Kudu

CalicoPenn is correct on all points. Also, given my good experiences with articulate, rough & tumble boy leaders, I wonder if the SPL is the unofficial Troop Chaplain because he has a talent for expressing in prayer what nobody else has the ability to say out-loud. As punishment, I'd make him watch "Patton" and report back on what happens to great leaders who don't understand the politics of self-censorship. Yours at 300 feet, Kudu (This message has been edited by kudu)

If the video is not of him, is it just something viral with a title that we can find on YouTube or elsewhere?

"Lets just say as a SPL of a boy led troop he lets the adults know he is in charge. He has stepped on a few toes. To make matters worse he is also (unofficially) the Troop Chaplain." Clergyman: I was interested to see a Bible by your bed. You actually find time to read it? Patton: I sure do. Every goddamn day.

"Some Outdoor Purist's object vociferously: those other scouters and scouts aren't outdoorsman-like enough. They don't know about the 1916 Charter's emphasis on scoutcraft. They aren't scoutly enough because they often go to campgrounds in cars rather than hiking out and back, uphill both ways, in the snow. They often have running water (w/ restrooms and hot showers even) rather than having to collect and purify water that pools in bear tracks along the trail." So you prefer a corporate-speak mission statement to the BSA's statute-defined mission of Scoutcraft. Congratulations. I see Wood Badge Course Director in your future. Yours at 300 feet, Kudu http://kudu.net

Someone should design an app that Emails us when we are mentioned in a Scouter.Com thread Seattle, I put together an extensive "Order of the Arrow Resources" collection of Indian ceremonies, dances, and sheet music: http://inquiry.net/outdoor/native/index.htm After a decade of mail from Native Americans, I reduced the introduction to a single sentence (no more mention of a certain overnight Naming Ceremony that takes place at a "Vigil Rock"), moved the only remaining reference to OA to the bottom of the page, and renamed the collection to "Native American Resources." Yours at 300 feet, Kudu http://inquiry.net/outdoor/native/ceremony/naming.htm

"At our local Council's summer camp, the new Scout program is known as the Green Bar Bill program. The shelter in which it is taught is known in that way as well." In the tradition of developers who name their streets after the eco-systems they pave over ("Quail Run"). In Green Bar Bill's version of the Methods of Scouting, Advancement was only a subset of the "Activities" Method: http://inquiry.net/adult/methods/4th.htm In other words, the mastery of Scoutcraft was a series of "Activities" to do under a competent Patrol Leader on monthly Patrol Hikes for a couple of years (as opposed to five days with a summer school summer camp counselor). In fairness to the National Boy Scout Museum, it would be hard to design a diorama depicting the two million Boy Scouts who streamed out of the BSA when we replaced Green Bar Bill's "Real" Patrol Method with Leadership Development (or the millions who stay away because Wood Badge continues to replace Patrol Adventure with six-month "Positions of Responsibility"). Yours at 300 feet, Kudu

Today's Scout Leaders are more likely to believe that indoor office workers know more about "leadership" than Baden-Powell.

Tampa Turtle writes: I have a way of over complicating things... Think of a cheesy acronym for it and sell it to Wood Badge as the new Green Bar Bill killer

Tampa, Most Scouts understand "find a cool place a football field away from the other Patrols." Skeptic, I'm not advocating historical reenactment. Our gung-ho backpackers bring their phones and MP3 players The primary "Green Bar Bill" experience that modern backpacking can "approximate" is your Patrol moving through physical space without the rest of the Troop's adults and Scouts. Troop backpacking trips also help filter out the annoying Paper Eagles who don't like Scouting. Food was a big part of such outings, with Patrol Hikes being either a "Chop Hike" (Patrol Cooking), or a "Sandwich Hike." Yours at 300 feet, Kudu

