Kudu

I tried to convince our most gifted Patrol Leader that Patrol Leaders are more important than Senior Patrol Leaders, but he was having none of that. So now he is SPL and I must admit that from this leadership position he has done more through his example to strengthen the Patrols than I have ever seen an SPL do before. Despite his talent, working the Scout sign for silence with 13 new Scouts has been a challenge. For the first couple of meetings with a bunch of new Scouts we consider it OK to yell "Signs UP!" but the time for this has passed. A couple of times at the last meeting when a silent "Signs Up!" failed to work, one of the senior Scouts said "Well maybe Ranger Rick can explain Signs Up to us." Everybody groans and this is my cue to say in exactly the same words as before that: a) The Sign applies to everyone including the adults; b) The person who raises the Sign is obligated to hold it up until everyone is silent with the Sign above his head on a fully extended arm; c) When the sign is lowered we remain silent until the person is done talking; d) The Sign means to be quiet right away, not to hold it up above your head "to show that you are in general agreement with the principle, but to continue talking because you are in the middle of a really important conversation!" That final statement always amuses the senior Scouts no matter how many times I repeat it but, frankly, humor isn't working. At the last meeting I lost my patience with waiting for everyone to acknowledge the Sign after the ASPL raised it. I exploded in anger and said to a stunned group that respecting the Sign when a senior Scout raises it is the key a boy-run Troop. Ugh. Before the next meeting I plan to address the senior Scouts, impress upon them the importance of the Sign, and formerly hand off responsibility for enforcing Signs Up to the SPL with the recommendation that we all follow his example. So given that this is a near-perfect situation (none of the senior Scouts are cynical, and although some of the new rough-and-tumble Scouts are prone to pushing and shoving, none of them are a real discipline problem) I am looking for any advice to pass on to to the SPL. Kudu

Before Baden-Powell borrowed the term "Boy Scouts" from the popular comic books of the early 1900s, the term he used when jotting down notes for his new game for boys was "Boy Patrols." The idea behind the Patrol System is very simple! From England, to Africa, to India, wherever B-P had traveled he observed that boys naturally form themselves into small gangs from which a natural leader always emerges. To teach Citizenship (the sole Aim of Scouting) B-P merely took this natural society away from the street-corner and into the woods to practice "real camping" in the natural environment in which Scout Law becomes a practical necessity. kb6jra writes: "Our troop doesn`t own a single tent, we require boys under rank of first class to tarp camp." This is an impressive example of what Baden-Powell meant by "real camping" when he wrote: In Scouting we know that what appeals to the boys, and is at the same time an education for them, is real camping--that is, where they prepare their own encampment even to the extent of previously making their own tents and learning to cook their own food [baden-Powell, Aids to Scouting, Part II]. In real Patrol Camping, the Patrols camp at least 300 feet from each other and decide on essential matters such as food and shelter for themselves: The object of a camp is (a) to meet the boy`s desire for the open-air life of the Scout, and (b) to put him completely in the hands of his Scoutmaster for a definite period for individual training in character and initiative and in physical and moral development. These objects are to a great extent lost if the camp be a big one... So it results that Scouts` camps should be small -- not more than one Troop camped together; and even then each Patrol should have its own separate tent at some distance (at least 100 yards) from the others. This latter is with a view to developing the responsibility of the Patrol Leader for his distinct unit. [bP`s Outlook; October, 1909]. The opposite of the Patrol Method is the "Troop Method" where (as anarchist notes) "we train our [Troop] quartermasters to be `really anal`." The best example of this Troop Method camping can be found in the exact opposite of Patrol Camping called the "Camporee." This is where Scouters can take great pride in impressing their Wood Badge buddies with the degree to which they have subordinated the Patrol Method to the Troop Method in their own units: "When you`re at a camporee, which campsites stand out and seem to say "This is a Boy Scout Troop." I`ll bet most of us will say the unit with tents and camp equipment that are uniform throughout." "The very first use was at a district camporee and the pride of the boys in setting a camp that really looked like a unit...a REAL BOY SCOUT TROOP was evident. One older scouts remarked that our neatly ordered camp made it actually look like the troop knew what we were doing...whether or not we actually did!" "Adults occasionally use troop tents (usually at Camporees) but may use their own if they desire. What I have found is many of the parent now own their own Timberline tents...so they can look like they belong...to the troop." "If you can I recommend getting your own it does add some load to the quarter masters but when you set up at a camporee you look good, not mismatch sizes and colors." This war between Troop Method Camporees and Baden-Powell`s real Patrol Camping dates back to 1912 and is the origin of the term "Parlour Scouting": And the direction in which James E. West (soon to be Chief Scout Executive) began to take the Boy Scouts of America was one Baden-Powell deplored. West was not an outdoor man, which was not his fault since he had been born with a deformed foot, but his obsession with bureaucratic control was a different matter...Almost as bad was West`s encouragement of vast `community gatherings` [Camporees], which left no scope for a sense of adventure... Baden-Powell described such highly organized camps as `Parlour Scouting`" [Tim Jeal, Baden-Powell, Chapter 15]. To his credit, it was James West who finally introduced the BSA`s version of the Patrol System (called the "Patrol Method") eleven years later (September 21, 1923) as "a radical change in the management of troops." It was James West who hired William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt who brought with him --from his native Denmark-- valuable practical experience in the Baden-Powell Patrol System. It was James West who gave Hillcourt the power he needed to turn the BSA around. The Patrol Method became the organizing principle of BSA Scouting for almost 50 years until it fell to the Troop Method demands of the new business resume "Leadership Development" Method in 1972, and to an increased emphasis on resume Advancement to Eagle which was better facilitated by Troop Method canvas town summer school housing and Troop Method cafeteria food for the convenience of Merit Badge summer school class schedules. I was shown a pattern school boy camp not long ago where there were rows of tents smartly pitched and perfectly aligned, with a fine big mess marquee and well-appointed cooks` quarters. There were brick paths and wooden bathing houses and latrines. It was all exceedingly well planned, and put up by the contractor. The officer who organised it all merely had to pay down a certain sum and the whole thing was done. It was quite simple and businesslike. My only complaint about it was that it wasn`t camping. Living under canvas is a very different thing from camping. Any ass, so to speak, can live under canvas where he is one of a herd with everything done for him; but he might just as well stop at home for all the good it is likely to do him... Where you have a large number of boys in a canvas town you are forced to have drill and special instruction as a means of supplying mass occupation; whereas with a few Patrols, apart from their camp work, which fills up a lot of time, there is the continuous opportunity for education in nature lore and in the development of health of body and mind through cross-country runs and hikes, and the outdoor life of the woods. My ideal camp is one where everybody is cheery and busy, where the Patrols are kept intact under all circumstances, and where every Patrol Leader and Scout takes a genuine pride in his camp and his gadgets [baden-Powell, Aids to Scouting, Part II]. We took eight of our 13 new Scouts on their first campout this weekend. When the Patrols started to set up 300 feet apart from each other, for the first time a couple of the new Scouts understood what we had meant when we told them to make sure that they are in the same Patrol as their best friends. The problem was solved by letting one Scout switch Patrols. We will continue to allow some additional changing around until all of the new Scouts have been tent camping at least once. We brought along enough of our Troop tents for everybody, but none of them were used. The new Scouts arrived with a big surplus of personal tents, most of which were three-man (four-Scout) Ozark Trails models. These inexpensive tents all have "bathtub bottoms" which prevents the wet sleeping bags that are so common with our own Troop-owned Eureka tents. One pair of buddies slept in one tent and used the extra tent to store their gear. Two other Scouts slept in their own three-man tents. Three personal tents were never set up. The Patrol Method is so much easier than the Troop Method! So what does our Troop Quartermaster do? We usually only have one good Quartermaster at any given time. His job is to verify that everything a Patrol needs is in its Patrol totes. Since Quatermasters miss the Troop game during the meeting before each campout, keep track of things during the campout, and are responsible for stowing the gear correctly after the campout, they are exempt from dish-washing and other chores. This encourages volunteers, whom the Quartermaster picks from each Patrol to act as the Patrol Quartermaster. In the rare event that the Troop Quartermaster finds a consistently good Patrol Quartermaster, his Patrol Leader officially appoints him. Our Patrol Quartermasters wear the Troop Quartermaster badge and receive POR credit for Advancement. Kudu

