Lisabob

It has never worked for me either.

I believe that, in his lifetime, Kennedy himself admitted that his actions were inexcusable. He might even have agreed, John, that it was neither trustworthy nor brave. It was certainly tragic for all involved. Then there is the business about passing judgment. Not really our job, is it. There are a lot of people (and not just politicians) who have done some sad, regrettable, cowardly things in their lives, to the cost of someone else. I suppose we could lock them up forever. Sometimes, in fact, we do exactly that under certain extreme circumstances. Or we could acknowledge that, while flawed, some of these people still have a great deal to offer to society.

I suppose this depends a little on the scout's approach and demeanor. As long as the boy is made aware that he should act in an honorable manner toward the other troop, there is no problem. If the boy perceives this as his opportunity to skulk around and undermine the other troop in some way, if the adults and youth in your troop are accustomed to verbally bashing the other troop and this boy is planning to take his sense of superiority over there and be obnoxious about it, etc., then somebody needs to have a talk with him about courtesy. Allay your fears by making sure everything is above-board and out in the open. Then let the boy go see what there is to see.

That's a different situation. THe cub requirements list a grade OR age. In the situation you describe, the parents, the den leaders, and the cubmaster ought to sit down and talk about what is best for that boy. I know that when I was a cub leader, we had some boys who repeated the year (to stay with their grade-mates) and some who moved ahead (to stay with their existing friends and age-mates). Both are acceptable.

To be fair - as far as I know, the questions from Macscouter are not official BSA questions. They're questions that some other people made up, and that lots of people have since adopted. They reflect one view of what the program can be, but that is not an official "BSA policy" view. There is nothing wrong with most of the questions you pose, either. They reflect another view of what the program can be. There is no reason to require or expect macscouter - which is not the BSA - to change their questions, as a pre-requisite of you changing what you do.

The old stand-by, car washes, work pretty well. My son's troop also does clean-up at several community events (the chamber of commerce absolutely loves us). There's a local recycling center that allows the boys a take of the gate fee and all the returnable bottles and cans, if the boys will staff the center for a weekend and help people unload their junk. I like all of these because they are activities that the kids can actually do without soliciting family, friends, and neighbors. One year the troop did a jeopardy game where you had to pay to get a seat at the table. This one I disliked - it was time consuming to put together and expensive to enter. Same with road rallies, not my thing. But neither were really "selling" tangible things, and the troop did raise a lot of money.

~ rolls eyes ~ I think OGE's point was that sensationalized "news" stories (that are often neither new nor true) have ruined the discourse when it comes to important issues in American life today. Certainly that's been the case with the health care discussion. I hope citizenship merit badge counselors and Scoutmasters everywhere are teaching their boys that open discussion of conflicting opinions is vital to democracy, but that it can still be done in a way that is constructive and civil and respectful of facts (not just angry knee-jerk emotions).

Baden, I disagree with your assessment. Maybe this is because I have attended many really, truly, awful waste-of-time scout leader trainings, but I'm very skeptical about your assertion that face to face training is better than the online training. It **COULD** be better, but that's just not what I see on the ground. What I see is a bunch of people with no experience as trainers or organizers, who themselves haven't taken the time to look through the material and think carefully about how to present it, who don't even know a national syllabus exists, whose idea of using the training aids (powerpoint) is to read them verbatim to the captive audience, who then "shoot from the hip" telling endless stories about how "they" do it, more than half of which is directly contradictory to BSA material. And heaven help you if you expect answers to questions or serious discussion of how to deal with difficult issues. I have usually found these trainings to be an insult to the intelligence of the participants, and a huge waste of time. At least with the online training there is some standardization. Everybody gets the same material. And people can go back to it a week, a month, a year from now to refresh their memories if a situation comes up. The online stuff has flaws, but I think it is a pretty good place to start for most adults.

