Kudu

Anna, I would like to apologize for our behavior. KDD, you should be more Scout-like. Anna William is the BSA's national director of Wood Badge, and she deserves our respect. Zen Bedrooms and Bathtub Residue are previews from the new Wood Badge based on Life Skills Merit Badge. National has replaced office management theory with practical "program neutral" skills that are equally useful to both Patrol Leaders and Den Mothers. When I was approached to be one of the guides for the first new course, I took the plunge. Basically we had to run the course while learning it. Maybe

How to make Scouting popular: Basketball tick shots! http://www.summitblog.org/programs/

The Chief Scout Executive's "What do we mean by 'Prepared. For Life'?" speech never mentions Scoutcraft, except to say that the 1916 requirements are "not important." The video is still online: http://inquiry.net/leadership/sitting_side_by_side_with_adults.htm

The undeveloped areas of National Forests do not require permits or minimum ages. The same is true for groups of two in most wild backpacking venues. Likewise for Patrol Camping. Patrols of less than ten Scouts do not require a permit in the Adirondack Mountains, for instance.

The most important First Class requirement is missing: The First Class Journey. Therefore the BSA's outdoor requirements are designed to get Cub Scout survivors to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with packs on their backs. For a while, Hillcourt's Patrol Leader Training got Patrols out into the woods without adult helicopters, but in 1972 Wood Badge replaced it with Troop Method training called "Leadership Development." Therefore the BSA's leadership skills requirements are designed to get Cub Scout survivors to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with a Patrol

Webelos Scouts camp with adult helicopters. BSA Scouts also camp with adult helicopters, but in addition they cook, clean up, hold whole-Troop popularity contests, and vote for whole-Troop activities in Scout student council meetings. Boy Scouts in William Hillcourt's Patrol Method would also plan and undertake regular unsupervised Patrol Hikes, Patrol Campouts, and in Baden-Powell's Patrol System (when camping as Troop) separate their Patrols by 300 feet. The troop committee in Baden-Powell's Scouting is Patrol Leaders, not parents. The Scoutcraft competency of Scouts in the rest

Nike commented: "How would you implement the First Class Journey in this day and age?" You mean in the "day and age" of Bruce Tuckman Wood Badge? For Webelos III Troops, the same way the Patrol Hike is implemented in Wood Badge: In a Boy Scout camp if necessary. One reluctant Baden-Powell Scouting association implemented my compromise "Shadow Party" of older Scouts or Scouters that tracked them at a distance through rough territory. If the Scouts undergoing the Journey needed to interact with the Shadow Party in any way, the Journey was cancelled.

Training is the problem, not the solution. Baden-Powell designed a week-long immersion course to teach indoor volunteers how to think like outdoorsmen. Leadership Development reversed the course to teach indoor volunteers how to think like a CEO. The problem is that we pay our mountaintop CEO role model a million dollars a year to explain why camping is not "inclusive," and to heap ridicule upon the Scoutcraft program guaranteed to America's children by an Act of Congress. And its not just the Utah Scouters that are out Storming and Deforming: http://inquiry.net/outdoo

Clarke Green writes: ""We could return to the same campsite ten times a year and do ten different things, or the same thing each time, but in the end applying the patrol system is all that really matters... Some Scoutmasters complain if patrol leaders choose the same activities from year to year, there are a few that require they don’t repeat anything from one year to the next. I don’t see any appreciable difference between a camping trip to a local park where patrols are functioning at a high level, cooking, hiking, playing games, and a ... big exciting activity or challeng

The most important First Class requirement is missing: The First Class Journey. Therefore the BSA's outdoor requirements are designed to get Cub Scout survivors to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with packs on their backs. For a while, Hillcourt's Patrol Leader Training got Patrols out into the woods without adult helicopters, but in 1972 Wood Badge replaced it with Troop Method training called "Leadership Development." Therefore the BSA's leadership skills requirements are designed to get Cub Scout survivors to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with a Patrol

Maybe a tie into the new marketing slogan "Prepared. For Life," which was introduced as "Life" being the opposite of the Scoutcraft defined by our Congressional Charter.

I thought about taking it again when I moved to my new Council, but a mere hour of Roundtable is more than I can bear. Wood Badge would still be a place to meet other Scouters if it was about Baden-Powell rather than Bruce Tuckman.