prairie writes: Anybody got a grass roots plan to carry on Bill's work? The most obvious difference between Bill's Patrol Method and the "Leadership Development" Patrol Method that replaced it, was the primary experience of Scouting: Your Patrol moving through space as a distinct unit, separate from the other Patrols in the Troop (what Green Bar Bill called a "Real" Patrol). At the unit level, the easiest way to approximate this experience is through backpacking: Allow a trusted, competent Patrol to hike without adult supervision during the day, and then camp Baden-Powell's 300 feet away from the other Patrols that night at the common destination. If (as in most Troops these days) your Patrols are a random mixture with only a few willing Scouts competent enough to navigate in the backwoods without adult supervision, then consider an ad hoc backpacking Patrol of older Scouts whose maturity and competency you trust. If your Troop does not backpack, then all the vintage Patrol Flags and Patrol Cheers in the world will never replicate the "Real" Patrol experience, but just camping your best Patrols "a football field apart" will get things moving in the right direction. Yours at 300 feet, Kudu http://kudu.net/patrol/index.htm

33 official BSA photos & drawings of Boy Scout hats on inside: http://inquiry.net/uniforms/hats/inside.htm

English Grammar: I think we are all bored with Scoutcraft. Just because by statute Scoutcraft is one of the three aims of Scouting is no reason to spend more than a new Scout's first week of summer camp on it. Boys need skills they can use in the modern world. The purpose of Scouting should be to make up for the shortcomings of the public schools! In the "Beyond Scoutcraft" tradition of Leadership Development, English grammar should become the Ninth Method of Scouting, replacing office manager success formulas as the content of Wood Badge. Wood Badge has always been about English grammar because Baden-Powell used sentences. And when Scouting's "Mountaintop Experience" becomes the mastery of grammar, your boss will be a whole lot more impressed with your resume than with yet another pop management seminar. After all, we do this for the boys (for their own good, anyway), so Keep it Simple, Make it Fun! Yours at 300 feet, Kudu http://kudu.net "Scouting is a Game with a Subject and Predicate" (Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting). (This message has been edited by kudu)

To put things in perspective, you might want to read how a model PLC meeting is run in Baden-Powell's version of Scouting where "Boy-Run" means that the Patrol Leaders actually do RUN the Troop (so there is no "Troop Committee" of mommies and daddies, no "Boards of Review," no "Scoutmaster Conferences," and no "Scout Spirit" or "Position of Responsibility" advancement requirements): http://inquiry.net/patrol/court_honor/coh_session.htm Note that B-P's term "Patrol System" means that most Scouting activity takes place at the Patrol level: Patrols organize their own regular Patrol Hikes (similar to the BSA's "Patrol Method" before the invention of "Leadership Development"). So the PLC Meeting is where the Patrol Leaders inform the adult leaders as to which of their Scouts are now Tenderfoot, Second Class, and First Class. Yeah, really: "Boy-Run." Yours at 300 feet, Kudu http://kudu.net

Photographs of Boy Scouts in Scuba Diving Merit Badge classes, and in ongoing Troop programs: http://inquiry.net/scuba_diving_merit_badge/index.htm

CalicoPenn writes: "I think we all know that isn't true, don't we?" Typical Leadership Logic: Establish Unreasonable Doubt to "prove" that the obvious meaning is not the real meaning or "purpose." The obvious meaning of "Camping" in this survey is "Do you camp?" Just as the obvious meaning of "Walking" is "Do you go for walks?" CalicoPenn uses the same Leadership Skills Logic to prove that the Five Mile Hike does not require walking because the real "purpose" of the requirement is "navigation:" "So what is the purpose? Look at the whole requirement, and how the requirement is subgrouped. Note the emphasis on learning map and compass skills, then utilizing map and compass skills...He could be driven in a car while he navigates...That's what this requirement is all about - navigating." http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=327760&p=2 "So what is the purpose" huh? Is it any wonder that our Indoor Leadership enthusiasts do so love their FAKE "Game with a Purpose" Baden-Powell quote? Yours at 300 feet, Kudu "He could be driven in a car while he navigates" (Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting).