We took eight of our 13 new Scouts on their first campout. We had planned on a visit to "Troopland," our own camp complete with waterfalls and a natural wading pool. But with a 90% chance of thunderstorms Friday afternoon through Saturday morning, we moved the location to the shelter of a lean-to at a local Scout camp. Despite the threat of rain, half of the new Scouts pitched their own tents and slept in them the first night, with the rest following their example Saturday night. They had a big surplus of personal tents, most of which were four-man Ozark Trails models. One pair of buddies slept in one tent and used the extra tent to store their gear. Two other Scouts slept in their own four-man tents. These inexpensive tents all have "bathtub bottoms" which prevented the wet sleeping bags that are so common with our own Troop-owned Eureka tents. The Scouts were delighted with the food they cooked themselves, including tin foil meals for lunch and Dutch oven "Deep Dish Pizza Bake" for dinner. On the afternoon hike we discovered an unlimited open rifle shoot for $1 per Scout, which meant guns ten months earlier than I had promised. I thought that this would be the highlight of the weekend, but the near-unanimous feedback at "Thorns & Roses" was how awesome "Capture the Flag" is when played in the woods! I promised them that they could stay up all night on Saturday if they agreed to a 11:30 "lights out" on Friday, but after a full day of activities the last Scout had crashed out by 11 PM Saturday :-/ The SPL was sick and one Patrol Leader stiffed us for the second time this month. The Dragon's Assistant PL acted as SPL and did a great job. Last night I asked the SPL to reassign the missing Patrol Leader as ASPL (a harmless position) so that the Dragon's APL could move back into his previous PL position (he had stepped down at a newly-trained adult Scouter's suggestion that he "give someone else a turn at the POR"). Ugh. Snapshots of our "Snapshot of Scouting this Weekend" can be found at: http://www.inquiry.net/625/outdoor/camping/2007-10.htm Let me know if you can get the video files to play on your browser. Kudu

gwd-scouter writes: "Kudu, I appreciate your earlier advice on this issue and I'm sure you would tell me at this point to try again and call those folks I didn't reach. It's is reasonable advice and I do want to recruit more boys to our unit. But, my opinion here differs from yours. I made the calls, I left messages, and I followed up with a mailout of our newsletter and calendar with all my contact information to those people for whom I managed to find addresses. I'm done. Thinking if I was on the reverse of this situation, receiving more calls from someone asking my son to join a troop/pack/whatever, would seem like badgering." I would remain silent if I did not share your "hesitance to make cold calls." I hate it. The call list stares at me all week between rounds of calls and I think to myself that I have done the best I could and anything more would be pestering. But every time I call the "No Answers," "Voice Mail" and "Yes" names, I pick up a couple more Scouts. Last night I picked up two more. The mother had said "Yes" but it turns out that the father did not want to get involved again in the nightmare that was their Cub Scouts experience. She told him about the distinctions I had made between Cubs and Scouts, convinced him to give it a try, but had put it off despite their two sons' eagerness to join their friends. She was finally convinced to take action after my fourth call (the two middle calls were just messages). In the fourth round last night I missed another call back from the mother of one boy who had attended two meetings. She left voicemail saying how much he had loved the two meetings that he had attended, but she felt that he is "not ready to go camping." We have three other boys who only have permission to go to weekly meetings with no camping as well (two of them will now be camping with us in December). I might have been able to convince her to do the same if I had been able to receive the call. Now should I call her back? I'm not sure. When they say "No" I ask for the reason and if it is a maturity issue or a scheduling conflict I ask for permission to call back in a few months or in the spring. I have "cold-called" over 200 parents over the last ten years (for four years we were not allowed to give presentations in the school) and I have only been treated rudely twice. Once was in the first round of calls in the first year. The dad said "No" and I asked if I could trouble him for his reason so that I could improve our program in the future. He started to tell me about the time demands of ice hockey but his wife started screaming at him in the background (yes, screaming!) asking why he was "still talking to those people. THE ANSWER IS NO!!!" He was very embarrassed and apologized to me for his wife's behavior. The second time was last night. One of the parents (who was hiding behind voice mail) answered her phone (presumably without looking at her caller ID). I told her that I was calling because her son wanted to join Scouts. She slammed the phone down without saying anything. Oh well. Ten years ago I only called each parent twice but now I call four times. That works out to only one-half of one percent (0.5%) of all the calls that I make ending unpleasantly. So statistically speaking you have another 180 calls to make before your first encounter with someone who is angry at you because her son wants to join Boy Scouts! It is always frustrating as a Scouter when a boy is convinced that he can't do something. He is always certain that another person's experience does not apply to his own unique situation. Given enough time and the ability to mine your own shortcomings for a similar experience of your own, you can convince any Scout that he is capable of overcoming his limitations, and once you do that small part of his life changes forever and there is no looking back. The same is true with adult Scouters who are convinced that the Patrol Method is "just a theory," or that their own older Scouts would never camp in the snow, go backpacking, or become better than adults at leading younger Scouts. I know from experience that with a little effort you can change almost all of the "wrong numbers" to the correct ones and add one or two Scouts. Likewise, if you call the no answer voicemail numbers again and explain that Boy Scouts is NOT like Cubs, you can pick up two more. If you call the two parents who did say "Yes," at least one of them will follow through. That means that on your list of 20 boys who want to join Scouts, at least six of the parents will allow you to change their sons' lives for the better and almost double your Troop size in the process. Can I through the written word convince you (or other readers in a similar situation) not to waste the resource you have been given? Maybe not but it would be wrong of me not to try to get you to overcome your limitations (the "badgering" thing is all in your mind) and follow through or at least hand the list off to someone who wants it more than you do. In the end recruiting requires missionary zeal: An unshakable belief in Scouting that transcends our own personal limitations. I find the following by William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt helpful: Ten Essentials of Scoutmastership A belief in boys that will make you want to invest yourself and your time on their behalf. A zeal focused upon one pointthe boys happiness through his formative years"A happy boy is a good boy, a good boy is a good citizen." An immense faith in Scouting as the program that will best serve to mold our youth into fine men. A realization that to the boys Scouting is a gameto you, a game with a purpose: Character building and Citizenship training. A knowledge that to your boys you are Scouting. "What you are speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say!" A steadfastness of purpose to carry out a planned program with energy and perseverance, patience and good humor. A willingness to submerge yourself and make boy leaders lead and grow through an effective application of the Patrol Method. A desire to advance in Scoutmastership by making use of training offered and material available on the subject. A readiness to work hand in hand with home, church, sponsoring institution, school, Local Council, National Council for the good of the individual boy and the community as a whole. A love of the outdoors in all its phases and a vision of the hand that created it. http://www.inquiry.net/patrol/hillcourt/scoutmastership.htm Kudu

gwd-scouter, So a week later, how are things progressing? Kudu

Loki, what are the Troop elections like?

Accounts by those who find "Do it yourself summer camps" to be the peak Scouting experience for strong, established Troops: http://inquiry.net/outdoor/summer/camp/troop/index.htm The 1,142 page third edition of the BSA Handbook for Scoutmasters has a very detailed "how to" chapter by William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt as well. Beavah writes: "Kudu...he`s sure to be the guy to yammer about BSA camp not bein` properly historical or somesuch. He might jump in." If you love cafeteria food, consider summer camp to be "a vacation from the Patrol Method," and your Wood Badge buddies all weep with joy to hear that your strongest Patrol Leaders step down so that you can teach less talented boys "how to be leaders," then this is not for you :-/ Kudu (This message has been edited by Kudu)

