Lisabob

Whatever Bob, as I said you are welcome to get all bent out of shape about this. Seems to me everyone here but you understands what I was saying though and can relate to it. And for the record, is this based on one news story and one experience? HECK NO, though I rather wish it were. I have seen lots of examples of this, as apparently, have others on the board. I just don't intend to type them all up for your reading pleasure. Not that I'm convinced some posters would learn much from reading anyway since learning does require an open-ness to other experiences and perspectives. The question is really, what to do? I like several of the things that folks have suggested here, from devoting a regular portion of RT to skill practice, to summer camp programs aimed at adult leaders, to the state programs pack described. I'm delighted to hear that some districts and units and individuals are actively combating ignorance. I would love to know what else people are doing out there to improve adult skill levels, so that more adults can do a better job of teaching kids the right information.

What acco said. I don't know of any troops in my district who go camping without some parents tagging along. It is both a blessing and a curse sometimes, depending on the situation, but yes it is reality for most folks these days.

Ed, you'll note I agreed that the DE was dumb for having thought it would be fine to break the rules. He should have stuck with the rules because they're the rules, and he's in a high visibility position as DE so breaking them will be noticed. This is entirely aside from whatever I think about the rules. You suggested that perhaps we ought to start inquiring about people's marital status if we're not sure! I can just imagine how that'll work out. A kid's parents want to attend the camp out with the troop or pack but first we leaders ask them a bunch of nosy questions about their marital status. Now a good many of them are going to tell us to mind our own business! And if the goal is to protect kids from adult sexual behavior entirely, then you'd better be ready to spell it out to the married couples too.

LOL bulldog... Where did religion come into this? Well it appears from reading through the previous responses that religion came into this some time back. As for BSA policy on cohabitation, it merely says that only married couples may share sleeping quarters. I don't believe it goes into detail beyond that. So, I suppose that if we wanted to get all technical about it, BSA guidelines could be construed to allow married couples to engage in all sorts of wild 'n crazy activity in the (ahem) privacy of their own tent/cabin, on the moral basis of being married. Really what BSA policy probably ought to be is that no hanky panky goes on at scout events, regardless of marital status! Then we could all assume that upstanding adults are following that policy (minus evidence to the contrary), and forget about playing the marriage police.

Thanks for the lead, pack. I hadn't heard of that type of program before, and will spread the word. Eagletrek, I'm sorry if you thought I was saying people must be professionals to do anything related to nature. I did not mean that, but what I did mean is that people should be more cognizant of their limits. Rather than pretending to know something, people ought to recognize that hey, this isn't a strong suit for me, and maybe there's a specialist in the area who could really help the boys learn a lot more. Instead, some adults seem to think they need to be know-it-alls just because they're adults. Bob White, I am in no way suggesting that reading is a poor method to learn something. If you want to continue to get all huffy about that and misinterpret what I said, go for it and have fun, but that's not what I intended at all. Reading is great. Libraries are wonderful. Resources should certainly be used and adults should not be afraid to say "well I'm not sure, let's look it up!" Books do not make a 100% substitute for hands-on experience though, and wise adults know where book knowledge of a subject stops and practical application of that knowledge in the real world begins. Case in point: I heard a show on NPR about mushrooms the other day. The fellow they were interviewing has written a well-known guide to identifying edible vs. non-edible fungi. He cautioned people by pointing out that mis-identification based on superficial knowledge (even with a book in hand) is easy and happens all the time, frequently with life-ending consequences. In some cases it gets down to the level of "what color are the spores?" which you cannot determine just be looking at the general shape and color of the mushroom. He went further to point out that some fungi are poisonous raw, but fine if cooked. Now most of us, I hope, know better than to go out and nibble on the shrooms if we aren't really, really certain of what we're doing. A little book learning here might be good but it certainly isn't what I want to rely on when you decide what to eat for dinner that night. I have seen people who can't identify the difference between a maple and an oak grabs a book (or these days, prints off a quickie guide from the web) and hauls a bunch of cub scouts or new boy scouts off on a nature hike. Now I'm not bashing hiking here either, getting kids outside is nearly always a good thing and for the most part, hiking (short distances, good weather) isn't rocket science and it can be easily done by most people. But... I went on a hike one time with a guy like this. He decided that a bunch of kids in that troop needed to do the nature ID and the 2nd Cl 5 mile hike, so he'd combine the two and lead them (yes, he is an adult, telling the boys "you're going to do this." So much for boy-led.) That fellow then proceeded to kill any spark of interest the kids had in both hiking and in identifying what they saw, by methodically ticking off, as we marched (single file), "that's a aaa, that's a bbb" etc. Not only that, but he was WRONG most of the time. His goal was to get 'er done and look like he know what he was talking about, not to help boys explore the wonders of nature and use a book as a resource. No, he set himself up as THE authority, all on the basis of a book in his hand and a printed list from the web that he distributed at the start, telling the boys what 10 trees they would be seeing that day. Some of those trees would be quite rare in my part of the country. It was rather obvious this guy had no idea what he was talking about. Now I know you'll complain that he was just one case and clearly poorly trained or not trained (actually I checked, this fellow had NLE, OLS, troop committee, and SM fundamentals or whatever the classroom version was then called). True, it is just one person. But I have met too many others like him, especially in cubs and working with younger boy scouts at the first three ranks. For these types, they think that just picking up a book makes them an instant expert and they're doing a real dis-service to the kids.

