Lisabob

My son has been working on the backpacking mb for close to a year and yes, they do the 15 mile/3 day treks pretty much as you described with most of the heavy hiking on Saturday. Keep in mind that the badge does not require the scouts to start/end in the same place. We have done it where drivers drop the hikers off at one end of the trail on Friday evening and then pick everybody up somewhere else on Sunday afternoon. In some instances that means the drivers are NOT the adults who are hiking with the kids, but that's ok too as long as you have a few additional adults (non-camping spouses, grandparents, etc.).

I can only imagine how the boys feel about this. I know my son would not enjoy having somebody's little brother tagging along all the time. The age range in boy scouting is already enormous and a challenge when it comes to providing appropriate/challenging program for all members. Let's not broaden that by de facto including even younger kids.

I admit this is partly a matter of idle curiosity. Considering that in most councils, it appears that the adults chosen to lead jambo troops are really the cream of the crop and that the boys who sign up are probably also among our strongest scouts, I wonder if participation in such a group has changed the way boys view their home troops upon returning? This might be good/bad/some of both, I suppose, but most boys never experience scouting on a level other than with their home troop and jambo might expose them to different ideas about how a troop can work. Yes? No?

Nancy, Supposing that half (really, any) of what you assert is accurate, and supposing that you really do not have other options to get your son into a different Jambo troop, then my best advice would be not to send your son. Yes Jambo is probably a wonderful activity. No it is not worth sending your kid halfway across the country at considerable cost and for a fairly long time period with someone who you clearly do not trust or respect. There are many other wonderful opportunities in scouting. No boy is likely to experience them all. You indicate that you live in the Midwest, which is a big place of course, but how about a high adventure trip to Northern Tier (wilderness canoeing), to Philmont (real serious backpacking), or other such activities? Many councils send annual contingents to those and other national BSA high adventure bases. Maybe there are other activities like these that could offer your son an amazing scouting experience without causing you to worry about the suitability of the leaders chosen. However, I too would be surprised to find that your council accepted someone to be a jambo SM, with the problems you have described. It certainly is not the norm in terms of how carefully councils consider adult leadership choices for jambo troops. Are you sure you have everything right there?

I agree with resqman's general caution. I'd add that you want to be careful not to sign off on things just because they "learned" them while hiking. It is one thing to be shown how to do something, another to do it with your guide standing right there holding your hand, another still to actually know the skill. Map & compass is a good example here. But, if you want some other thoughts, how about 2nd Class req. 6b (prep a 1st aid kit and take w/ you on a hike)? The prep could be done at a troop meeting. For that matter your guide could teach the new guys basic 1st aid for blisters at an upcoming meeting (part of Tenderfoot 1st aid) and then have them demonstrate proper care at the end of the hike. The menu planning reqs seem to be focused on campouts, not a day hike, so I'm not sure what you have in mind there.

Scouter760, I'm pleased to tell you that your last statement is not always true, though probably it is most of the time. We live in the auto-alley area. GM, Ford, etc. are all here and a lot of dads design and build real cars for a living. (Or anyway, they used to - now they're all laid off.) PWD is serious for some of these guys. When my son was a cub there was a dad in the pack who really went whole-hog on his kids' cars. I don't know for sure whether the kids did ANY of the work, but I do know the dad spent a whole lot of time researching, testing, and building cars that his boys then raced. Most years his kids came in on top, it is true. To make matters worse, this guy was an insufferable braggart and his kids were well-known bullies. Anyway, in their last year of cubs, my son built a car that was pretty basic. Just a wedge shape with a cool paint job. He wasn't expecting to win, but he did, hands down. This other dad then pulled out his champion car from when HE was a kid. "Nobody ever beats this one!" He said. My son's car beat it too. What was the secret? Apparently it was just the right balance of weights, nothing fancy, although my son was pretty convinced the paint job had a lot to do with it. It was probably wrong of me to feel satisfaction in this, but I admit I did. Anyway about the cheating. We too got to a point where we told people they could only use the cars issued to them by the pack. We had spare parts if things went wrong and someone needed extra wheels, etc. It is unfortunate that things got to the point where we felt it was necessary to at least try to curb the cheating. A lot of scout parents seem to think that the law of the pack (cubs) and scout oath (boy scouts) apply only to children though, as if repeating a phrase will have a deeper impression on the kids than what they see their parents doing day in and day out for their whole lives.