gwd-scouter writes: "I was not looking for reasons to put off making the calls." I said that reasons to delay were being offered, not that you were looking for them :-/ "The rest were either wrong numbers or no one home." When I get a wrong number, I write down the number that I did dial. This year I got a total of eight wrong numbers! I was able to convert five of them to correct numbers by looking at each digit and thinking about what other number it could possibly be, and then calling that possible number. For instance this year an "8" looked like a "6," a "2" looked like a "7," a "7" looked like a "2," a "9" looked like an "8," a "9" looked a "4," and a "1" looked like a "4." On another thread I mentioned that the mother of one of the "unfixable" wrong numbers called me as result of the flyer. We had called six (6) different possible numbers for her, but it turned out that we were looking at the wrong digit: The obvious "8" was actually a "9"! "I did leave messages on machines." Did you mention that they were not required to accompany their sons to weekly meetings and monthly campouts? You must continue to call those numbers at different times of the day (evenings and after school in the afternoon are good times) because most of them will not call back. "If the two I talked to last night come and join, plus the one who joined the other night, that will make three - a thirty percent increase in our troop!" The bad news is that sometimes as many as half of the parents who say "Yes, my son is excited about joining and we will definitely be there tonight" do not show up the first week, or even the second week after a call back when they say "Yes" again. Each one of these "Yes" parents has a different circumstance and may take some figuring out to actually get them to your meeting. The good news is that with a lot of persistence you should be able to convert 1/3 of the 20 names to paid registrations, but you must call each number until they actually say "No." On what night does your Troop meet? "I will make a suggestion to our DE for next year." Your suggestions will have more weight if you offer them with 6 or 7 paid registrations in your hand :-) "Maybe he could tell me ahead of time when he plans to do the middle school recruiting and I could be there as well to hand out our Troop flyer and talk with the boys." Ask him how big the audience was from which he got the twenty names. I always get more than 50% of the boys in an audience to sign a list (my goal is always 66%). Flyers usually do NOT work unless you can convince the kids that it is their only ticket to do what they want more than anything else in the world, and even then only one parent out of every 18 boys who desperately want to join will call you. Remember that even in the best of circumstances next year, your calling list will be just as frustrating as it is this year. The point of John-In-KC that "the best recruiting aid is still great program" is true. For you that also means that you must work very hard to to keep the interest of your six or seven new Scouts as you move in the direction of boy-run. That may mean letting the PLC decide what it wants to do in a general sense with the Scouters making a significant effort to translate that into something that surprises and delights boys looking for adventure every week, not just once a month on campouts. You said that you are desperate for boys in your troop and asked just how far do you have to go in the process of recruiting. The answer is that you must go very far beyond what any reasonable adult would consider the point of diminishing returns: The point beyond which most people think "This is beneath my dignity," or "This is just not worth it," or "Nobody would blame me if I quit now," or in suburban Kansas City the point where the helicopters of investigative news reporters start circling your home :-) Kudu (This message has been edited by Kudu)

Gwd, Hopefully you sat down and breezed through the 20 phone numbers before checking this thread and finding more reasons to put it off. Sunday night is a great time to find people at home. If you haven''t done it already sit down and make those calls! John-in-KC writes: "You have a right to be apprehensive in an era where all manner of bad folk are going after our children." Gwd, According to Richard Louv''s Last Child in the Woods this kind of bogeyman sensationalism is one of the reasons that children are kept indoors and on sanitized playing fields. So what? Being apprehensive is not going to help anyone, most importantly the 20 boys who signed up hoping that they would be closer to camping today than they were last week. Sit down and make those calls :-) John-in-KC writes: Your DE had an obligation as well... to provide you LEGIBLE input. Gwd, You are talking about sixth grade kids here. This year ten minutes after I passed out the clipboards with the sign-up sheets I noticed that in one row the clipboard was still in the lap of the first boy (presumably dyslexic) still struggling to write his name and number. Remember that you are very lucky to have 20 names: With the help of the people who do show up this week you can piece together the details of the missing phone numbers much better than the DE can. John-in-KC writes: "1) Do the research needed to get full names tied off to phone numbers. anywho is a pretty good resource there." Gwd, If you did not do that right away when you read wingnut''s suggestion on Saturday at 3:42 PM, then forget it. You need to get those kids to your NEXT meeting. You STILL have time but the clock is ticking. Sit down and make those calls :-) John-in-KC writes: "2) Some people will not be publicly listed in the criss-cross." Gwd, So what? If you want to know their names, just call them up and ask them! I''d dump those back on your DE and say "please find me enough data to call these kids." Gwd, Why get into a stupid battle with the DE? The school where he did the rally is typically assigned to another Troop in your District but he gave the list to you because the other Troop was too much of a hassle. Why dump it back in his face now, four days later? Did you ever hear the Scouting expression "It is all about the boys?" Well it means suck it up, take some responsibility, and do the right thing by them! Sit down and make those calls :-) John-in-KC writes: "3) I''d get my PLC together for a call party at wherever you meet. Let them do the calling work, (it approaches being Scout-run then), and let them have the glory of recruiting kids." Gwd, OK, if you can have the PLC in your house two hours before bedtime tonight (Sunday), then it might be worth seeing how well they do, but you might loose all 20 recruits if they do not have good phone skills. This sounds like yet another excuse to put off calling the parents. I might try this idea myself for our third round of phone calls because a good guilt angle might work. But remember that the idea is to talk the parents into letting their sons join Scouts. Even with all our flaws as human beings, is anyone on our PLCs really better at that than us? As far as "Scout-run" goes, if in the BSA the PLC was responsible (as they should be) for issuing "Blue Cards" and approving advancement (rather than letting adults conducting Scoutmaster Conferences and Boards of Review do their work), maybe they would be responsible enough to talk with experience and authority when convincing parents that Scouts is a good idea for their sons. But is this the right time to dump this responsibility on them? Gwd-scouter wrote "Yes, I am desperate for boys in our troop as we only have nine now, but just how far do I have to go?" Just turn the computer off and make those calls :-) Kudu

Trevorum writes: "I nominate Kudu for National recruiting Tsar!!" Thanks Trev but if it is all the same to you, I would rather be Stalin in the tradition of James E. West. As the Stalin of National Recruiting I would return Scouting to the Baden-Powell Vision: Outdoor Adventure! 1) The first thing I would do is kick the Cub Scouts and the One Minute Managers out of Wood Badge and send everyone wearing Wood Beads to Reeducation Camp: A week of learning Outdoor Skills in small groups called Patrols. This would change the Wood Badge paradigm to health spa from business manager school because hunger is a greater motivator than a business resume: "Your Patrol did not eat this morning because nobody could start a fire with two matches? Congratulations! You have discovered the hidden Wood Badge agenda: The One Minute Dieter!" 2) Kick Leadership Development out as a Method of Scouting and restore it to its pre-1972 position as a subset of Boy Leadership, which is a subset of the Patrol Method. 3) Kick all of the classroom Merit Badges out of Scouting, including Environmental Science and the Citizenship Merit Badges. In their place restore the backwoods Scout Journeys (a series of wilderness expeditions of increasing difficulty), as the final test for every rank in Scouting. 4) Restore Patrol Leader Training to Scouting: Teach Patrol Leaders specifically how to hold Patrol Meetings, Patrol Hikes, and Patrol Campouts with an absolute minimum of adult presence. Leave National Youth Leadership Training as it is. If marketed correctly, the verbal skills and self-confidence that it teaches could greatly enhance our recruiting efforts: My previously nerdy SPL returned from NYLT with a notebook full of team-building exercises and started to date college girls. 5) To celebrate true leadership skills change the BSA Mission Statement to: "Outdoor adventure and confidence with girls, what more could a boy want?" Kudu (This message has been edited by Kudu)