Hoo boy, so Ed, now at the gateway to our troop's camp site (or in the parking lot?) I need to stop all adults and get answers to the following before I let them enter (in the tone of the gatekeeper from The Holy Grail): STOP! 1) What is your religion? 2) What is your marital status? 3) What are your extra curricular intentions this weekend? If they answer wrong, they go flying off into the chasm below. ----------- Gotta tell ya, I don't relish being the one in that job! That means, among other things, that before letting cub scouts parents attend events, I'd better demand to see a marriage certificate from them! Because you know, some of them only have been living together for their kids' entire lives. I think we ought to apply a common sense sniff test here. All adults ought to understand that certain behaviors are inappropriate in the presence of children. I don't care if they're married or not, tent and cabin walls are thin. When we've camped with cub scouts in the past we've simply reminded adults that this is not them and their buddies out in the woods so certain higher standards apply (including those covering alcohol, smoking, and language). We've never needed to say more than that. This DE was dumb for breaking the rules because they are the rules and he's in a high profile position. Even with higher approval, he should have realized that it would look bad to some parents. By descriptions given, he's also a young guy with no prior scouting experience. So some kindly adult may need to explain this to him over coffee. That's a life lesson. But c'mon, let's not start a witch hunt here!

We had this happen a couple of times when I was a cub leader. Initiative is great and no you don't want to quash that. There are some good reasons to make sure the pack leadership knows what the pack members are doing in its name though. 1) Basic courtesy. 2) If there are complaints, who should they be addressed to? Kids behaving poorly, parents mis-informing people, problem with the products, etc. If I'm a store manager and customers have concerns about the group of kids in front of my store, I want to know who to take those concerns back to. If all I know is "some scouts" were to blame, then in the future I'll likely ban all scouts just to be safe. 3) You want some control over how your unit's image is presented to the public. I know of a case where some folks CLAIMED to be representing a unit and were selling product outside of local stores. The unit knew nothing about it until after the fact and got a nasty surprise when it turned out that these folks were not turning over all the money collected in the troop's name. They were marking up prices and soliciting outright donations, and pocketing the profit. When word got out about this, it really hurt that troop's image and the BSA more generally (not to mention resulting in some problems for the folks in question!). 4) convenience of scheduling, for unit leaders and for stores - especially in an area with a lot of units, having every parent do this on his/her own means it becomes much more difficult for multiple units to all have a reasonable shot at doing some fundraising, and may result in tensions between units. Further, if stores are inundated with requests from a zillion parents, as opposed to a handful of unit leaders, the stores may simply say no to all such requests in the future. So I can understand why some pack leaders wouldn't be excited about this sort of thing. What you might suggest in return, though, is that the pack needs to find more ways to allow eager boys to participate in MORE sales. For example, we set our show&sell dates up by den rather than for the whole pack. We also told kids in other dens that there were (X number of) extra spots open during most of the dens' times, and they could go with other dens if they wanted to get more sales time. Since we split show&sell sales among all boys who were in attendance at that sale event, this meant the more often you showed up, the more you would probably make. It worked for us.