See now, I'm perfectly ok with people showing their ignorance, idiocy, hot headedness, shallowness, narrow-mindedness, and/or sheer lack of common sense for all to see. As with packsaddle, I'm done with this thread. Seems there's only one person "upset" about all this, and that one person didn't even see the original posts. Well, you can't please everybody all the time.(This message has been edited by lisabob)

TheScout, it seems you did not see this poster's comments or it is unlikely that you'd be planting your flag on this particular hill. I don't pretend to know Scouter Terry's mind, but I bet he doesn't support this site so that deranged people can post lewd comments about children in multiple threads all across the board. Left to continue unchecked, stuff like that can quickly kill the whole community as most people would no longer feel like coming here and sifting through piles of that trash to find relevant scouting discussion.

Primarily obscene. Explicitly so. Not the kind of thing you want a kid who is a scout and might stumble across this board to see. And we do have scouts who stop in here from time to time. I'm not for censorship in general but this was a good example of the very rare occasion when I think it makes sense to remove posts.

Good point about the uniform issue, although troop T shirts and scout pants seem to be acceptable public attire for most of our guys. In the past when we did show & sells with the pack, we did it like this. We asked all boys to cover at least one 2-hour shift, but then they could work additional hours if they wanted to. The profits from the sale would be evenly divided across the total boy-hours worked by all boys. A boy who worked 3 hours would get 3 hours worth of profit. The idea was to reward effort and participation, and to avoid having some boys/parents worry about getting "better" time slots than others. We could do the same thing here. Actually I think the harder part would be deciding who pays the up-front cost of the popcorn and deals with any left over product, since even packs & troops with the same CO don't share a common budget.

I was thinking about popcorn show&sells and was wondering if anybody had done one where a troop and pack joined forces. In our area, there are about 3 or 4 packs for every troop. Most of the packs sell popcorn; most of the troops do not. Although there are several cases where a pack and troop are sponsored by the same CO, few have close connections between the units and almost none share a common pool of adult leaders across troop/pack lines. As a former cub leader and popcorn kernel I know how much work it was to organize those show & sells (a lot) - and how much money we made from them (a lot)! As a current troop committee member, I know that the older boys don't have the "cuteness" factor working for them any more and the older boys really hate going door to door for sales, but they are also better organized and more patient than cubs were. Would it be beneficial to have a troop and pack team up to run a show & sell? Pack would benefit from having a wider adult and older boy network to do the organizing and run the sale. Troop would benefit from mixing in with the "cute" little guys to encourage people to buy the product. Or am I pipe dreaming again?

Aha! (Thanks Vicki)

My first inclination would be to say no, that all 8 hours of service need to be done for the same organization. I was talking with my son about this the other day. He is not yet working on this badge and when he does, it won't be with me. But he's thinking ahead and he was trying to figure out what would or wouldn't count for the service hours, and why. His take was that breaking up the service to various different orgs might be fine - it is all service, after all, who really cares who it is for. My take is that it isn't fine because working at the same place for a more lengthy period of time (8 hours) gives you a better feel for what that organization is really about and what on-going service feels like. An hour or two here and another couple hours there is just drive-by service. Not good enough for this badge, IMO.

Buffalo Skipper - why Blue? I can see where the rest of those came from.

