars and playoff and what not can be done in time for the Little League World Series.

Sad, that they're letting the money get in the way of the mission. The result is a gradual loss of interest in baseball, because fewer kids are playing it. I suspect my son, who was pretty good at it, would still be playing if the season was played when the weather was decent. You can play football and soccer in the rain, but baseball really doesn't work when its wet.

It almost all went down the drain one morning when one patrol brought PopTart for breakfast and spent their extra time walking from patrol to patrol giving the others lip for wasting their time cooking cleaning. The next month, we were back to frozen waffles and instant oatmeal.

Seems that's about the time a SM should give the scouts with extra time on their hands some special duty, like cleaning the kybos or something.

Just out of curiosity, are you in an area with a significant Asian, Latino or African American population? If so, has your Troop been successful in recruiting among these populations?

We don't have a very large minority population, but we've had some success recruiting from what there is, though we don't do anything to tailor our message to any particular ethnicities. There are scouting organizations in other countries, it's not just WASPs who do this stuff. Granted, membership in Latin American countries isn't very high, but WSO outfits in Asia seem to do okay. There's probably a lack of "brand awareness" about BSA in some communities, which is what Marketing and Advertising are good for overcoming. National could do a better job there helping local units out, and I don't mean Soccer Scouts either (though recruiting scouts from soccer leagues isn't a bad idea).

Most parents, regardless of where they were born, want good things for their sons. It's a matter of convincing them Troop 123 provides that. Think back 100 years - the folks who first sold scouting to WASPs didn't have Normal Rockwell nostalgia to fall back on, they had to sell the benfits of the program. Yeah, it's harder, we're just a bunch of volunteers, but that's what's needed. Maybe you can find a parent volunteer who's good at marketing and get them to help with a strong message that sells the program.

SP,

For one thing, our community was underserved. Existing troops in the area had fallen into the habit of only recruiting Webelos, so a lot of boys who would enjoy a scouting program were not even being asked.

Our CO helped, having a youth group that several boys joined from.

We advertised. Flyers around town, talks to local groups, talks to homeschool groups, recruiting nights, business cards printed with meeting info people could hand out, Facebook... It probably helps that our SM does a lot of marketing as his career, and he picked messages, images and themes that conveyed an outdoor, adventure-focused troop. But basically, we marketed ourselves to the community.

That got us about halfway to where we are now, but now there's a change. Most of our new guys now are friends of existing scouts - classmates, teammates, neighbors, older brothers - sold on the troop by our existing guys who are having a blast with a good program. None of our scouts made First Class in our first year, but three of them had 30 nights camping, and a bunch more had 20+ nights. We're outdoors every month, even in the rain (we're Chief Seattle Council too, so you know what December and January weather is like - we were out camping in it).

I really do believe that having a good, fun program that focuses on stuff Scout aged boys like to do and can't do elsewhere is the key. But you have to sell it.

Keep plugging away. Even if it's hard, don't give up. The boys are out there.

It's not at all easy to recruit new Boy Scouts who haven't been through Cub Scouts. We'll give it a try.

Out new troop went from zero to 38 in one year, and two thirds of those boys did not come from Cub Scouts. We still seem to be averaging one new recruit every month or so "wandering in" and joining. Don't limit yourself to just recruting Webelos.

I read somewhere once that one-room schoolhouses often did better than our modern same-age factory schools. Can anyone who actually knows about that sort of thing confirm that?

Like Lisabob said, there are enough other moving parts that it's hard to separate the impact of one-room schoolhouse, but my sense it it was better. If nothing else, I think it fostered better behavior. I can give two annecdotes, six decades apart in time.

One, my father was a school teacher, principal and superintendent. When he was still in school, his first student teaching assignment was to one of the last one-room schoolhouses in the local county (this was back in 1950). It was in one of the rougher, more rural areas. One day one of the younger boys was smarting off to the teacher, Ms. Smith, and my dad thought maybe he'd have a chat with the boy at recess. He walked behind the school looking for the kid and found him in, shall we say, "conversation" with one of the older boys. The older boy was making it very plain to his younger classmate - in words and deeds young boys understand - that he would treat Ms Smith with respect and knock off the disruptive behavior.

Two, my own son spent several years in a mixed age classroom. This last year he was in a same-age class. The biggest difference I have noticed is that he is far less self-motivated to do his schoolwork now than he was before. Again, there are other differences besides the classroom, but when I've questioned him about some homework scores, he's said things like "that's better than average for the class" and other comments that indicate he's not using the Cub Scout motto in his schoolwork any more. He's not doing his best, he's just going with the flow. In his old school, there was no "average" or expected grade levels, there was just kids of multliple ages learning stuff at their own pace. Their own pace seems to be a lot faster than the single-aged group pace.

t2Eagle said:

I have never been able to successfully spin off a thread, so if anyone else can please do so, for now Ill continue the discussion here, it is a worthwhile discussion.