This happened to us one year. Our pack had "booked" the largest grocery store in town for a sale, and upon arrival discovered another pack had done the same (well after ours, btw). When I talked with the manager about it, what I discovered was that he had no understanding of how scout units are organized. He just figured we were all run by the district or something, and that we'd happily divide up all sales equally among ourselves. So he saw no problem scheduling multiple units because hey, we're all scouts. Upon enlightenment, he announced that it was our problem, not his - he had a store to run, and if we couldn't work it out then we'd all have to leave. We worked it out. Based on this experience, you can blame store managers all you want but it is only likely to sour them on supporting scouting in the future, which is counter-productive. So tread carefully there. Now we could have gone crying to district, which would likely have resulted in a bunch of new rules that lacked flexibility and couldn't be enforced anyway. Or we'd have been told (equally likely) that this is not the district's problem, and to solve it ourselves. Instead what we did was get together with leaders of other local packs and work it out among ourselves. We all selected dates and locations and put them on all of our calendars for the following year. A situation that could have resulted in bad blood and enmity, instead resulted in better planning for future sales meaning better profits for all, better relations among units meaning more shared resources (time, ideas, equipment) in the future, and a lot less stress. Just goes to show, this can be done if people are willing to act like adults!

GA Hillbilly makes an excellent point in his post on the insect study MB, that many (most?) scouters are really not well equipped to identify trees and animal signs, let alone to teach kids to do the same. This is certainly something I've noticed. How to fix this? Well we could reach out to more professionals for help with an occasional meeting or outing. We could, for example, invite the local forestry service guy or gal to assist, or the local park ranger, or someone who hunts and actually knows a thing or two about animal signs, or that guy who has a tree farm up the road. For adults, we could invite these same types of folks to come to a Round Table, to University of Scouting, to a district camporee, etc, and teach US. Instead what I see in a lot of troops and packs, is that the parents decide that they'll just bone up on things by reading a page or two ahead in the scout handbook or downloading something off the web real quick, and off they go as the nascent "expert." Ugh. Often times it is due to ignorance of local resources. Sometimes it is due to sheer laziness. Either way, "fake it til you make it" is a horrible lesson to teach our kids.

Hi Robert, I'm not sure whether you can do this with the new #s but I know that you used to be able to special order the red/white #s as one patch via BSA supply division. Maybe check with your local scout shop manager about this.

About the red #s, here I think our unit is likely to just ignore national for a bit. You see, last winter before word of the new uniform came out, we custom ordered from national supply division a bunch of unit # patches with all 3 numerals on the same patch. We have probably 50 of these and are not about to waste them. A scout is thrifty. If someone would like to reimburse our troop for this cost, then maybe we'll reconsider. Til then, oh well. OK so since this has morphed into a "new uniform" thread, I want to ask a slightly off-topic question. About those pants...can the lighter weight ones be purchased custom fit, as was the case with the old pants? I ask because, after trying on the unisex mediums and larges, I find that neither fits me right. (Grumble. They might fit, if they made pants cut for women. The unisex idea is just dumb.)

I agree common sense really ought to rule the day here. Unfortunately we can all come up with plenty of examples where this is not the case when it comes to uniform matters. And my son is in a troop where uniforming is a seriously big deal. So if in fact the green socks are the only "official" socks and the grey ones are only "hiking" socks, then he'll end up w/ green ones. I'll just be slightly annoyed is all. As for the thorlo stuff - I like thorlo. They're certainly better than the old cotton green/red socks. And in fact there were green thorlos on the shelves at our scout shop too. So if I end up buying greenies too, at least they'll be suitable for real outdoor use.