gwd-scouter writes: "Yes, I am a bit hesitant to make cold calls." Yes, I am the same way. It is human nature to think that the situation would be much better if only something was different. Just sit down and do it, it is not so bad once you get started. As soon as you make your first "sale" your self-confidence will soar and your natural missionary endorphins will take over. " - but no guarantee they told their parents about it." The chances are that they did not, but you can work that to your advantage. Most parents are surprised to hear that their son signed up to join Boy Scouts. You know something about their son that they don''t and you can offer him something that they can''t. I''m sure you will think of something from your own experience: Given my interest in Scout history when they sound surprised to hear about this, I tell them that even in the depths of the Great Depression, the Handbook for Scoutmasters advised spending money on postage to mail announcements to parents rather than trusting the boys (who would some day be known as the "Greatest Generation") to remember to bring papers home with them from a Scout meeting. Just say something from your own experience that is natural to you. "Yes, some of them did not include phone numbers." Sit down with your "very eager Scout" (and maybe his mother "who would like to serve as a leader") and try to figure out what the last names are, and maybe roughly where they live. From there you may be able to look up the phone numbers or find them in a school directory. When other Scouts have joined you also can ask them. One trick is to ask the boys whose names are just before and just after the names without phone numbers because they may have been sitting or standing close enough to have noticed who signed up just before or after they did. You can offer Recruiting Patches to anyone who can bring someone on the list to a meeting to register. Often a Council will have free patches this time of year, and more expensive ones in the Scout Shop you can buy for Scouts who bring in more than one new Scout. One year a popular boy -- the son of the District Commissioner (who had given up on getting him to join Scouts, btw) brought in six new Scouts when I mentioned that a Patrol Leader patch is the "recruiting patch" for bringing in at least four new Scouts :-) But don''t depend on the Scouts to do the recruiting. You need to call all the no-shows again after the first meeting. "I still don''t like the idea of hanging around in the school parking lot waiting for people to show up." I didn''t understand that in your first post either. Where do you normally hold your weekly meetings? Now that you have their names, simply direct them to sign up at your weekly meeting. "I don''t think it makes much of an impression on prospective Scouts and their parents that we can''''t seem to be more organized by having a sign up table, brief presentation, demonstrations, etc. inside the school." I feel the same way about the BSA''s current "Eight Methods" as you do about dark parking lots :-) We live in an imperfect world. Work with what you have. Many Troops would love to have a list of 20 kids who want to join, especially if it is normally another Troop''s "territory". If you do a good job maybe the DE will give you the list again next year. Kudu

Rereading your first post, I wonder if it is possible that you are apprehensive about calling people on the telephone. If so it is time to bite the bullet and call everyone on the list in one sitting. Your DE is right, you need to call these boys, and you need to do it now. You should be able to get 1/3 - 1/2 of the list to a meeting. That would double your Troop. Parents'' first and last names are nice, but you do not need them. 1) Write down what you want to say (a couple of words for each point to remind you, don''t read a script) Cover the same points if someone answers or if you leave voice mail. Remember to smile if you are leaving a message, it will change your tone of voice. Who, What, When, Where, Why (Why = Tommy wants to join Scouts -- don''t get into an abstract discussion about the Aims of Scouting): a) Hello, I am gwd-scouter from Boy Scout Troop XXX and I am calling because Tommy wants to join Boy Scouts. b) Did he tell you that he wants to go camping? c) We meet every xxxxx night at xx:xx at xxxxx, do you know where that is? d) The cost is $xx per year plus $xx per campout. We camp once a month. e) Boy Scouts is different from Cub Scouts. At 11 years old, boys are more independent and do not need to be accompanied by a parent at weekly meetings and monthly campouts, if that will be a factor in your decision. (This is important, you can ask them to help out in some way AFTER their son registers). f) My number is xxx-xxxx 2) Make lots of notes as you call. Don''t give up after one or two rounds of calls. I use the following abbreviations: a) Yes (with notes about what the parent said in case they don''t show up) b) No (write down reason to give your DE feedback) c) BY = busy signal d) NA = no answer e) VM = voice mail (time and date) f) Msg = left a message with a person (who) g) CBL = call back later (in ten minutes, at the end of football season, in the spring after religion clases end) 3) Do not give up just because you left voice mail. Keep calling back at different times of the day. Nobody answers voicemail. 4) Have something interesting planned for their first meeting. First impressions are everything. a) Try a half-dozen spark tools and a bag of cotton balls out in the parking lot. b) Or knife safety. c) Or print up an equipment list and have someone bring in his pack and go down the list. Do NOT show off a bunch of expensive toys!!! In the north the only thing they need to buy right away is a $7 closed-cell sleeping mat from Wal-mart. d) Have a good game planned (dodge ball is usually popular, especially if it is banned in the schools). Use the game to start the Troop thinking about who they want in their Patrol. Have everyone in the Troop find a buddy, then have the buddies group into two teams. Stop the game and let the boys change around if they want. 5) Have enough registration forms on hand, plus a permission form & equipment list for the first campout, and a Troop info sheet if you have one. Hand the parents a registration form when they arrive, with the assumption that they are there to sign up (as they would to register their son for sports). If they want to check it out first that''s OK, but don''t be the one to suggest that they delay filling out the registration form. 6) Here is some stuff that might be useful if you haven''t read it: http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=168355#id_169164 Kudu

gwd-scouter writes: "Problem there is that most of that list (20 boys) have only a first name, barely legible handwriting, and some whose names I recognized as already being in other troops." Are you saying that you only have a list of first names? No phone numbers?

Thanks to everyone for their positive feedback! Ohio_Scouter writes: "You may want to consider adding white-water rafting, kayaking, knife and tomahawk throwing, mountain climbing, rappelling into a 200 foot underground cave, etc., that is, if indeed your Scouts do these activities. Oh, at Philmont we now have to learn how to deal with mountain lions, too." Yes, those are all in the spirit of the presentation. We did tie our October 5th mountain climbing trip "You can see into Canada, Vermont, and on a clear day the White Mountains of New Hampshire" into both the cooking and the bears themes. Can''t say that I have ever rappelled into a 200 foot underground cave, but the more stuff that your Troop does (even if only at summer camp) the more likely you will strike a cord with a sixth-grader who has been dreaming of doing such a thing. Here is some information on Axe Throwing: http://www.inquiry.net/outdoor/skills/axe/axe_throwing.htm BrentAllen writes: "Have you seen the National High Adventure Promotion video?" The spoken word works better for me if I have a captive audience and the ability to dim the lights and show off camping toys as I talk. I will look into the video for back at the Scout room, especially for the parent''s presentation. I''m thinking of getting the Scouts up to Scout "rank" at the first campout and bringin the parents in for a Court of Honor and Parent''''s orientation. ozemu writes: "Does it work with small schools. Lots of our schools number 100 or so and therefore only about 20 in the right age bracket. They know each other really well - which could go both ways." I have had great success with audiences of around 25, but in larger schools. Yes, it can work both ways, but if you capture the imagination of the alpha-males in a small group you can bring a high percentage in. Discipline can be a problem, but we had one very popular boy bring in an additional six boys himself so to earn a Patrol Leader badge. Surprisingly, the only small group that this presentation does not work well with for me is Cub Scouts who are ready to "cross over" into Boy Scouts. It seems to scare them away. On the other hand, it does work very well with the sixth-grade boys who dropped out of Cub Scouts along the way because they hated the whole indoor scissors and paste thing. Many parents express shock at their rough and tumble boy wanting "anything to do with Scouts again" :-) Here is a second week update of my Recruiting in the Public Schools statistics for this year: Total boys attending presentation: 56 +/- Total boys not already in Scouts who want to join our Troop (sign up sheet): 36 Second Round of Phone Calls Total parents who said "Call back after religion classes / football season": 3 Total parents who said "No": 4 ("Mondays are Busy," "No Time," "Ice Hockey," "Tae Kwon Do on Mondays") Total parents converted from hiding behind voice mail: 8 ("You do not have to go camping with your son") Total parents still hiding behind voice mail: 6 Total wrong phone numbers impossible to figure out: 2 (One called me as a result of flyer) Second Meeting Total boys who actually made it to the second meeting: 14 (13 plus a 13yo older brother). Total paid registrations so far: 9 (plus 2 more promised) Changes to Presentation There is nothing in the world of Scouting more satisfying than to face 55 mocking sixth graders who want to "hoot you off the stage" and in 40 minutes through the spoken word convince 36 of them to sign up in front of their peers to be a Boy Scout. This feeling that "all is right with the world" turned to bitter sorrow and self-doubt for me last year when only six of them showed up at the meeting. What had I done wrong? So this year I decided to make some changes: 1) Greater Sense of Urgency a) The previous year I scheduled the presentation on a Friday to give the parents a three day notice of the Monday weekly Scout meeting. Looking at the success rate, I decided that this gave the boys too much time to change their minds. This year I scheduled the presentation on a Monday morning and called the parents after 3 PM, only four hours before the meeting. The number of boys who showed up to the first meeting this year was exactly the same as last year (6) but this increased to 14 on the second week. b) I added a new hard-sell element to the presentation: "If you want to go camping with us, you MUST tell your parents that THIS is what you want to do. If you don''''t they will think that I am just a salesman and they will never return my call. If you don''''t tell them you want to join Boy Scouts how will they know that you really, really want to go camping with us?" "If you signed your name then raise your hand and take one of these information sheets. Make sure you give it to your parents as SOON as you get home." "Write very clearly, especially your phone number. If we can''''t figure out your phone number we will lose you!" This made a big difference. I believe all of the 36 parents were expecting my call. 2) Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! a) I shamelessly centered on the dangers of the wilderness and the importance of the Patrol Leaders'' rules regarding bears, rattlesnakes, knives, fire, cooking on a fire you make, first aid you need to save the life of someone you know, guns, shotguns, arrows. b) I played "bad Jack Bauer" to my SPL''s "good cop." c) Oh, and did I mention knives, fire, guns, & arrows? 3) Phone Calls to Parents a) This year I teamed up with a friend, our former District Commissioner. He owns a medical supply company and is not only great at sales but also at selling the Scouting program to adults. We split up the phone list. He has the gift of gab and spent about three times longer with each parent than I did. Looking at the rate of boys who showed up to a meeting, it appears that a detailed discussion with the parents does not make any difference. The bottom line is that most parents say "yes" to Scouting not because of the importance they place on Citizenship, Character, & Fitness, or Eagle on a resume, but because their son is desperately clamoring to join. b) During the presentation this year I placed more stress on the importance of the boys listing in the left column of the sign-up sheet the one activity that they want their Patrol to do first after joining. This gives me a topic to talk to their parents about: a conversation starter. c) The biggest roadblock to recruiting is voicemail. Unlike ten years ago, almost half of the parents of the boys who want to join Scouting hide behind voicemail, no matter how many times I call. I made a breakthrough this year: A number of parents who did show up said that their son "had been in Scouts before," or that they couldn''''t believe that their son "wanted to be in Scouts again," or that they really were not looking forward to accompanying their sons on camping trips every month "but he seems really excited about Scouts again." So in the second round of phone calls I added the following message to all of the voice mail: "If this is a factor, Boy Scouts is different from Cub Scouts. At 11 years old, Boy Scouts are more independent and so parents are not required to accompany them to weekly meetings or monthly campouts." This appears to have made a big difference: eight of the people who hid behind voicemail called me back right away, with 4 of them converting to paid registrations the next day. 4) What I Will Do Differently Next Year a) After the presentation a few boys came up to ask if they could play with the spark tools because they were not going to join. When I asked why, most of them were already Scouts but a couple of them had only assumed that their single mom would not let them join because she worked at night. I took their numbers and in both cases the mother arranged for transportation so that her son could join. So next year I may end earlier so that I can talk to more of them individually as they examine all of the Scouting toys on display. b) I usually let my Scouts do the question and answer period but their answers tend to be too long. At least 15 arms are always straining with important questions at any given time, sometimes about stuff that we hadn''t answered in the presentation. The answers need to be shorter and to continue the sense of urgency that the presentation is designed to create. The old version of my sixth-grade recruiting presentation can be found at The Inquiry Net: http://kudu.net/adult/recruiting.htm Yours in Traditional Scouting, Rick Seymour http://inquiry.net/