Gern, it isn't my example - it is Mafaking's. And I agree it is really complicated. I know as an adult that when my son started in scouting, I wouldn't have been capable of planning this because I didn't know enough about how such outings work. Even now, I'd be running my plans by several other adults who had done similar outings in the past, to tell me what I'm overlooking. Your example is simpler but I tell you, it sounds to me like the SM is playing "oldest SPL in the world" in the scenario you describe. Not surprising, maybe, that none of the boys are taking the SPL seriously. They believe the SPL is not empowered and is merely a mouthpiece for the adults. And yes, I have seen that happen just about every PLC I've gone to (the blank stare parts). Adults then **** and moan about it to the other adults. No one takes the SPL aside and actually teaches him what to do. No one brings the SPL on board as an equal partner and gets his input. Those same adults also tend to shoot down the barest glimmers of original thought or initiative shown by any of hte boy leaders and so the boys all "know" that there's no point in speaking up and voicing their views. The SPL doesn't believe he'll be honestly listened to if he does that, because that isn't his prior experience. Even a change of regime among the adults takes a long time to filter down because the boys have to unlearn their passive behavior, and among other things, that requires a lot of trust and consistency. Gunny said on the first page somewhere, it takes only one such experience, or memory of that experience, to kill boy-led initiative. The boys are so used to being told what they can't do. Edited to add: Each and every lesson that you want someone to learn has to be guided, or you risk the "student" learning the wrong thing. In the case of a failed camp out, the "lesson learned" by the boys needs to be carefully structured or else they'll just learn that "this troop is boring." Other than asking the PLC "what went wrong?" What else did the SM do to help structure the lesson?(This message has been edited by lisabob)

Your last comment suggests to me that you have a lot of very young fellows in positions of responsibility. How old is your SPL? How long has he been in boy scouts, that his camping experience is all family camping? Or is it just that mom & dad always tagged along with the troop in the past? I think you need to give the boys very specific tasks to do. It is not going to work to tell them "go make sure the Librarian is doing his job." More than likely, neither the ASPL nor the Librarian has any idea what the specifics of his job are, or how to do them, or (for the ASPL) how to motivate the Librarian to get going on it. Also make sure your SPL and ASPL are on board with what you're trying to do. If they don't understand or know where you're coming from, they will not be able (let alone willing) to help get the troop there. Give them your overall vision and ask their serious input into how to get there. What are THEIR views on what works and what doesn't in the troop? How do their ideas fit with what you're trying to accomplish? Thinking again about what I see in my son's troop, I really think it would help for the SM and SPL to have regular meetings - not the PLC - where they can strategize together. The SM could use the time to mentor the SPL in terms of leadership skill too, but above all he needs to make the SPL a true partner in this process and not treat him as a puppet for the SM.