On the new uniform tri-fold flyer, it shows both grey socks and green ones. Our scout shop is stocking both. My son opted for the grey BSA thorlo hiking socks. These socks cost something like $12-$14. After purchase we were told by the person who does the ordering for our scout shop (and usually knows what she's talking about) that the grey socks are "activity socks" only, and the new green socks are the official uniform socks. Since he's in a troop that strongly emphasizes the uniform method, the upshot of this, if true, is that we'd need to buy the other socks too. Can anybody verify or debunk this? I see no clear statement of this on the new uniform brochures, but then again, it isn't as if the BSA is always crystal clear either.

Hi Rythos, Sorry to hear it turned out poorly for your pack. I have seen that happen before, and sometimes a little digging around unearths a good explanation for why (insufficient prior notice, unclear language on the flyers, flyers weren't uniformly distributed by some/most teachers, conflict with other community events, bad weather, etc.). Sometimes there is no obvious reason why and it just flopped. In both cases, we've held do-overs for packs, and sometimes we've also done a community-wide round up for all packs in the area. For do-overs, packs have often used their upcoming pack meeting or have held a separate "fun" event (depending on your resources and timing) to use as a draw and we (district membership) have simply helped make sure the word got out in an effective manner. For community round ups, we've done these in late Oct/early Nov, well after the pack round ups are complete and when fall sports like Soccer are about at an end (for parents who felt they couldn't sign up for both scouts and sports at the same time). The local park, library, rec center, etc., works for these and packs are invited to set up a display and/or have an activity for the kids. We brought maps of the community so parents could see where kids from their neighborhood typically go. These events are rather successful, but require more work on the part of both your district staff and your pack to organize and promote. If you do something like this, make sure you either include all local packs or none of them, so as not to cause resentments.

a willingness to honestly deal with problems and not just sweep them under the rug.

Yes. Unlike RangerT, I see it mostly with boys who are working toward Star, Life, and Eagle. Honestly, the first few ranks focus on the "fun" stuff - outdoor skill, new adventures, etc.. From talking with my son and his friends what I hear is that star and life in particular, are more "work" and less "fun." By the time they get to this point they've often already done the outdoor-oriented MBs and have things like personal management, family life, communications, and the citizenship badges in front of them. Not that those aren't important, but for most boys they're probably not as exciting as, say, camping and hiking, which is what they joined scouts to do. It takes a different level of maturity for a boy to see the benefits of doing these badges. So I'm not surprised that a lot of boys get to 1st Class and then stall out for a while, or even for good. Hopefully the troop has a decent older boy program to keep them engaged and maybe they'll come back to advancement when they're a bit older. Anyway, that's the trend I've seen in my son's troop.

Call me cynical (and at the moment I am feeling that way) but I don't think this is as much the fault of the media failing to educate, as of the ordinary person, failing to exhibit an interest in learning. It is not rocket science, and the resources to understand this matter are out there, readily available to any of us for free. Yet we're at a point, it seems, where not only are we anti-intellectual in this country, we're even anti-information. Much easier to just shout about Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, than to actually spend a little effort trying to come to grips with the real issues. We're on our way back to the "know nothing" era, I fear. ETA: Incidentally, Barry, I find it kind of funny that a lot of Republicans who preach personal responsibility as their mantra when it comes to a discussion of social problems, go and blame the media for the public's general lack of understanding of (or interest in) the issues. Shouldn't it also be our personal responsibility to educate ourselves so that we can make informed electoral choices?(This message has been edited by lisabob)

Oy, BW, rather than get hung up on exactly where or when this is written, let's just talk about the notion of it, hmm? I find it an interesting, though perhaps not terribly practical, idea. One reason I find it interesting is because I am not impressed with how many BORs operate in many typical troops. No need to quash the actual conversation here, please.

In one of the other BOR threads, someone posted this snippet: "Ideally, a Scout should sit for a board of review every six months, whether he is advancing or not." Just curious here - does anybody out there actually do this?