(This message has been edited by Kudu)

Are they ALL Important? Yes! Listed in the order of their importance to the cancer that feeds upon Scouting: Leadership Development: The most destructive force in BSA Scouting and the primary source of Wood Badge Logic: "If the best Patrol Leader in the entire world led a Patrol in the Troop that I serve, my duty would be to encourage him to step down in order to give less talented Scouts a chance. This is because my primary job as a Scouter is to teach Leadership Skills to everybody." Wood Badge Logic requires regular Troop Elections to provide constant source of fresh meat for these Wood Badgers to train. The most obvious symptom of Leadership Development''s destructive effect on the Patrol Method is the emergence of the Troop Method: Weak Patrol Leaders require Senior Patrol Leaders and Troop Guides. It should be noted that the hippies who introduced Leadership Development in 1972 removed the Uniform as one of the official Methods of Scouting for nine years and demoted it to status as one of the "other program elements" with the same importance as "Competition" and "Activities Among Troops." See: http://inquiry.net/adult/methods/index.htm Advancement: The second most destructive force in BSA Scouting. Scouting was invented to be the opposite of classroom education, an outdoor activity where boys learn Citizenship by testing their mastery of Scout Law against the forces of nature under the leadership of the most competent Patrol Leader. The BSA reversed that and turned Citizenship into classroom Merit Badges which require the Troop Method for efficiency. Summer camp is Advancement summer school complete with lecture instruction, class schedules, and cafeteria food. Outdoor Method: The emphasis on Advancement has required the castration of required Scout Journeys from the Outdoor Method so that any indoor boy can earn Eagle Scout without EVER walking into the woods with a pack on his back. The only required Scout Journey that remains in the BSA is the Second Class five mile hike, the sissy version of the eight mile Second Class Journey in which two Tenderfoot Scouts undertake an expedition laid out for them by the Scoutmaster without the company of any adults, Junior Leaders, or other Scouts. It could be argued that the restoration of the rugged and true Outdoor Method would solve ALL of the other problems of BSA Scouting! Patrol Method: The Patrol Method has become the Troop Method. The Ideals: A few years ago the BSA issued an official fatwa stating that Duty to God is NOT AN IDEAL, it is an obligation. Perhaps it is because the BSA represents the Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson wing of the Republican Party, that Christian conservatives so rigidly defend the Eight Methods'' destruction of Scouting against all critics. Of course all of us who disagree but remain members of the BSA are like John McCain: we have all made our separate peace with the party members he once described as the agents of intolerance. The Uniform: As an Indoor Method, the Uniform is a symbol of the great cancer upon Scouting. But the introduction of the Switchbacks and the well-designed breathable "Action Shirt" with its wicking capabilities and mesh inserts ended my eight year boycott. Now I hold regular Uniform Inspections: Scouts with properly placed patches earn my congratulations. If they also wear the ugly official Scout pants or a generic olive-drab nylon zip-offs I give them a piece of candy. If they wear the Switchbacks I give them two pieces of candy. Association with Adults: Boys want to be men, not "adults." My Scouts are OK with women who can teach them how to jump off a cliff or paddle in white water, but they are dead-set against female leaders who "act like somebody''s mom." Although such mommies have caused a few boys to quit, one adult male bully caused more than half of our Troop to quit in one stroke and forced me back out of Scoutmaster retirement. I suspect that the BSA changed "Adult Male Association" to "Adult Association" in 1990 not because anyone in Irving Texas believes that discrimination is wrong, but because American men no longer step up to volunteerism in sufficient numbers. That can not be blamed on the BSA. Personal Growth: Last and least, Personal Growth is a bad Method only because it indicates that nobody in the BSA would ever dare to think that the so-called "Three Aims & Eight Methods of Scouting" is just a theory. Personal Growth is an Aim, not a Method, but we have too many "Aims" already. There is no Scouting activity that encourages Personal Growth that could not be grouped under one of the other Methods. The hippies added "Personal Growth" in 1972 to correspond with some progressive education theory of their day. It is intended to be measured with a complex set of questions designed to gauge Personal Growth against the six aims of Scouting (including the new "Mental, Moral, and Emotional" subsets of Fitness), see: http://inquiry.net/adult/methods/6th.htm To answer your question, "Are they ALL important?": For the most part only the real Six Methods as practiced prior to 1972 are important: The Scout Way: (1. A Game, NOT a Science); Patrol Method: (2. Scout Patrol & 3. Boy Leadership); Men in Scouting: (4. Scoutmaster, 5. Committee & Council) Activities: (6. Adventure in the Out-of-Doors & 7. Advancement); Uniform: (8. Scout Uniform); Ideals & Service: ( 9. Scout Law, 10. Oath, Service, Good Turns) Yours in Traditional Scouting, Kudu (This message has been edited by Kudu)