There is a very fine line. On one hand, if you let failure take place with scouts who do have the skills but just don't want to be bothered to do the background work, it might result in an eye opening experience for them. On the other hand, if you do this with scouts who do not really have the skills, and/or if you allow it to happen often, you will lose membership very quickly. I hear the frustration Gern expresses all the time. Sometimes I understand it and agree; most of the time I think it is misplaced. Older doesn't always mean better prepared. Let's face it, most troops operate where the adults do most of the leg work. "Boy led" is interpreted minimally. So it is not surprising that the kids in your Crew don't know what they're doing Gern, even though they're all at least 14. Where would they have learned this? Every year in my son's troop, I hear adults express similar frustrations with the youth leadership (PLs and SPL in particular). "They're not stepping up!" "They aren't being serious!" "They aren't..." whatever. You know what though? There is little evidence of serious leadership mentoring going on. Yeah ok there's TLT twice a year. It is a dud. Semi-annual viewings of the Tommy Tenderfoot videos won't cut it if you're serious about teaching leadership. And there's even less actual mentoring for how to organize an event (TLT tends to focus on how to lead a patrol...sort of). You have to be willing to sit down and show the boys how to do every step of the process. You have to be willing to answer a hundred questions that you think are obvious. Let's take a look at Mafaking's scenario. (His troop sounds a lot like my son's, by the way). OK, the boys selected a canoe outing 100 miles away, for April. Supposing that you really want them to do as much of the legwork as possible, what are some of the next steps they need to take? 1. They need canoes, paddles, PDFs. Does the troop have these, or will they be renting? In the former, do you have enough and are they in good repair? This will require some inspection, maybe with a canoe merit badge counselor along side to offer input. That requires they locate the equipment and arrange to go have a look with a knowledgeable adult. The boys should expect to report to the SM and maybe to the committee at the next committee meeting, so that any new equipment can be budgeted for, or existing equipment repaired. They'll also need to think about transportation of the canoes (does the troop have a trailer for this? Can one be borrowed? What about a driver?) Or will the troop be renting these? In that case they need to find one or more canoe liveries in the area. What will the costs be? What is included? Are the dates they have in mind available? If not, what are some alternative dates (before they start calling they should know this.) THat will require some web investigation, maybe phone calls, and/or emails. They'll need to know where they are going, look at a map to discern nearby locations, and then do a google search for liveries in that area. Or, you could recommend to them that they call Mr Jones from another troop who has been there recently, and ask him for the name of the livery that troop used. 2. They need campsite reservations. If it is a busy area, they need to do this now, but they may not realize that on their own. Someone will need to help them understand that trips like this are often planned a full year in advance. Again, reservations will require some web investigation, some phone calls, and/or some emails. Before they get started, make sure they know WHO the reservations would be for (Boy scouts yeah, but how many of you?), WHAT they need to reserve (type of campsite), WHEN (dates and backup dates), and WHERE (general area - which probably requires you talk about the route you'll take and how far to go each day, first). Then they probably need to get back together, compare notes about options, seek your input, and get an adult to make the actual reservation. They'll need deadlines by which to get the above done, and someone may want to follow up with the boys tasked to do these things, in order to ensure it actually happens. That's just for two steps in the process and it is a WHOLE LOT of work for your typical 13 year old. We haven't figured out how they'll get there, how they're going to pay for this, how they'll ensure that they have enough BSA swimmers, what they'll do about non-swimmers who want to canoe, and a million other details of the actual camp out. What seems easy to us (because we've made reservations for groups before) is pretty overwhelming to someone who has no experience with this. For kids, you may also need to coach them a little in how to make a business phone call. "Hey uh do you have canoes" at 4:59pm on a Friday is not going to produce a good response from some clerk on the other end of the phone. If you just tell the boys - go figure out where we can camp and where we can rent canoes - without all sorts of additional detail, you'll get deer in the headlights looks back at you.

Yikes. What a mess. If this has all come out publicly, then maybe it is time for upset parents to go to the CO and tell them bluntly - either you remove these people or we'll be leaving the troop. The CO may not fully comprehend the level of upset that these individuals have caused. They may not understand that they have the right to retain these folks as SM and CC, but that in doing so, they'll have an exodus of boys. But unfortunately, previous responders are correct, this is not a situation where the Council will remove leaders. You could, however, also contact your District Executive and let him or her know you're looking for a new troop because of the situation. A bunch of emails and calls from people to the DE may give the DE some better ammunition to pressure the CO into making a different decision. Good luck!

Have any of you guys ever been asked to provide, or received, a reference for someone that read: "So and so worked here from date x to date y." End of story? Would you ever hire someone with references like that? (geez I kind of hope not, at least, not if you're my boss and the person would be my co-worker) There are clear ways to signal that there were issues, without saying there were issues. If that's your honest take on things. Leader of pack 123 says "hey I see we're getting Mr Smith and his family. I thought he was in your pack. Did something happen?" You respond something very lukewarm, like "Yes, they were in our pack. I'm pleased that they identified a pack where they feel more comfortable." End of story. If the other leaders know you to be a good and honorable person, they're likely going to take that in the spirit you meant it. After all, they know and trust you; they don't yet know Mr Smith. About the wife dropping charges - let's be careful not to blame victims here, guys. You have no idea what her situation is.

My district is attempting to finally start a district-wide uniform closet. Other than that, I haven't seen anything. But I also know that just because it isn't making the front page, doesn't mean it isn't happening. So it is a little hard to say for sure.