There are times when you have to take a step back from the question of "should they do this?" and instead, ask the question "how should we respond to this?" My son's troop requires a boy to have his book with him in order for a BOR to take place. They enforce this all the way up to the SPL, who last year had his BOR delayed a week because he forgot his book. When I asked why we do this I got three answers, some of which I like better than others. They were 1) because that's how we always have done it (my least favorite); 2) because it encourages responsibility and preparedness, just as you wouldn't go to an interview without a copy of your resume for the employer to see; and 3) because that way if there are questions about how sign offs occurred, we can at least see whose initials are on the line. I will admit that the third has, on rare occasion, become an issue. We had one boy who was signing books for others when he did not have the authority to do so. We had another couple of cases where more senior scouts who did have the authority to sign off, were not being very careful or responsible about how they used that authority, resulting in kids showing up at BORs who acknowledged that they didn't really know the material/hadn't actually fully done the requirements. Now in both cases it would have been much better for the SM or advancement chair to have caught these, but they didn't. In that regard the BOR acting as a quality control for the troop (letting the SM know to deal with these problems) was important and would not have happened if the scouts hadn't had their books with them. But again, I think you have to decide whether this is something you need to make a big deal about right now. Maybe it is one of the bigger problems or issues in your troop and causes sufficient chaos that it needs to be addressed. I will say in my son's troop, while this may upset some folks here, I see this as an issue to be put on the back burner while they attempt to figure out some much more weighty matters first. There's the question of what lessons we want to teach kids. There are times in life when unfair and undesirable things happen, far worse than delaying a BOR for a couple of days or even a month (depending on how often BORs convene). Is the lesson to be afraid and embarrassed to deal with the sometimes imperfect hand you're dealt? Is it to make a big stink about it every time life is unfair? Or is it that stuff happens, and let's look to how to pick up and move forward from here? Personally I'd prefer to see us teach kids to be more resilient in dealing with minor set backs. Not to say changes can't also be made, but let's not allow things to get blown out of proportion.

Having been a webelos leader, now a troop committee member attempting to improve our troop's recruitment efforts, and also involved with district membership, I see all sorts of angles on this question. From the membership perspective, hands down, the biggest place we lose members is in the webelos-boy scout transition. And once lost it is nearly impossible to get kids of that age back into the program. One thing I've seen from all three perspectives is that there is a fundamental disconnect over purposes and programs between WDLs and troop leaders. Often as not they do not know each other, do not share info easily or efficiently with each other, and do not understand each others' programs. Not surprising, then, that the transition process is haphazard for many units and many boys. Things we've attempted to start that seem to work (somewhat): 1) We use a district-wide "disappearing packet" where we give every player in the transition a check-off list of things they should be doing/looking for/expecting from about April of the W I year through to cross-over. This helps coordinate among the various parties so they all expect roughly the same things to happen. 2) We do specific round table features where we attempt to bring all parties together. 3) We repeatedly provide pack leaders with local troop contact info, and troop leaders with updated WDL contact info. We ask troops to designate a specific individual for WDLs and parents to call. In larger troops this is often NOT the scoutmaster. 4) We attempt to get troops to share their upcoming webelos-friendly events with the district membership committee so we can help them get the word out to local webelos dens. 5) We (re)educate troop leaders regarding the requirements for a boy to earn their webelos and AoL ranks, and what sorts of activities, help, assistance webelos leaders are likely to ask for (you'd be amazed how many troop leaders either have no idea what the Webelos are all about, or who have very outdated ideas. This is a major source of misinformation for webelos leaders, I find.) 6) We stress to webelos leaders and parents that AoL is a step along the way and not an end point. We try to help them see what sorts of different program opportunities lie ahead for boys who stay with scouting. Last year, doing all of the above, we had a pretty good percentage who crossed over. I'm hoping to see our percentage go up this year, in our second year of having an actual district plan.

Three fairly common things we do that the boys love: 1) wide games 2) capture the flag (pick up games after dinner) 3) (in winter) build quinzees Three less common activities we've done that the boys love: 1) aviation-themed camp out at local airport, complete with opportunities to fly 2) luging camp out where the boys got to sled down the US olympic luge training track. 3) dog sledding That's on top of back packing, fishing, hiking, canoeing, wilderness survival, pioneering, etc., etc. Don't tell me there's nothing fun to do anymore.