There's a link in the lower right hand corner of each post, down underneath the admin and IP: Logged links. You just have to click it and give the spun thread a new title (and remember to pick a forum for the new thread). Other than that, it's just like replying.

...judicial system, like all the other parts of our democracy, is, paraphrasing Churchill, the worst form of a judicial system, except all the others that have have been tried.

Yeah, I think I agree with that, but it doesn't mean there aren't some problems that could be fixed. In particular, I think you lawyer types could do a little more self-policing on the exaggeration front. That's where a fair amount of the problems - both real and percieved - come from. I know it's part of the system, and to some degree inseparable from it, but it sure seems to be a bit out of hand these day.

Like Beavah said, I'm a software guy. I've done a fair amount of interactions with IP (Intellectual Property) attorneys. I have a few patents, I've been involved in a couple of infringement cases. The IP attorneys writing up a patent application have a SOP of making a set of claims in descending generality. First, they claim the invention covers pretty much the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. Then if that doesn't hold, they just claim the Moon and a couple of good sized planets. If that doesn't hold, the 3rd claim is for the Moon, the 4th for a couple of craters, and finally somewhere down at the end they actually get around to claiming the real novel inventions the application ought to cover in the first place. Their reasoning is that they'll exaggerate their claims, the other side will exaggerate theirs, and somewhere in the middle the adversarial process will find an acceptable version of the truth. Like a car salesman quoting a high price expecting the buyer to haggle him down a few grand.

It works, but the bigger the exaggerations, the bigger the potential error. I think the acceptance of making exaggerated claims (always in the interest of the client, of course) has become a little too lenient. Not just in tort or IP cases either. Seems prosecutors have a SOP these days of threatening a defendant with exaggerated charges in an effort to get him to plea bargan down to what they think he might actually be guilty of. The bigger the exaggerations tolerated, the better the chance of an intolerable injustice being done.

Do journalists blow up the exaggerations even further? Sure, they can do a hatchet job on all our professions (T2, if you want to practice your thread spinnin' skills, spin one off on jouranlism:)) But I think the general mechanism of the adversarial process requires some housekeeping and self-imposed limits from you "officer of the court" types to remain functional.

But, I disagree with JMHawkins that once written, they can not be modified.. So if 10 years ago the policy is scout can not be removed from medicine for summer camp, and now you have a reason to do so, if the policy is brought up, and the SM recommends in this instance it is not applicable, then the policy is either not enforced, or changed to add in "unless those adult leaders in attendence are agreeable to it".

In other words, the committee comes to a consensus about what should be done, which they can do just fine without the bylaws. In fact, having the bylaw there about summer camp medicine is more likely to hamper reaching consensus than help it.

Just a thought, where are the Lions, Shriners, and other Fraternal Service Organizations doing in your area? Just about died here. If they exist they do so very quietly. The Generation X does not have the volunteer gene that most, and I say most Baby Boomers do.

GenX types have their own volunteering patterns, but I would guess that you're unlikely to find a large number of GenX folks volunteering in organizations with a large contingent of Boomers already ensconced. GenXers are in general not very fond of Boomers at all, and are going to be less interested in volunteering for organizations where they have to interact closely with Boomer "bosses."

The troop I'm in has a ton of GenX volunteers. We have two Boomer ASMs, but the SM, the other 5 ASMs, the CC, the COR, IH and the entire Committee are GenX. The relative autonomy of the BSA unit allows that.

Something other organizations might want to consider. There is a fair amount of generational animosity, for better or worse. If you want volunteers, you need to deal with it.

There's nothing wrong with bylaws so long as you don't need them.

But once you need them, you're as likely to find them a source of trouble as a source of help. At their best, bylaws are a means of resolving disagreements among the folks on the committee by stating what you will do if you don't agree to do otherwise. By itself, there's nothing too badly wrong with that, you're just setting up some default assumptions. But the temptation is so strong to add and extend and update, and it's a temptation that is strongest with the least desirable sort of committee members, the ones who would rather be right than do right.

Bylaws let these folks be "right" by quoting subparagraph 4 of Section IV.3.a to prove their point. But that's a bad way to resolve disagreements and no way at all to reach consensus.

It's also no way to solve the problems moosetracker mentions. Or really what I should say is bylaws won't solve any of those problems until after they've already happened. You don't know to write a bylaw that says kids can't be taken off medication prior to summer camp until you've had that problem. Then as soon as you write that bylaw, you find yourself with another problem when a kid should be taken off medication and you've got someone quoting Paragraph 7a saying he has to stay on the meds if he's going to go to summer camp even though everyone knows it's the wrong thing to do. And in any event, that's a decision for the SM and the adults who will be going to summer camp with the scouts, not for the Committee who will be sitting at home.

