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Kudu

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Everything posted by Kudu

  1. Girl Scout camp was where I first heard the phrase "Once an Eagle, Always an Eagle"! The Scoutmaster of my first Boy Scout Troop as an adult volunteer was an Eagle Scout. He did not allow boys to tent in weather under forty (40) degrees, so he rented cabins from early fall to late spring. Girl Scout cabins were his absolute favorite because the central heating meant that he did not have to assign a fire watch to insure against a chilly cabin at night. Without stuffed furniture, wall to wall carpeting, twin microwaves, and cable TV, it will take much longer for his future Eagle r
  2. Paul, This is precisely the problem with a program based on character. To you I am "projecting" and "painting" you as a "stereotype" from my "imagination," which you characterize as "not really very fair." From my perspective rejecting a boy's touchdowns, baskets, goals, or homeruns because he could not explain the concept of "sportsmanship" to the satisfaction of some other kid's father, is not just "fair," but a perfect analogy to your desire to "send boys back from a BOR over 'idealist' issues when they were progressing in knots and fires."
  3. Clearly you are not moved by the beauty of the passages that Jeal quotes. A pantheist would point out that your reaction is an expression of all the natural laws in the universe. Note the context: Jeal is quoting the clergy that reacted to Baden-Powell's pantheistic article "Religion of Backwoods." http://inquiry.net/ideals/beads.htm A pantheist is just as likely as a Buddhist to recognize applied Christianity ("service to one's neighbor") as a metaphor intended for a Christian audience: "Some may object that the religion of the Backwoods is also a re
  4. Easily squared: A skeptical Scout inoculated with B-P's brand of woodsy pantheism reads that as "No man is much good unless he believes in the transformative power of nature and obeys its laws. From the very first fortnight edition of Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell used the Buddhist culture of Burma as his prime example of applied Christianity. Maybe friendly Christians do not threaten to destroy the Scouting "Movement as a national institution" if nature offers an alternative to "Revealed Religion," or announce that God had condemned Baden-Powell's name
  5. So what do all of those age-restricted activities have in common? 1) By definition they are not based on merit.
  6. PaulSafety: Welcome to the forum from your anti-matter counterpart in Scouting. The centerpiece of the "Personal Growth" Method when it was introduced, was the "Personal Growth Agreement Conference" with its own paperwork: the official "Personal Growth Agreement" contract. The Scout was required to list specific goals and then meet them before his next advancement. To accommodate the anticipated flood of "urban youth" who hate Scoutcraft, the goals need not have anything to do with Scouting. And yes, when "Personal Growth" and "Leadership Development" were introduced in 1972, the S
  7. "Previously entered content was automatically saved. Restore or Discard. "
  8. Does the auto-save function work for you? It often asks me to save or discard old drafts from previous days.
  9. A single Patrol unit is the purest form of the Patrol Method. Baden-Powell designed Scouting to be run by Patrol Leaders, with SPL unnecessary in Troops as large as 32 Scouts.
  10. If you use what Hillcourt called the "Real" Patrol Method in a single Patrol unit, the Scoutmaster should want the Troop's most competent and mature Scout as the Patrol Leader, leading Patrol Hikes, to keep the Patrol members from harm's way.