Without having more information on the pack's finances, there is really no way you can make an adequate evaluation of their decision to charge an entry fee for the PWD or to ask parents to pay for awards. As others have pointed out, you don't appear to know how their fundraising structure is organized (personal accounts?) or what that money has been used for (dues? books? debt to council for a mess-up in popcorn ordering in a previous year? etc.) As an outsider you also aren't privy to the viewpoint of the parents of boys currently in the unit, other than your father. And from your limited description I'm guessing that maybe your dad is fairly new to the unit too (or he wouldn't be surprised by the way the pack's funding operates). One thing is sure though - if a person approaches the situation assuming the worst about other people's motives, the discussion is unlikely to be productive or illuminating. Something to consider, aquaticeagle. Newbie - you may want to consider starting a new thread as you'll get more input on your situation that way. My basic take on it is that while ScoutNut is right (this should be the treasurer's job), often units in distress like what you describe only have one or two functioning leaders and the notion of saying "that's not my job," while technically correct, is sometimes an unaffordable luxury in the immediate aftermath of a leadership melt down. If I were in your shoes, based on the limited info you've provided, I think I'd show up in the Institutional Head's office. A phone call or email apparently isn't going to communicate the urgency of the situation; a personal visit may do better there.

Maybe you're myopic Vicki. My understanding is that Narraticong mitigated that mistake.

I'm a counselor for this badge too. I read the requirement to mean that it must be a charitable org like a non-profit org, and that all 8 hours of service must be to that particular organization - not just any 8 hours, done anywhere. That means service to government (marching in the town parade, for example) or service to your neighbor (raking the lawn for them) are not part of this badge. Part of the point of the badge (IMO) is to help boys identify groups in their community that people can be part of if they want to "make a difference." It isn't that hard to find a plethora of non-profits in most communities that fit the bill. But, the counselor in question has final say over what s/he will sign off on. If you disagree you might have a quiet conversation with the individual and ask them to help you understand their perspective. Or, if you're the SM, you might guide boys to a different MBC for that badge. Or, if you're in charge of merit badge counselor training, you might find a way to bring it up in that context.

OK folks, let's play a little "what if" game. Suppose that you have the perfectly moldable scout - our maybe this is you - and you can select 5 merit badges that this scout will earn. I'm not talking about Eagle Required vs. Not Eagle Required. I'm talking about any 5 badges that you think really reflect the image of scouting - either your image, or what you think is the public image. What would they be? Here's my list, though not in any particular order. 1) Canoeing 2) Backpacking 3) First Aid 4) Any of the shooting sports 5) Citizen in the Community And here's why I would choose those: 1) the image of scouts going on canoe treks, or at least canoeing on the lake at the local scout camp, is just part of the mental picture of "scouting" to me. 2) Same thing, backpacking speaks of adventure and exploration, the very image that much of the public has of what boy scouts do. Plus, if you can backpack then you have all sorts of other scout skills nailed down (camp cooking, map & compass, camping, hiking, etc). Being a capable backpacker seems like the epitome of scout skills to me. 3) Just something a good scout should be competent in. People expect to be able to rely on scouts in emergencies, where 1st aid skills would be called upon. 4) Boys love shooting sports! And for many, maybe most these days, where else will they learn to do this? Again, just part of the image of "what boys do at scout camp" to me. 5) This is probably the oddball in my list. But my thinking is that they learn most of the Cit in Nation material in school already and the Cit in World badge is pretty abstract for a lot of boys (although personally I think both are good badges). On the other hand, a large part of scouting is helping boys understand their role in their local community. The material in Cit in Community is rarely taught in school. Most boys can rattle off a bunch of big national issues, but have no idea what their local gov't does or how it impacts them. They, like their parents, live increasingly isolated and atomized lives where they have few ties to anybody outside their families. How can a boy help his community when he barely knows it exists, let alone how it functions? So that's my list. What would yours be?

HA! Thanks for the good laugh, Beavah! I've found that the BSA is one of the more anachronistic organizations out there. Though, to be fair, lots of smaller non-profits as well as very large bureaucracies tend to be slow on the uptake when it comes to changes in technology. In my council, it is still all about cash, checks, and credit cards. My council scout shop does take debit cards, but they still have the old double carbon receipts where you put the card on the metal plate, put the carbon paper on top, and slide the handle across it. I haven't seen one of those in a regular store in years... Our troop does not have online accounts. Monthly camping trip payments are handled in paper form only (cash, check, or a printed/signed statement authorizing withdrawal from troop account). I'm awaiting the day when some young-ish parent of some new cross-over scout gives us a blank and bewildered look and asks for help filling out a check to pay us with.