They want their friends to see it, not everybody else. They don't understand that they have no control over who their friends forward it to, who their friends allow on their site, or how their friends archive stuff. They also don't understand that they have no control over the company that owns the site upon which they're posting their most personal thoughts. Kids (and a lot of adults) view this as their personal property, to be put up, taken down, modified, and shared only as the kids themselves wish. They're wrong though. There was an article about facebook in the NY Times last weekend. Adults were absolutely astonished to learn that facebook was tracking their behavior on non-facebook parts of the web, and then linking it back to their facebook pages. That's just creepy. Kids have no clue that this could or would happen. My son's a good example in some ways. He has been through internet safety programs at school every year for probably 10 years now. He's seen the scouting material. He sure gets an earful about it from his parents. He still thinks I'm just being stodgy and old fashioned when I tell him to take certain things off his social networking sites. His view of internet safety is, you don't post your name/phone/address and you don't post your SSN or credit card numbers (if you have them). He knows what to do about stalkers and cyber bullies. We've talked about the Michael Phelps situation. (Phelps didn't even post that photo, remember, somebody else posted a photo on their site. Phelps happened to be visible in that photo, though not the main subject of the photo.) I tell him about students of mine who have been burned by similar situations and didn't get that job or internship as a result. My (reasonably smart, fairly thoughtful) teen's answer? Yeah, but mom, only my FRIENDS can see my page.

And Ed, they don't understand why they shouldn't. Saying something in a public square is fundamentally different from saying it online. One will fade away; the other is preserved forever, outside of your control.

Right, Beaver. Not something a lot of kids fully understand though. It is an ongoing challenge to educate, and then (being kids) they often roll their eyes and decide that some stodgy old adult is being paranoid. Well yeah, maybe, but if they really *are* out to get you it isn't paranoia. In my limited experience, kids just don't believe some company would store their info and that it might come back in strange ways later on. Anyway I didn't really mean to hijack the thread to a discussion of internet privacy so I'll stop now. Merlyn, you have a good point there. If that's what is being asked.

This is how the topic of a scout's religious views in my son's troop came up. The scout had posted on facebook that he was agnostic, and then invited some trusted scout leaders to be his "friends." One of them noted his religious status and advised him to change it. I know that it has prompted two serious discussions, one among adults about how to counsel scouts and the other with the scout about what he believes. As a parent, I'm uncomfortable in the extreme with facebook - a private commercial site - having "ownership" of a child's profile, including his evolving religious views. Seems like such a personal thing that it doesn't belong in some company's data bases, no matter how benign the company promises to be. And children, by their nature, are less likely to jealously guard their personal information than adults might be.

We're a troop where adults do most of the organization and boys nominally run the event on the ground, but boy-led is sometimes a fig leaf for us. Changing this is really hard. I watched numerous painful sessions of our troop's venture patrol meetings this year, in which a group of boys who are coming into troop leadership but are a little on the young side (13-14), tried to organize new and exciting outings. What I saw was that they had NO IDEA how to start. First and foremost, I saw that the boys are at heart creatures of habit. They were initially unable to think outside the box because they had no idea what sorts of opportunities existed "out there" for them, and they had no idea how to find that out, either. For all that they are the internet generation, they appeared to be both narrow-minded (knowing only what they'd already done) and overwhelmed (not even knowing how to begin a targeted search for cool new ideas). Telling them to "get on the web and look around!" was not helpful. Look for WHAT?? Second, when the pump was primed a little bit by adults (here are 5 options, what do you think of them?), the boys immediately wanted to do them. ALL of them. But they had no clue how to move from "wow, let's do THAT!" to "and this requires organizational steps a, b, c..." They needed education in how and where to get phone numbers, a list of questions to ask, dates by which things needed to be done, and a sequence of steps to take. You cannot expect them to develop these skills on their own. Telling them to "figure it out yourselves" is not mentoring or teaching leadership - it is dropping them over the side of the cliff and then acting surprised when they fall. Third, teaching execution of a plan is difficult. Things would be assigned (either by the Venture PL or by an adult) to specific boys, but there would be little or no follow-up or accountability. The boys did not understand that simply telling someone "ok you do XYZ and then tell us what you found out" is not sufficient to ensure it actually happens. We, as adults, know this only because we've dealt with the annoyance of having to back-check other adults to make sure they did what they said they would. SO we build this in to our plans. The boys did not. Events fell through as a result, and boys became frustrated. "We never actually get to DO anything" is a comment I heard from more than one boy. You have to teach them how to follow up. You also have to push hard on the "trustworthy" part. If a boy says he'll do something, make sure he's fully aware of what he's committing to, and that he understands the consequences of failing to do it. Also that he knows where to get help if needed. And fourth, because of this level of frustration (which as an adult, was PAINFUL to watch), the inevitable urge was for adults to step in and take over. Make it happen. That's exactly what took place with the Venture Patrol and it did result in a fairly robust outing schedule where activities went off as planned. But it also resulted in a lot of disillusionment and resentment, because the boys who were struggling to learn to lead felt trampled upon. Some of the adults involved felt that the boys were ungrateful and contrary when the boys attempted to re-gain some control. Some boys (including the PL) backed out of the patrol in large part because of this ugly dynamic. The short of it (well ok, LONG - sorry) is that you have to actively teach the boys to tackle each step, even the very small steps we adults take for granted. You have to understand many boys are conservative creatures who fear failure and who will sit on their hands rather than risk themselves if they feel too uncertain. You have to resist the temptation to make it YOUR outing, even though at some points in time adults might consider stepping in to help the boys expand their reach and ensure that something actually does happen. Just as you can't always pick up the pieces for them, you also can't always let them fall on their faces. They need some successes to build from. If you have a young troop with little leadership experience, you have to be better prepared to step in from time to time, but also to step back at the very first sign that you can hand over more bits and pieces to the boys. By the way, we live a few hours from a popular amusement park. For years, the boys have tried to schedule a trip to the park as a monthly "camp out." Every year, adults have said "that's not a camp out activity we will support" so it doesn't happen. Last year, adults signaled that they'd support it as a side trip, maybe an end-of-the-year fun thing, as long as the boys completely took over the planning and funding for it. The boys still a) don't quite believe it and b) haven't begun to plan it even though they all want to go, because they do not know how to begin. I hope that the new SPL will grab it by the horns - we'll see.