Theft and embezzlement? Require two signatures on a check and have the bank statements sent to two different committee members each month (Treasurer and CC perhaps). If you want to call those bylaws, fine. There's paragraph 1. Paragraph 2 says "This committee will operate under the Scout Law for the good of the Troop, the youth, and the Charter Org". You don't need a paragraph 3. If you write one, you'll eventually end up with a paragraph 4, then 5, and so on, and someday someone will try to use those extra paragraphs to prove themselves "right," creating discord and drama.

Good will and good sense are what's needed from MCs. Along with a realization that you are on the committee for the good of the unit and the program, not to get your soap opera fix. If anyone needs drama, they should watch TV. TV has plenty of dramas, all of which have the great and tremendous advantage of being complete fiction so no real people are hurt by it all.

In researching Little League participation numbers, I came across this quote:

Lance Van Auken, Little League's spokesman, said baseball seems to be morphing into a more-structured year-round activity that requires expensive lessons, equipment and travel. "Our position is that kids should play baseball, soccer, a musical instrument, do scouting, and specialize later on," Van Auken said. "It seems ridiculous that there are eight-year-old travel teams, but there are."

-WSJ March 31, 2011 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576232753156582750.html

Are youth sports programs hurting? ANyone know? If its the economy, then hasw Little League taken a numbers hit?

Yeah, supposedly they have taken a hit. I don't have official numbers, but I've seen news reports claiming a 13%-14% decline since the late 90's, and a 1% year-to-year decline. The WSJ claims the overall number of youth 7-17 playing baseball declined 24% from 2000-2009. Like Scouting, it's worse in some places, better in others. Lots of people complaining about the changes that have happened in the last twenty years ruining it. Official explainations from the Little League corporate types include kids having other sports to choose from, the economy, video games... All sounds familiar.

My son dropped out of Little League this year. I don't blame him. The schedule is terrible (practice in February, in the Pacific Northwest? We had more practices rained out than completed last year), the fields are in bad shape, rules are poorly thought out for younger players (really, they think 8 year olds should be pitching to each other?). And last year he had a really obnoxious coach who didn't make it very fun for the kids. I've heard they have a shortage of adults volunteering their time.

But, FWIW, our troop had a scout drop out of baseball because it was interfering with scouts.

Yah, what T2Eagle said, eh? These are initial filings, so yeh hit everyone with da kitchen sink. Allegations are just allegations.

Not to drift too far away from the safety and permission talk, but a little advice from a non-lawyer to the lawyer-types around here, this above is one of the reasons your profession isn't held in very high regard by the rest of society. The plaintifs are doing something here that's very much like lying. In an official filing. They're making allegations that they do not know to be true, but they're stating them as if they did know them to be true. I'm inclined to call them reckless allegations instead of just plain old allegations. Common sense and plain language says the plaintiffs are being untruthful and untrustworthy by boldly asserting as fact things they in truth only think are possibilities.

Yes, yes, I understand the laweryly excuse here - it's all part of the dance and it's just how they get the ball rolling for discovery and all that. But it's still dishonest. Consider:

Scout Billy runs up to the SM and breathlessly says "Johnny was carving his initials into that old-growth redwood tree over there!" The SM, upon asking how Billy knows this gets the reply "well, I didn't actually see him do it, but I saw some initials carved into the tree that looked like his, so I figured he must have done it."

Billy gets a talk about jumping to conclusion and making reckless allegations, right?

Courts are supposed to be where truth and justice are sought, where lying is not only morally wrong, but can get you fined or imprisoned. Yet the sort of behavior described above, this casual abuse of the notion of truth, is not only tolerated but considered an essential part of the system. That's broken.

What it does do is increase the likelihood of poor quality training, as yeh have to find lots more people to offer the training for groups that frequently, or make the groups bigger so there's less personal attention.

Not good risk management, really.

I'm sensing a pattern here...

Seems that could be said about quite a few other "risk management" implementations as well. The emphasis is on centralized bureaucracy and paperwork, rather than on proficiency and results. Process over performance.

JMHawkins - Your mistake is viewing scouts as burgers...

In which Fred proves he doesn't understand my point at all, since I was demonstrating that the McDonalds franchise analogy doesn't work because Scouts aren't burgers.

Sigh.

Doesn't matter. You're running a youth program to serve your community under the umbrella of the Charter Org. Throw the bylaws in the trash and work as a team to have a functional unit. If you can't work as a team without resorting to parsing a bunch of (most likely poorly written) rules, let the COR know he or she needs to apoint a new committee. Resist the urge to indulge in petty dramatics over bylaws. Do what is right for the unit, the scouts, and the CO.

Getting back to the original post. Maybe if people could review the GTA and specifically suggest changes to particular sections it would be of some use to the discussion?