Hold on now Merlyn, you are mistaking what I said. Please read for the context of the remarks that you quoted. I did not say that it should be forbidden to inquire into a youth's religious background, though I do in fact find that to be in poor taste. As has been noted by other posters, asking a youth, especially one with whom you do not have a strong relationship, to expound upon their religious principles is often kind of meaningless. By definition, children tend not to have a full understanding of these sorts of topics, and so questions of this nature are likely to uncover either a) what the kid has been taught via rote memorization at home/school/house of worship or b) half-formed, wavering thoughts of the child's own which may reflect nothing more than a passing fancy or desire to explore, be different, rebel, what have you. In either case, I don't think most youth are in a position to give an answer that is so clear and so firmly rooted as to justify removing them from scouting. Now there may be exceptions I suppose, an unusually mature child whose thoughts on and understanding of religion are fully formed at a young age. But I think that's quite rare. So, given the above, I think it is both tactless and fairly useless to ask kids to define their religious beliefs. The only people likely to do so are those with an agenda to push, and those folks aren't interested in what's good for kids anyway. So if I were to hear about some scouter engaging in this sort of behavior, putting random kids who do not know him/her on the spot, I would most certainly attempt to shield "my" kids from such boorish, agenda-driven, inappropriate behavior. And from the sound of the questions and comments made in the AA column, that's the sort of individual the SM was trying to figure out what to do with. Incidentally, in the main I think you were right in your initial observation. And I'm also appalled at the notion that some idiot professional out there has decided (apparently on his own because it isn't even BSA policy) that Jehovah's Witnesses are unfit for membership too, for who knows what reason. But idiots abound. (typos)(This message has been edited by lisabob)(This message has been edited by lisabob)

hotfoot, for starters the interpretation you give probably differs greatly from unit to unit. I've not seen a religious litmus test at Eagle BORs, myself, though that doesn't mean it never happens elsewhere. Second, it also assumes that a boy who spends time in scouting but doesn't earn Eagle, did not get the full measure out of his time in scouting. Eagle isn't every kid's goal. Merlyn, I wasn't impressed by the clarity of Andy's answer to this particular set of questions. I try to keep in mind that Andy doesn't speak for anybody but himself, and is not a paid representative or mouthpiece of the BSA (as far as I can tell). But I also haven't yet met any scouters who look for reasons to kick a kid out. And if I did I would personally do my best to keep my kid and all those whom I counsel, away from such an individual. Religious witch hunts aren't going to help anybody and they can certainly hurt plenty of people. The situation as described in this AA column suggests to me that there are some zealots involved, and that both the SM in question and probably Andy too, are attempting to shield a youth from idiotic adult zealotry. That, to me, is an honorable intention, even if explained rather clumsily in Andy's responses. By the way, asking someone's age is not nearly equivalent to asking their religious beliefs. While both might be considered in poor taste in many circles, the first is fairly innocuous; the second is a deeply personal matter.

Oh come on guys, both McCain and Obama made similar comments referring to lipstick and pigs when discussing Hillary Clinton during the primaries. I don't recall either one of them taking up the cause for women at that time. McCain (and probably Obama too) has also uttered and/or not contradicted plenty of other one-liners that portray women (or a woman in particular) in a sexist manner. For example, do you recall the kerfluffle last spring when, at a fundraiser, someone asked him how to stop the "*itch?" Referring to Hillary at the time. He laughed and said it was a "very good question." So much for McCain as crusader against sexism, hmm. And any woman in a position of power had better both become accustomed to this sort of nonsense and also develop a thick skin because politics is a rough game. The candidates' reactions, particularly McCain's, suggest that somehow women can't "take it." Well I have news for you guys...anybody who is playing at this level and who dishes it out, had better be able to take it, regardless of their gender or party identity. Last night I heard about 40 minutes of spewing forth about this topic on Hardball (I was at someone else's house - I would just have turned the TV off). Who cares? This is not worth more than 2 minutes of commentary, if that.