I want to thank you all for your input. It has been very helpful to me, and I will share it with other leaders too. And I'm glad to see that pretty much everyone responded in measured ways that give the scout the benefit of the doubt.

While we're on this topic, and maybe it is a tangent I'm not sure, I'm beginning to see with the PORs in troops that many scouters turn to the parents of boys who have been appointed to those PORS when there is a problem. Maybe it is because my son is older now, that I feel this way. But I don't feel as though it is my job *as a parent* to ensure my kid fulfills his POR. That doesn't mean I won't be supportive of the troop in working with my child, or that I won't help my child. But ultimately the responsibility is his, not mine. It is kind of like when teachers constantly tell a parent that Johnny isn't turning in his homework or something. Yes, I'm going to reinforce the message at home but ultimately it is Johnny who has to physically turn in the work. I can't tail him around all day, and it wouldn't teach him much about responsibility if I did. Seems like the role of parents is blurry, and ever-expanding.

I think it would have more impact on the boys if they had a full week to immerse themselves. Part of the course as I understand it is the modeling of how a boy-led troop really operates. Seems it requires boys a little jostling and jockeying to get into their new roles and let go of a little of the "well in my troop we do it this way" mentality. Not sure if 2-3 days at a time is enough to accomplish that. But then, most WB courses I hear about are the format you describe, which works out ok. And maybe the intervening time would give boys more opportunity to think about how their lessons in NYLT apply in their home troops. Maybe talk to the SM more in between and come back to the second weekend of NYLT with more questions, ideas, and perspective.

John, I hope you'll let us know how it is going in your council.

Well if they're going to put the basic training online and make sure their recording system actually works, then I guess I might be ok with this. If they're going to continue to rely on uneven presentations, scheduled once or twice a year, done by volunteers with no experience as trainers or teachers, If scoutnet is going to continue to be unreliable, and if the OTC is going to continue to "forget" who we are every time an update is made so as to result in continual loss of volunteers' training records, then no, I'm not ok with it because it won't work, will be a waste of time, and will turn off a lot of otherwise excellent potential leaders. Like always, we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm embarking on a project this year that's going to take up a large part of my "free" time and then some, not to mention being kind of high stress. So I had been thinking that I needed to build in hard-set time for physical activity too because it is a huge stress reliever for me. But I hadn't actually gotten around to doing that. And I'm about 15 lb over where I want to be now, as well. So I'll take up the challenge. I'm going to re-up my membership in the local gym (to do strength training, mostly) and do more walking/hiking. And drink less wine. I already eat pretty reasonable meals and I rarely to never drink soda or eat junky snack food. Goal: lose 10 lb and maintain my sanity, by the end of November. Will post updates (but not photos, man you're brave OGE!) here from time to time.