As I said way back on page 1, "So, short summary: define the goals not the process, and explicitly require the adult(s) approving advancement to use judgement in determining if the scout has earned the award."

The opening paragraph should state "Adults overseeing the advancement process should keep in mind that Advancement is to be for recognition of actual ability. Requirements should be interpreted in a way that ensures proficiency in the skill covered. Good judgement on the part of adult leaders is necessary, and 'strict interpretation' of the rules should never be substitued for good judgement."

Also, as I said earlier, just delete the "don't add to the requirements" nonsense and let adults set the bar they want to set. They're going to anyway, make it explicit.

I am not a statician.. But, I just don't see these two reports jiving??..

Good observation. The only possible explaination is that the percentage of Scouts awarded Eagle is higher today than in the past. Even if it's only 4%, it has to be higher for there to be more Eagles when there are fewer Scouts.

We also need to remember we can't add to requirements...

Don't add to the requirements! Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch...

How do we make Scouting cool?

Well, who are the cool kids at school? They're the ones oozing self-confidence. Maybe we get confused about which is the cause and which is the effect and think they're self-confident because they're cool, but no, it's the other way around.

People, especially young people (and especially girls...) gravitate - are attracted to - people who are confident in themselves. So while I am 110% in support of getting a Chief Scout who will convey the message of "Scouts are cool", I think the best thing we can do is develop self-confidence in our Scouts. Real self-confidence comes from real accomplishment, and there's nothing quite like outdoor adventure to bring a sense of accomplishment. Outdoor adventure isn't just an advertising gimmick. It's not even just a selling point for the program. It's also the best way to make our Scouts walking, talking, swaggering advertisments for cool.

Yes, swaggering. In moderation, and all of it earned, but our scouts ought to have a little swagger to their stride. After all, they're doing stuff beyond the ability of the molly-coddled football team and the poor, deluded grinds working their weekends off for the chance to squander $100k of Mom and Dad's money and graduate another $150k in debt to Prestige U with a degree that increasingly does nothing that a cheaper degree from State doesn't do. They're given responsibility for things the football coach would never dream of letting a kid handle. They're tougher, more adventurous, and more capable than their classmates.

That's the theory anyway. It's up to us to make it a reality.

Of course, if the general public ever gets a load of what's currently in the G2SS, we're scuppered. They'll laugh us right out of whatever toehold on cooldom we've been able to gain.

[edit: fixed spelling mistakes - at least I think I did](This message has been edited by JMHawkins)

Where are they?

Diven away from their families, mostly. Or encouraged never to be a part in the first place.

It's a multi-front problem: the education establishment treating boys as dysfunctional girls, popular culture portraying men as bungling idiots or violent thugs and little in between, family courts that are brutally unfair to fathers, no-fault divorce laws that make ending a marriage an easy thing for a woman (70-80% of divorces are initiated by the wife), little remaining shame in out-of-wedlock pregnancies, a lousy economy that has seen especially high unemployment for men...

Bottom line, our legal system and our culture are treating men as little more than fashion accessories - and ones of questionable taste at that - for women. It's not working out well for men, women, or children. Frankly, It seems to be a disaster for everybody, but the folks pushing both the cultural and legal bashing of men are too pig-stubborn to admit they're wrong.

It's better in some places than others, but it's a problem.

That's one of the things that makes BSA so important - it's one of the last places were a boy can be what nature intended him to be and not be shamed for it. Scouting celebrates masculine traits and attempts to mold them into what's needed to make a good man.

Back in the 70's when I was 8 years old, I walked (or biked) a couple of miles to and from school. At 9, I could go anywhere in town that my bike or legs could take me. At 10, I was riding the transit bus to the neighboring city to spend my hard-earned paper route or lemonade stand money at the stores over there. By the time I became a Scout, I had several years of reasonable independence under my belt. I wasn't really unusual.

The guys I see coming in don't have anywhere near that much experience being responsible for themselves. If the Eagle rank (or First Class) is to mean anything, our new guys have farther to go than Arthur Eldred had. They're no less inherently capable of it than his (or my) generation, but I think it takes a while for them (perhaps more importantly their parents) to realize it and let the real work start.

My complaint isn't with the age of a Eagle Scout, it's with the maturity. Merit Badge classes and programs that let a kid check off all the requirements for Eagle with only 20 nights camping are not developing maturity, regardless of how fast or slow the advancement conveyor belt runs.

Well, there is a complaint I have with guys getting to Eagle at an early age, and it would apply to 1912 as well as 2012. If a scout makes it all the way through the Advancement program in 25% of the time he could be a Boy Scout, we've pretty much lost the use of the Advancement method with that kid for 75% of his potential time. Better to have a program that challenges even the most ambitious to get there.