Funny you should mention backpacking and cooking, highcountry, because my son is working on both of those now and enjoying them. He has, however, been pressured a bit by some folks to stick to the "Eagle Required" badges, as he is in his mid teens and a Star scout. Their concern is he get all the E_R badges knocked out before he gets into other typical late-teen distractions. My son's concern is more "what do I find interesting to work on?" Two rather different perspectives, I'm afraid. Anyway, the cooking badge does have a lot of requirements but quite a few don't really take that much time to do. As for the 5 day, 30 mile component of backpacking, many summer camps offer week-long high adventure hiking options for older boys and this is how most I know of have gotten it done. In my son's case, his venture patrol has a week-long hike planned for this summer. In fact (as I've posted elsewhere) we've discovered there are so MANY adults who want to go that the question is how to manage adult participation, rather than how to scare up enough adults. Those two badges are "electives" I would like to see more often on boys' sashes when they come to their Eagle BORs. Too often you see boys with the minimum required # and their elective badges are all things like scholarship and pet care. We can quibble over the relative merits of those badges I guess, but they do not scream "scouting" in the same way that backpacking, hiking, cooking, and others do.

Yeah, I was fine with that too, until the day I parked in a pay lot, got in my car to leave late at night, and discovered that I needed old fashioned cash in order to get out. And there I was, with a variety of plastics and no nearby ATMs in a neighborhood where you don't want to be wandering around in the dark looking for a place to get cash. So now I always have 5 or 10 dollars with me, though I rarely carry greater quantities.

I would submit that there are a number of adults - not just boys - who seem to view OA membership with a jaundiced eye. In my area OA has been quite weak and so maybe this is more a local thing, I don't know. But I have seen several adults who were given the "honor" of being selected, only to treat it like a line on the resume (something to do and move on, not something to be part of). When adults treat it that way, is it any wonder that the boys do, too?

I asked my son, a mid-teen Star Scout with 4 1/2 years as a boy scout for experience, what he would recommend to a brand new scout. His list: 1) rifle shooting (everybody likes to shoot - he says rifles over the other shooting MBs because there's too much shoulder kick in the shotgun for little guys, and archery is harder than rifles) 2) reptiles & amphibians (extra cool if you catch your own critter, which you get to care for for a month before releasing) 3) metal working (he says good to do at summer camp) He has both swimming and first aid MBs. Swimming in particular, he said he thought was tough for typical 10-11 year olds (this from a kid who has taken red cross swim lessons his entire childhood, swims like a fish). Lots of requirements, some stamina, and a fair bit of coordination required. I'm not saying it can't work to do those particular MBs which seem to be popular for first year scouts in many troops. I'm just passing along my son's thoughts on the subject.

Here's another way to look at this. Nothing says you can't do the requirement in winter along the lines that Calico describes. However, that should NOT be the last time the scout is asked about these plants. Just because they got the sign-off doesn't mean they're done learning, or done using that knowledge. Everyone - scouts and adults alike - would benefit from identifying these plants whenever they are out and about. For myself, I know do a quick visual refresher every spring when I start to help with clearing brush at my parents' farm.

Cool, congrats to you. From what I hear, our council has filled 2 of the 4 troops we were allotted, and the other 2 are both about half full. The expectation seems to be that we'll get enough additional interest to fill the remaining 2. The troop my son is in has not yet met or talked about fund raising at all and I wish they would, because the next installment is due in June and then again in December. My son is paying for this himself (mostly) so he needs to get moving - $2000 is a lot of money for a kid to raise. Meantime, we're just encouraging him to work really hard on his troop's fund raising efforts.