I gave my recruiting presentation again this Monday. We are allowed to meet with all of the sixth grade boys at our local school during school hours. We lost that privilege for a number of years when a new principal took over. We never pushed the issue with her and last year one of our Scouts (who spent more than his share of hours in the Vice Principal''s office and detention), discovered that the Vice Principal (in charge of discipline) is a strong supporter of Scouting. Our bad boy Scout (on his own initiative) then single-handedly reestablished our Troop''s former recruiting privileges through this Vice Principal. Six grade boys will always try to hoot you off the stage but you can silence them with the Promise of Scouting. I do it this way: I set up my tent next to an artificial campfire. The auditorium lights are dimmed very low. A boom box plays forest sounds. I speak a couple of feet from the first row. If necessary I stop to absolutely silence any and all whispering. My pitch goes like this: 1) Scouting was invented a hundred years ago this summer. B-P invented Scouting to teach Citizenship. Citizenship is working together in a community. The community in Scouting is called a "Patrol." A Patrol is made up of you and seven of your friends under the leadership of an older boy called a "Patrol Leader." You will shop for food and cook together, pitch your tents together, hike together, and plan your adventures together; all in a program led by these Patrol Leaders standing next to me. 2) For Scouts to run our program, we must have MANY STRICT RULES! (Holding up Scout Handbook): a) The first rule is that you must learn how to deal with bears (I tell some bear stories while holding Scout Handbook over my head). b) The second rule is that you must learn how to deal with rattlesnakes (some rattlesnake stories). c) The third rule is that you must carry a knife (you must prove to one of the Patrol Leaders standing next to me that you are qualified to carry a Totin'' Chip Card). d) The fourth rule is that you must carry matches or other fire-starters, and cook a meal over a fire you start (I strike my Spark Tool as I explain the Firem''N Chit Card). e) The fifth rule is that you must carry a first aid kit while hiking (I hold up a first aid kit and tell the story of our Scout who saved his dad''s life with the CPR skills he learned in Scouting). 3) Those are some of the rules that YOU ALL must follow. But we also offer other things that you don''t have to do (Rifle, Shotgun, Archery, Canoe). Contrary to Wood Badge Logic, boys DO still have a deep longing for outdoor adventure, and it is exactly the same longing that their great-grandfathers felt. Unfortunately, their parents are a very different story :-( The preliminary statistics are as follows: Total boys attending presentation: 56 +/- Total boys not already in Scouts who want to join our Troop (sign up sheet): 36 Total parents who said "Yes": 12 Total parents who said "Maybe": 7 Total parents who said "No": 0 Total parents who hid behind voice mail: 14 Total wrong phone numbers impossible to figure out: 3 Total boys who actually made it to the first meeting: 6 (plus one older brother). I tried some new things this year, but the old version of my sixth-grade recruiting presentation (including some notes on peer pressure) can be found at The Inquiry Net: http://inquiry.net/adult/recruiting.htm Yours in Traditional Scouting, Kudu http://kudu.net/

Yes! We use it for shelter-building during the second weekend of our Council''s three weekend OKPIK course. The "Ice Box" requires much less snow, creates fewer wet clothes, and takes about 1/4 of the time to build an "igloo" than the classic Polar Dome (a modified quinzhee building kit which was featured at the week-long National BSA OKPIK course at Ely, Minnesota in the olden days). The Ice Box comes in 7, 8, 9 ,10 or 11 footer models. The 11-footer will sleep up to 6 people. 19 pics of us using it can be found at: http://inquiry.net/outdoor/winter/shelter/igloo_kit.htm Kudu

GaHillBilly writes: "from what I''ve been able to gather, much of [Dr. Robert Epstein''s] research would support, to a rather extraordinary degree, the youth development philosophy behind Scouting." If by "Scouting" you mean the program as it was written by its inventor, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, then you are correct to a rather extraordinary degree! At the first campfire at Brownsea Island and later in the first chapter of Scouting for Boys, Baden-Powell impressed upon his Scouts that his invention of Boy Scouting was inspired by the 38 boy cadets who served (under the command of 13-year-old Sergeant-Major Warner Goodyear) during the 217 day siege of Mafeking: I said to one of these boys on one occasion, when he came in through a rather heavy fire: "You will get hit one of these days riding about like that when shells are flying." And he replied: "I pedal so quick, sir, they''d never catch me." These boys didn''t seem to mind the bullets one bit; they were always ready to carry out orders, though it meant risk to their life every time (Baden-Powell, "Camp Fire Yarn No.1: Mafeking Boy Scouts," Scouting For Boys). I use the movie "Master and Commander" to illustrate this experience of teen competency to my Patrol Leaders (and more importantly the Troop''s adult leaders). The story includes a group of 13-year-old midshipmen ("squeakers") each of whom commands his own adult gun crew during battle. As the title implies, every frame of "Master and Commander" is about leadership, and the film includes a number of scenes in which the captain teaches this craft to the young midshipmen. My list of sample questions for use in a discussion following the film during a Patrol Leader Training campout, and a source of used copies of the "Master and Commander" DVD for about one dollar can be found at The Inquiry Net: http://inquiry.net/patrol/training/movies.htm In real Boy Scouting, a Scout''s mastery of Scoutcraft skills (those that are not unique to combat: observational skills for instance) is equal to that of B-P''s adult scout soldiers, and is field tested at each Award level though a series of increasingly difficult adult-free wilderness excursions called "Journeys." For example, the BSA''s version of Baden-Powell''s "First Class Journey" read: Make a round trip alone (or with another Scout) to a point at least seven miles away (14 miles in all), going on foot, or rowing a boat, and write a satisfactory account of the trip and things observed. Early BSA Advancement (called "Progressive Training in Scoutcraft" in B-P''s program) was, I think, a pretty good test of the personal competency and responsibility of a First Class Scout. However, the BSA''s implementation of Baden-Powell''s Patrol System (leadership competency and responsibility) is an entirely different matter. In the article cited by GaBillBilly, "The Myth of the Teen Brain" (Scientific American Mind), Dr. Robert Epstein writes: "The teen brain fits conveniently into a lager myth, namely, that teens are inherently incompetent and irresponsible. Psychologist G. Stanley Hall launched this myth in 1904 with the publication of his landmark two-volume book Adolescence....Hall...believed in ''recapitulation''--a theory from biology that asserted that individual development (ontogeny) mimicked evolutionary development (phylogeny). To Hall, adolescence was the necessary and inevitable reenactment of a ''sage, pigmoid'' stage of human evolution. By the 1930s the recapitulation theory was completely discredited in biology, but psychologists and the general public never got the message." This recapitulation theory will be familiar with anyone who has read the early editions of the BSA''s Handbook for Scoutmasters. The BSA firmly embraced the theory of G. Stanley Hall, and flatly rejected the basic premise of teen leadership competency and responsibility as practiced in Baden-Powell''s Patrol System. In its place the BSA introduced the "Six Principles of Boy-Work." These BSA "Principles" required the "Scout Master" to distrust the judgment of the Patrol Leader and to control the activities of the Patrols himself. In addition, the Scoutmaster was instructed to systematically undermine the Patrol Leaders'' authority by delegating decisions to the entire group rather than to the Patrol Leaders! The Patrol Leader and the Scout Master Care should be taken by the Scout Master that the patrol leaders do not have too great authority in the supervision of their patrols. The success of the troop affairs and supervision of patrol progress is, in the last analysis, the responsibility of the Scout Master and not that of the patrol leader. There is also a danger, in magnifying the patrol leader in this way, of inordinately swelling the ordinary boy''s head. The activities of the patrol should not be left to the judgment of any patrol leader, and if the Scout Master wants to delegate the work of the patrol and troop, the whole group should reach a decision in regard to the plan. See: http://inquiry.net/adult/methods/1st/index.htm The BSA finally introduced a watered-down version of the Patrol System called the "Patrol Method" in the 1920s. This "new method of troop management" was implemented nationally by a young BSA professional named William "Green Bar Bill" Hillcourt who had practiced real Scouting in Baden-Powell''s Patrol System as a teenager in his native Denmark only a few years earlier. Hillcourt''s Patrol Method is a good example of how the findings of Dr. Robert Epstein''s research could again someday be implemented in BSA Scouting. In Hillcourt''s six month Patrol Leader Training course the Scoutmaster acted as the Patrol Leader of the "Green Bar Patrol," and by example taught his Patrol of Patrol Leaders how they were to conduct their own Patrol Meetings without adults, conduct their own Patrol Hikes without adults, and conduct their own Patrol Campouts without adults. See: http://inquiry.net/patrol/green_bar/index.htm This era of BSA Scouting embraced real Scouting: adults teach the most responsible and competent Scouts how to lead their Patrols in the field without direct adult supervision, and individual Scouts undertake Journeys of increasing difficulty without adult supervision to prove their mastery of Scoutcraft skills. On the downside, the BSA''s "Patrol Method" never allowed the Court of Honor (the Patrol Leaders in Council) to actually run the Troop. The powers over Advancement that boys administer in Baden-Powell''s program were in the BSA handed over to the adults in the form of Scout Spirit requirements, Scoutmaster Conferences, and Boards of Review. The BSA would later call this subtraction from B-P''s Patrol System the "Adult Association Method." The very important First Class Journey also disappeared during Hillcourt''s tenure and the camping aspect of the program continues to degenerate. The last token required overnight Journey, a three-mile backpacking trip for Camping Merit Badge was made optional so that any Scout can add Eagle Scout to his business resume without ever walking into the woods with a pack on his back! What is next? A First Aid Merit Badge "float trip" option for Scouts who don''t like CPR or serious bleeding? Leadership requirements for Advancement appeared shortly after Hillcourt''s retirement from the BSA and in 1972 his program went into a sharp decline with a new subtraction from the Patrol Method called the "Leadership Development Method." Leadership Development downgraded the Patrol Method to what I call the "Troop Method." Patrols no longer functioned independently of adult supervision, but served as little laboratories in which to practice abstract leadership theory. The Senior Patrol Leader was no longer elected by the Patrol Leaders in Council (an important function of a PLC) but in a popularity contest called a "TROOP Election" in which even the youngest untrained Scouts were allowed to vote for somebody to boss the Patrol Leaders around. The new leadership requirements fueled these "TROOP Elections," usually conveniently timed to put all of Patrol Leader positions up for grabs in order to provide "leadership opportunities" to Scouts who need a Position of Responsibility (POR) for Advancement, regardless of their actual responsibility. BSA Patrol Leader Training was abandoned to make way for "Junior Leader Training." This did away with teaching the specific skills a Patrol Leader needs to run his Patrol in the field without adult supervision and in their place offered "managers of learning" skills that would in theory be as useful to the TROOP Librarian, the TROOP Historian, and the TROOP Bugler as to the Patrol Leader! Therefore, Scoutmasters began to think of their role as teaching a constant stream of newly-elected boys how to be "leaders" in an institution that by necessity now taught to the middle ("everybody is a leader") rather than to the practical needs of the most gifted, competent, and responsible Scouts. Lacking specific instruction in how to camp independently, Patrols now camp nearby each other (rather than the 300 foot distance recommended by Baden-Powell) so that Patrol Leaders can practice their "11 Leadership Skills" and/or other trendy corporate management fads under the watchful eyes of the TROOP adult leaders and a "chain of command" that undermines the untrained Patrol Leaders authority by making them subordinate to an untrained mini-boss called the TROOP SPL. One justification for the BSA''s downward spiral of increasingly dumbed-down standards is that due to the influence of electronic media, the "minds" of 21st century boys are "different" than those of their parents or grandparents. This really boils down to lazy adults not awed by nature insisting that "modern" Scouts do not find the wilderness interesting either, so we must find new ways to achieve the so-called "Aims of Scouting." This ends up as chin bars rather than backpacks to meet the "Fitness Aim" of Scouting :-/ All is not lost. The BSA still allows Patrol Campouts without adults. So it is possible to use the older William Hillcourt and Baden-Powell training materials and practice Traditional Scouting within the BSA with those Patrol Leaders who exhibit competency and responsibility. If you support Scouter.Com by purchasing the back issues of Scouter Magazine, check out my article about such a Patrol Leader in the Winter 1997/1998 issue. Kudu