14.7% of Boy Scouts (grades 6-12) do NOT camp! Increasing the number of Boy Scouts who hate camping was our Chief Scout Executive's much publicized goal for the BSA's centennial year. I believe similar Scout/non-Scout "research" was done in previous years. It would be interesting to measure the effectiveness of his awesome CEO "leadership skills." Yours at 300 feet, Kudu http://inquiry.net/leadership/sitting_side_by_side_with_adults.htm

Interesting survey of Scout verses non-Scout boys. http://scout-wire.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/YouthBeat2010_ComparisonReport.pdf Or http://tinyurl.com/d582wgs

Specific POR requirements for advancement were introduced in 1965 to transition the BSA away from Green Bar Bill's "Real" Patrol Method after his pending retirement. The purpose of a "Real" Patrol is Adventure: Patrol Hikes without adult supervision. That is what Baden-Powell meant by "Real Responsibility." Green Bar Bill's adventure program was wildly popular with boys. We showed up because Scouting was fun, not because a bunch of "trained" adults set "reasonable expectations for participation." If you are applying everything you learned in training and your Scouts don't show up, then it is time to think the unthinkable: Either your Cub Scout Survivors don't like "Real" Scouting, and/or BSA training is (gasp) wrong. Instead of punishing boys for not participating, consider introducing Patrol Backpacking Hikes without adult supervision, and then camp the Patrols 300 feet apart at the end of the day. We find that older boys who no longer show up for regular Webelos III campouts, do show up for independent backpacking. To do so you must violate the holiest of Leadership Development holies: Either you must establish ad hoc Patrols with a Patrol Leader that you, Mr. Scoutmaster, trust with the lives of the Scouts in his Patrol, OR you must establish Troop criteria for Patrol Leaders for all on-going regular Patrols, and stick with the most responsible Scout as the Patrol Leader for as long as he is the most responsible Scout (the one you actually trust with the lives of the rest of boys in his Patrol). Yes, I know. It seems wrong to let the most competent Scout "take up" a POR year after year when other Scouts "need" it for Advancement. If a "Position of Responsibility" was really a position of what B-P called "Real Responsibility," then Troop Lifeguard would be a Position of Responsibility. Would you switch Lifeguards every six months so that every boy has an opportunity to win the Troop popularity contest for Lifeguard? Would you joke about "Controlled Failure"? Would you take position-specific Lifegard training away from your Lifeguards and replace it with NYLT? Yours at 300 feet, Kudu http://kudu.net (This message has been edited by kudu)

JMHawkins writes: A quick spin with Bing didn't turn up any documents, but you can look for a paper by Profs Jeffrey Pfeffer and Christina Fong, or one from Henry Mintzberg of McGill University. Thanks for the leads!

The guilty dog barks the loudest. You can't rack up 7.7 trillion dollars in gambling debts (or drive 2.2 million Boy Scouts out of the BSA) without bashing skeptics who reject "innovation" as a moral absolute.

The guilty dog barks the loudest. You can't rack up 7.7 trillion dollars in gambling debts (or drive 2.2 million Boy Scouts out of the BSA) without bashing skeptics who reject "innovation" as a moral absolute.

emb021 writes: Also, what IS "leadership development theory"??? Does it exist or are you just making it up? In Scouting, Leadership Development is the replacement of Scoutcraft with Success Formulas. "Success" is defined as the 1972-80 national disaster following the introduction of Leadership Development as a "Method of Scouting," when BSA membership declined nationwide by 34% (a loss of 2.2 million members)! emb021 writes: There are various concepts about leadership development. Some are complementary, some are not. I'm looking for the ones that are not. Specifically the ones that show the relationship between "innovation" and our 7.7 trillion dollar gambling debt, and CEO worship as magical thinking. Some members were very resistant to the idea of changing the focus of Wood Badge from training leaders in Scoutcraft to leadership skills. Among them was Bill Hillcourt, who had been the first United States Wood Badge Course Director in 1948. Larson later reported, "He fought us all the way... He had a vested interest in what had been and resisted every change. I just told him to settle down, everything was going to be all right."

My post is a request for information: Does anyone know of a skeptical analysis of Leadership Development theory that links concepts like "innovation," "thinking outside the box," and "group development" theory with magical thinking and the recent 7.7 trillion dollar bailout? Apparently the answer is "No."