The most important First Class requirement is missing: The First Class Journey. Therefore the BSA's outdoor requirements are designed to get Cub Scout survivors to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with packs on their backs. For a while, Hillcourt's Patrol Leader Training got Patrols out into the woods without adult helicopters, but in 1972 Wood Badge replaced it with Troop Method training called "Leadership Development." Therefore the BSA's leadership skills requirements are designed to get Cub Scout survivors to Eagle without ever walking into the woods with a Patrol

Good point! In the Scoutcraft program mandated by an act of Congress, Second Class Requirement #4 (track/observe), as well as First Class #3, 4, 7, and 10. http://inquiry.net/advancement/tf-1st_require_1911.htm Presumably "modern" Scouts take Ritalin instead.

How do they complement each other? Scoutcraft ("The Religion of the Woods") and Service for Others ("Practical Christianity") are the two spiritual sides of Baden-Powell's Boy Scout program. Literally the "two sides" because Scoutcraft badges are worn on the right side of the uniform, and Service for Others badges on the left. In most Western religions, the right side is favored by God, but as far as I know there is no written account of the right/left symbolism of the Traditional Scout Uniform. The final test of Scoutcraft competency for every award (what Americans call a "rank") i

There's the Troop Method, and there's the District Method :-)

Kudu says "Chuck Those Chuck Boxes!" http://inquiry.net/outdoor/skills/cooking/lightweight.htm

"Service for Others" has always been central to Baden-Powell's Scouting. If you look at his Boy Scout uniforms in the rest of the world, all Scoutcraft badges are worn on the right side of the uniform, and all Public Service badges are worn on the left. http://inquiry.net/images/placement-sr.gif Note that these Public Service badges represent current proficiency in the SKILLS of service (such as First Aid, recertified every year), not hours of service projects or months of leadership service. In real Scouting a Boy Scout helps other people at all times because it is th

Count Baden-Powell among those whom as a boy valued hunting but hated classrooms. Against school rules, he snuck out to the Copse (a wooded area near his school) to hunt and cook rabbits. He developed skills of stealth to hide himself and his cooking fires from teachers paid to patrol the Copse and catch boys like him. When he got older he incorporated his anti-regimentation skills into a military program that riveted the world's attention to the Siege of Mafeking, and turned his military book Aids to Scouting into a best-seller. Become a Wood Badge Staffer to form and s

Count Baden-Powell among those whom as a boy valued hunting but hated classrooms. Against school rules, he snuck out to the Copse (a wooded area near his school) to hunt and cook rabbits. He developed skills of stealth to hide himself and his cooking fires from teachers paid to patrol the Copse and catch boys like him. When he got older he incorporated his anti-regimentation skills into a military program that riveted the world's attention to the Siege of Mafeking, and turned his military book Aids to Scouting into a best-seller. Become a Wood Badge Staffer to form and s

Those Methods of Scouting are designed to teach Bruce Tuckman to Den Leaders. Scouting helps boys grow into good men because of common interests between the young and the old. It's a human thing. The Methods are only a theory, and a bad one at that. If hockey had "eight methods" boys would hate ice as much as they hate Scouting. Some are, as the statistics I provided show. Over the years a number of mothers have said that their sixth-grade sons were "not ready for camping yet, maybe next year." Statistically DCSimmons is closer to the truth, but my general sense is that experience

KDD, No adult voices until announcements at the end? That is impressive. "Most boys had collars folded under, with neckers" is a small but good thing. Older Scouts is usually a good sign. As for a unit of 90 Scouts, Baden-Powell limited Troops to 32 Scouts, but that was when all 32 loved Scouting. The advantage of 90 Scouts is that perhaps 30-45 are potentially competent enough in the backwoods to allow ad hoc backpacking Patrols (without adults during the day), and 300 foot Patrols at night (when away from the rest of the Troop). "No 300', citing saf

Basementdweller: The link lists specific dates. dcsimmons: Apples and oranges. You speculated that society has urbanized and the pool of potential members is simply drying up. But the potential market share of urban sixth-graders who can be sold on outdoor adventure is 80%. The percentage of parents who will actually allow their sons to register is around 30% of the total audience. That does not include Cub Scout survivors already crossed over. The fact that your public school might not give you access is a different issue. If the mission of the BSA was Scoutcraft rather than "

Short answer: If you present Scouting as outdoor adventure, 80% of sixth grade boys will (in front of their peers) sign a clipboard asking you to call their parents so they can be a Boy Scout. For what it is worth, I compiled a breakdown that lists the reasons parents say "no": http://inquiry.net/adult/recruiting_boy_scouts_public_schools.htm

　 Yes. On occasion Baden-Powell himself demonstrated that same fatal bravado. 　 Physical Scoutcraft skills made Scouting so wildly popular with boys, that the founders never in their wildest nightmares anticipated that professional Eagles would use our government-imposed monopoly to convert Scouting to an "ideals trump skills" program in which the highest rank did not require a single night of camping.