"In the question above, I wonder, do all clock items or number of campouts in that First Class rank reset to zero on his rejoin date?" Why would anyone reset anything in a Scout''s experience to zero? If this Scout has most of the requirements for Star completed you might also want to look through stacks of old complete and incomplete "Blue Cards" if you keep those kinds of things around. With returning Scouts who no longer have their old Scout Handbook and left before earning First Class, consider pulling out the Troop''s photo albums (or CDs of digital images) and arrange a "Scoutmaster Conference Down Memory Lane" with the Scout, members of his old Patrol, Troop Guide, etc, to reminisce about old times, checking requirements off as you go that have obviously been met, and circling those that might need some degree of verification in the field. For a Scout Spirit inventory, check out the Scout Spirit Scavenger Hunt: http://usscouts.org/advance/docs/spirit.asp Kudu

A Scout is Friendly, Courteous, Kind, and Cheerful. But not everyone at Scout Camp acts like a Scout because camp is where boys learn how to be Scouts! This includes Patrol Leaders. I''m with John-in-KC on this one, I would not assume that "they would have left anyway." I hate to admit it, by my best Patrol Leaders sometimes act like boys! They can be blunt, bossy, and lacking any empathy what-so-ever. That''s how boys get things done if left to their own devices, and their behavior is usually modeled after the adults in their lives. It doesn''t hurt for the Scoutmaster to keep an eye on the group dynamics within each Patrol from a distance, quietly mentor his Patrol Leaders, and likewise reward them when he catches them being Friendly, Courteous, Kind, or Cheerful to their Scouts. Believe it or not, new Scouts do not always do a good job of washing the dishes and a Patrol Leader will have to make them wash them again if he did not keep a close eye on them the first time through. Likewise, most new Scouts take forever to cook and cannot recognize firewood on a forest floor even when they trip over it. New Scouts simply do not work as efficiently and therefore actually do end up spending more time working than the older Scouts. And the more clueless they are, the more likely it is that they will not treated very politely in the process. When a campout with new Scouts does not run very smoothly I use my turn at "Thorns and Roses" to tell the new Scouts that they have survived the "test by fire" of their first or second campout and may have been worked harder than everyone else to see if they "have what it takes" to be a real Scout. But now they are "full members of the Troop" and if in the future a Scout thinks that he is not being treated fairly he should talk to his SPL and if that does not work, come talk to me. Usually when a Scout quits, he is gone for good. We bribe Scouts with candy if they can get ex-Scouts to sell us back their Scout shirt for $5. One time a Scout returned with a ex-Scout in tow and asked if he could still get the candy for the shirt "if the Scout who quit is still inside it." So now I announce that if they can get the Scout to join again, we will double the bribe (for both Scouts) and we usually throw in a "recruiter patch" to boot. Kudu