  11. Before "leadership skills," the purpose of Wood Badge was to train Scoutmasters to how teach the best Patrol Leaders how to physically lead their Patrols into the backwoods. Scouts learned their skills from a "Patrol" Leader, not a "Troop" Guide! Here is a Wood Badge participant's official "Wood Badge Training Notebook" from William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt's Wood Badge: http://inquiry.net/traditional/wood_badge/index.htm
  12. "The mission of the BSA is to advance Cub Scout survivors to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with a pack on their backs, and to call that 'making ethical choices'." What makes Scouts uncool is that we have replaced physical distance (objective standards) with the subjective judgment of adults. We replaced Journeys (as each rank's test of Scoutcraft) with subjective adult sign-offs, Scoutmaster Conferences, and Boards of Review. We replaced "Real" Patrols (a Patrol Leader's ability to physically lead his Patrol into the backwoods), with a subjective "understanding" of EDGE
  13. In theory "Leadership Development" is a separate Method of Scouting, so it should have it's own forum: "Leadership Development: Lessons and questions of Scout leadership and operating Troop program". The correct tagline for the Patrol Method in a Website dedicated to the memory of William Hillcourt would be: "The Patrol Method: What a Patrol does apart from the Troop" With at least two sub-forums: William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt's Patrol Method. and Lord Baden-Powell's Patrol System There are now two (2) Baden-Powell Scouts associations in the United
  14. NJCubScouter, For instance "Camping & High Adventure" has a "Sub-Forum" listed under it, "Equipment Reviews & Discussions" Someone looking for equipment reviews need not sift through pages of Camping and High-Adventure discussions that have nothing to do with equipment. So, someone who comes to Scouter.Com because they hear that the site is dedicated to William Hillcourt, should not have to sift through pages of "Lessons and questions of Scout leadership and operating troop program" to find out how to implement William Hillcourt's "Real" Patrol Method (what a Patro
  15. Yes. Where else are you going to learn EDGE theory? Wood Badge replaced Boy Scout skills with office management theory because, as Wood Badge Staffers like to remind each other, some of us spend our entire lives avoiding offices and the people who manage offices. The problem is that word gets around, and outdoorsmen avoid Wood Badge now, so office theory must be introduced in the "specific" training courses. In Scoutmaster-Specific training (the course that replaced the "Scoutmaster Fundamentals" course your dad took), the BSA's EDGE experts removed the Patrol Leader
  16. In both Hillcourt's Patrol "Method" and Baden-Powell's Patrol "System," the Scoutmaster takes an active role in guiding each Patrol toward its most mature Scout, and encouraging them to stick with him (for as long as he is the best leader). I talk to each natural leader individually and ask him if he would be willing to be a Patrol Leader (rather than SPL or some other office). I tell him the truth: I need someone I can trust to move the Troop in the direction of controlled risk. If the natural leaders don't get elected, I keep the Patrols with immature Patrol Leaders on a sho
  17. Yes, a Baden-Powell Troop camp is a wagon wheel. The adults are at the hub with a 300 foot radius to each Patrol, and the Patrols likewise are spaced 300 feet apart from each other along the circumference.
  18. Most of the active adults I know listen to MP3s when they backpack, jog, walk, and work out. Why should Boy Scouts wait until they quit? The BSA program is designed to move a Cub Scout survivor to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with a pack on his back. So, yes, "No Electronics" policies serve the important function of allowing adult Wood Badge/ItOLS graduates the illusion that packing Patrols into small, crowded car camps is Scouting. But really, if to reach Eagle the BSA required even a single night of what Baden-Powell called "camping," how would you even know that a
  19. Thanks. I was also thinking along the lines of a Patrol Method "sub-forum." Scouter.Com is dedicated to William Hillcourt. It should be the repository of "How-To" implement Hillcourt's "Real" Patrol Method, before such knowledge passes from living memory.
  20. Add "No Electronics" policies to the uncool. Show me a Troop that forbids electronics, and I'll show you a car-camping unit where the adults don't get enough exercise.
  21. Add passworded Websites to my list of why Scouts is uncool. In sports, a boy's first AND last name are published in both the analog newspaper and the online edition to announce his accomplishments. In Scouts we hide in secret vaults what is cool about Scouts (the one thing that has proven to recruit Boy Scouts to our Troop), so as to protect young men against imaginary monsters lurking in the parking lot.
  22. That's going on our Troop's Website!
  23. The purpose of the page was to move the BSA in the direction it eventually took: The Uniform as an Outdoor Method. However, it is not as easy to convince parents that the place for their son's expensive "class A" uniform is on the trail.
  24. Please tell us about your Patrol Leaders and SPL. In a Troop of twenty, you would be lucky to have two natural leaders.
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