I do not believe Kudu ever said that it was easy to teach/train patrol leaders to take his patrol off without adults, only that Green Bill Bill's prescribed training in the Patrol Method was the best approach. Depends on what you mean by "Patrol Leaders." IF you use backpacking to filter out all the Cub Scout survivors who "need" Eagle but hate camping, AND you appoint "Natural Leaders" that you can trust with the lives of other Boy Scouts in the backwoods without adult supervision, THEN yes, it really is EASY to form ad hoc units that GBB and B-P would recognize as "Real" Patrols. Of course that statement violates at least two very obvious "Success Formulas for the 21st Century" taboos Over the past couple of years I have posted simple "how to" points for how to establish such backwoods crews within an "Eagle Mill" (and I can cut and paste them here if anybody is interested). However one thing I haven't mentioned is that I also filter out the "F-150" Scouts: Juvenile Delinquents who hate Scouting but have been bribed and/or coerced into getting their Eagle. It is easy enough to identify them: I simply ask the Natural Leaders if they think they can handle these specific Scouts without adult supervision. The oft-quoted phrase "I don't have to do what you say" comes to mind. Yours at 300 feet, Kudu

The Patrol Method does NOT work because training excludes any mention of what Green Bar Bill called a "Real" Patrol. CricketEagle writes: Many lectures on EDGE method can't help if the adult is not apt to understand that part of the learning/growing process is to allow mistakes. It bears repeating that our national office manager experts removed the Patrol Leader and ANY description of a working Patrol from the "Patrol Method" presentation of Scoutmaster specific training, and replaced them with a lecture on the EDGE success formula. With Patrols and Patrol Leaders safely sanitized out of the "Patrol Method" presentation, the national training committee invented a new FAKE Baden-Powell quote that suggests that the Patrol Method is the way to "operate a Boy Scout Troop." In case you missed that, it adds "Boy Scout Troop" again at the end of the FAKE quote. Oh, and the FAKE Baden-Powell quote is signed "Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting," just so you understand the importance the Troop Method (doing everything as a whole Troop) is to office manager success formulas. So ad hoc Patrols are a good thing. That's right. I said it. Ad hoc Patrols are a good thing. If your Troop is adult-run and focused like a laser-beam on adding Eagle to the resumes of indoor Cub Scout survivors who hate camping, AND you want your "Real" Scouts to experience what Green Bar Bill meant by a "Real" Patrol, AND what Baden-Powell "the founder of Scouting" meant by "Patrols," THEN ad hoc backpacking Patrols are the way to go. Backpacking gets rid of all the Paper Eagle candidates! We used ad hoc Patrols this weekend: Our Long-Trekkers Patrol of six Scouts (an exclusive--by invitation only--group of jocks) See: decided Saturday morning to head in the opposite direction as the rest of the Troop, so as to spend more time getting to the same destination: The Canoe Base at McGregor Smith Scout Reservation. They ran into a dead end at Shinn Ditch, waist deep alligator-infested swamp water (which didn't look so formidable on the map), so they plotted a new course. They camped in what appeared to be an Indian burial ground on land dug up by wild hogs, with the north end of Shinn Ditch between them and the adult Patrol, out of sight, out of mind. The Short-Trekkers of only four Scouts this time (nerds and misfits too noisy for the jocks) See: hiked without adult supervision for the first time. It was also their first time cooking over gasoline backpacking stoves without adults or older Scouts supervising -- they managed to tip over their spaghetti pot only two times! They also camped a football field away from the other Patrols. The Long-Trekkers hosted a campfire, the first time everybody got together. I took advantage of their Indian burial Patrol site to tell a violent ghost story about zombie office managers who wear beads around their necks and pursue Boy Scouts through the Florida swamps in order to teach them indoor success formulas. At the end of the tale I was met with hushed silence, very unusual for this crowd. Today at Thorns & Roses, however, they clapped at the mention of the ghost story and asked me to prepare a new tale for the next campout. Yours at 300 feet, Kudu http://kudu.net (This message has been edited by kudu)