Pick Two: Start Small: GaHillBilly's son and the SPL is a perfect number to begin with: 2 Scouts, 2 adults, 1 car! Start Short: Remember that the BSA removed the backpacking requirement from Camping Merit Badge, presumably because hiking 1.5 miles in each direction is too much to expect from an Eagle Scout, so consider 1/3 of the "impossible" 1.5 mile distance for your Troop's beginners :-) Start Light: Go to the trouble of inspecting your beginners' packs the week before their first Wilderness Trek. Send home in a plastic bag all of the heavy objects they don't need (mouth wash, large tubes of toothpaste, more than two days' of clothes, entertainment centers, multiple large flashlights, etc.). Teach them to share, everybody does not need to bring their own bottle of bug spray, etc. This is not the time to "teach them a lesson" about how unpleasant a heavy pack can be. Start with the End in Mind: Sell the destination, not the journey. Pleasure (fishing, etc.) or Fear (bears, rattlesnakes, high mountains, ghosts) is always more attractive -- at least until dusk :-) -- than the drudgery of bad words like "hiking" or "backpacking!" Of course the reason that Baden-Powell made a backpacking Journey of increasing difficulty a condition for every rank was to exposure Scouts to the spiritual experience that he called "The Religion of the Backwoods" (it is the journey not the destination that counts). B-P referred to his camping equipment as his "toys" and wrote "May it not be that our toys are the various media adapted to individual tastes through which men may know their God?" Start with No Preconceptions: If the Troop's only eager Scouts are 10 or 11 years old, then start with them and base your trips on their abilities. Someday they will be your best Patrol Leaders. Bribery is Your Friend: I always bring candy and a few pounds of home-made beef jerky while backpacking. Let regular backpackers (who do know how to pack light) make the decisions about mp3 players and all of the stuff that adults should not be deciding anyway. Popularity Contest: My older Scouts are always surprised to discover that the adults (Committee Members, Commissioners, Council Instructors, etc.) that they consider "cool" are usually men (and one licensed female canoe guide) who hate car camping but are always up for a backpacking trip. Look for such charismatic outdoorsmen and invite them to a meeting to give a demonstration of their toys and backwoods camping techniques to your Troop with an offer to go on the next Wilderness Trek with them. Peer Pressure is Your Friend: Likewise don't be above extending a sincere personal invitation to a couple of your Troop's most popular Scouts (a minimum of two who get along). Ask them point blank (individually) what it would take to get them to go on a Wilderness Trek. If your Troop elections are just popularity contests then so much the better! Limit a "Green Bar Wilderness Trek" to these popularity Patrol Leaders only and ask them what it would take to get them to go. Once you have them hooked, others will follow. Adult-Run: Don't expect Scouts new to the wilderness to think of fun things to do there. Do your homework and Be Prepared with a list of proven suggestions. As Ernest Seton wrote more than 100 years ago "Not long ago a benevolent rich man, impressed with this idea, chartered a steamer and took some hundreds of slum boys up to the Catskills for a day in the woods. They were duly landed and told to 'go in now and have a glorious time.' It was like gathering up a net full of catfish and throwing them into the woods, saying, 'Go and have a glorious time.' The boys sulked around and sullenly disappeared. An hour later, on being looked up, they were found in groups under the bushes, smoking cigarettes, shooting 'craps,' and playing cards -- the only things they knew. Thus the well-meaning rich man learned that it is not enough to take men out of doors. We must also teach them to enjoy it." Scout-Run: Let the Scouts pick out their own campsite, then have the adults camp AT LEAST Baden-Powell's recommended distance of 300 feet away (at night to begin with). The wilderness will bring out your Scouts' natural leadership abilities. They will develop their own traditions soon enough. Role Models: Attend your Council's Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills course and/or High Adventure Training (even if you know it all). Network with the course instructors and other participants with the goal of finding a Troop that will allow you and a couple of your older Scouts to tag along on a backpacking trip so that your Scouts can observe and hang out with Scouts who think that the wilderness is fun. Elitism: Hold regular Wilderness Treks, perhaps every 3 months (this becomes realistic when you start to include adults who despise car camping and only go backpacking). If only a couple Scouts attended the last Trek, then make a big deal out of a private meeting between them and the adult backpackers to plan the next trek while the rest of the Troop is doing something boring. Wilderness camping will soon reveal to you the strengths of the Scouts who attend. Develop the habit of asking for their opinion within their areas of expertise in front of the other Scouts. Exploit the phrase "with the Scoutmaster's approval" to blatantly favor for elected and appointed positions your Troop's best campers. Blue Cards Likewise, be proactive about signing Camping Merit Badge Blue Cards only for Scouts that you know from your personal (backpacking!) experience to be ready, or limit your Troop's approved Camping Merit Badge Councilors list to adults who only go backpacking. Remember that in Traditional Scouting a Scout applies to the PLC for a "Blue Card" only after he has already mastered the material! Kudu

GaHillBilly writes: "Currently a number of the kids can NOT get through 'the fitness requirements for Tenderfoot and for 2d/1st Class swimming', without some accommodation and help. I'm just trying to figure out how to help make that happen, and was seeking advice toward that end." OK, some advice toward that end: * Fat kids float better than skinny kids. * The side stroke is good for kids who don't like to put their face underwater. * Kids who hate the water when they are 11 can change as they get older. In the meantime plan fun, fast-moving games in the water that don't require swimming. * The Tenderfoot physical fitness requirement was invented by lazy fat adults who removed the actual fitness-building advancement requirements from the BSA, such as backpacking requirements of increasing difficulty for every rank. It is a lot easier for an adult to stand next to a chinning bar or a swimming pool than it is to tag along on a Camping Merit Badge hike for 1.5 miles with a pack on his back! The moral is that Advancement is deeply flawed, so do not push EVERY Scout to do requirements that they don't like. You can always pick outdoor Merit Badges instead. Advancement is only one of the so-called "Eight" Methods. * The recent pull-ups thread offers a few suggestions for how to "parse" the words in the requirements to the Scouts' advantage, for instance to define "show improvement in the activities" as over-all improvement in the activities rather than improvement in each and every specific exercise, see: http://www.scouter.com/forums/viewThread.asp?threadID=162626 GaHillBilly continues: "The only other option is simply to accept that they'll drop out in a year or so. " Nah, it is NOT the only other option! Scouting was invented by a man named Baden-Powell who was an outspoken advocate of EVERY boy doing daily calisthenics and learning how to swim, BUT he did NOT require swimming and push-ups, pull-ups, etc. to become a First Class Scout. If you develop a fun outdoor program, then the kind of boys who are attracted to real Scouting will stay on to do the fun things without being concerned about missing out on all of the BSA Advancement clutter. Think of happy they will be hiking or cycling off to fish while everyone else is stuck sitting in boring Environmental Science, Citizenship, and "Personal Management" classes :-) GaHillBilly continues: "There are two boys in the troop for whom backpacking is a current possibility, my son and the new SPL. The former SPL is recovering from a variety of ailments, including recent gall bladder surgery. ALL the rest are too small, too heavy or both. Backpacking will only become an option for most of these boys only AFTER they've experienced significant fitness improvement." Nah, that is NOT true. * Start with the two boys for whom backpacking is a current possibility. Take them out and develop their backpacking skills! They are your future leaders. Count your blessings: It is easy to fit 2 boys, 2 adults, and four backpacks into a single car. * If you don't know how to backpack, ask about qualified volunteers at BSA Roundtables, Commissioner meetings, outdoor stores, and outdoor clubs. Many adults can't stand the stupid monthly car camping weekends, but will jump at a chance to go backpacking. * No boy is too small or too fat to go backpacking if you are strict enough about banning everyone (including clueless adults) from bringing unnecessary gear. Dump everyone's gear out on tables or the floor, and teach your two backpacking Scouts to go through each pack with a checklist. Pack the heavy, unnecessary gear into a clear lawn bag to return home (along with a list of still-needed gear) and then lock the packs up until you leave. Adults and bigger Scouts can take some of their smaller Scout's group gear. * Backpacking is NOT about distance. Backpacking is about self-sufficiency. For instance, our October trip is a climb up Cascade Mountain and Porter Mountain in the Adirondacks. We will backpack only half a mile to a stream, establish basecamp there, and then hike up the mountains the next morning with just our "10 Essentials". * NEVER use the word "BACKPACKING" around children! Never, ever, ever! * A wilderness trek over flat land might be called a "Wilderness Trek" or B-P's term "Journey." Mountain climbing can be called "Mountain Climbing." Describe the trek NOT by lugging weight on your back ("backpacking"), but by an attractive destination such as a wading pool at the bottom of a waterfall, a remote fishing hole, or a scary night at a haunted lean-to. Hope that helps! Kudu

Slouchhat writes: "Scouts in Germany are very different from the rest of the world as they sort of mixed with the various independent youth organisations for which their outdoor activities are not a concept of education and training in citizenship, but a way to express their liberal, free-thinking views." Very different indeed! Germany is a free country as far as Scouting is concerned. As such it is the very opposite of the United States where the courts have (so far) determined that one religious organization is allowed to impose its discrimination on everyone who wants to join Scouting. Germany is the BSA's very worst nightmare because Germans have the right to choose from 40 Scouting associations plus dozens of unaffiliated single groups, or just start their own! For an excellent overview of World Scouting, See: http://www.troop97.net/intscout.htm Slouchhat continues: "my own past scouting experience was along traditional lines and so that's what I'm going to convey to the kids...Here, they distinguish between "scoutish" (traditional), rather scoutish, covenant or rather covenant." What sort of traditional program do you use? You might find The Kudu Net helpful. See: Some Traditional Scout Skills, including Stave Making: http://kudu.net/outdoor/skills/index.htm Some Traditional Scout Games your Scouts might like, especially Wide Games and Night Games: http://kudu.net/outdoor/games/index.htm Kudu

13 games of Tag from G.S. Ripley's politically incorrect, rough & tumble Games For Boy Scouts: http://inquiry.net/outdoor/games/ripley/5_tag.htm Scout Games such as "Turtle Tag," "Slapping Cheek," or (my personal favorite) "Barrel Boxing" may need to be, um, adapted :-/ Kudu