MattR

My troop is at summer camp and I'm not. Got a phone call this morning about a scout with marijuana. It was found. He offered some to a younger scout and lied about the whole thing when the adults confronted him. Some of the adults wanted to handle it internally and some wanted to call the sheriff directly. I said go to the camp director and follow whatever process they have. My only rule is he's going home today. The scout is going home, sometime after the sheriff talks to him (camp policy). He's a life scout that has completed everything but, you guessed it, the scoutmaster conference. The question is what to do with him after this. Should he be thrown out of the troop? Should I sign off on Eagle? Right now I won't. I believe in giving a kid a chance to repent for his mistake but just saying sorry won't cut it. I don't want to give him an explicit list of things to do as I want him to figure it out, but at the same time, he needs some guidance. Humility, understanding what he did and why it was wrong, confessing, and making up for it are things I'd look for. I'm not sure he'd figure it out but I would like to give him a chance. Thoughts?

Good samaritan rules? I can't imagine a day of training for that. That would create more problems than it would solve. Imagine what the helicopter parents would do with this info

Peregrinator, probably the same way you do (they're all fixed). At least in my temple there's a mix of English and Hebrew. We sing most of the Hebrew prayers. Considering I wouldn't come within a mile of a karaoke bar, I really like the singing. It gets me in the mood, so to say. What do Catholics think of ad-hoc style prayers at scout functions?

I'm guessing more poeple die from suicide than arterial bleeding. My friend's daughter committed suicide. It was/still is tragic. What they learned after the fact is shocking. Definitely mental illness. I'm not sure what would help scouters but the idea is reasonable.

I've temporarily changed my religion to Futbol. I have a different take on the Jewish scouts that mumbled through the "prayer." I have a couple of Jewish kids in my troop and they are bright, and well educated in their faith. They would do the same thing. It would be great if one of them started with the Shima in Hebrew but they're young and peer pressure is a big thing. The real issue, as in a lot of these types of things, are people with authority making assumptions. I watch out for these kids so it won't happen to them. Not every scout gets that support. I absolutely agree with encouraging scouts to learn more about their own faith. But what about the kids that aren't exposed to much more than the two days a year they have to go to church/temple? The Jewish kids mentioned are no different than a lot of Christian kids. I'm not sure prayers of any style will encourage them to do anything. As in most things scouting, I can see the adults really messing this up by saying this is the way you do it. Maybe scouting has more powerful ways to get through to kids. A service project where the boys see the result, helping another scout that has Asperger's, an awesome view, just talking about these things and getting an honest answer from an impartial friend. I don't know. My scouts listen to me a lot more when they know I'm not telling them what to do. I think it all gets back to a scoutmaster with a light touch that knows his scouts.

I'd say they aren't equal (for whatever this has to do with the thread). There's a difference between local and not allowing the refusal of some group. My understanding is that no unit can refuse a gay scout. That's not local. I don't know if locally a unit can officially refuse a woman leader.

I would be fascinated to read anything newly written by Schultz. Talk about someone with a fantastic perspective.

It's amazing how a disaster can focus things. I saw a Shakespearean tragedy of a scout meeting last night. Everything that could go wrong did. I just took notes and asked other adults to let it happen. It would be fun to tell you the details but I won't. The thing that really stuck out was that a lot of scouts, leaders or not, knew there was a problem and didn't do or say anything. The troop guides already had plans for their patrol and "had" to change them. Even at the end of the meeting when I asked how it went I got a collective shrug. Nobody said it was fun. Nobody said anything. Nobody wanted to say it was a disaster and nobody knew how to say that in a constructive way. Patrol Method, boy led, and leadership are all the same thing. My take on what needs to be defined, getting back to the original post, is what everyone's job is. The job of the scout leaders is to help the scouts below them achieve their goals. Call it support, or servant leadership, or tough love. At the same time, their job is also to move their group together, as a team. Handling the contradictions of the team vs the individual is just part of the fun. Those scouts that aren't leaders also have a responsibility to participate and speak up in a constructive way when things don't go right. They need to help their team and help solve problems. Finally, the adults need to facilitate good decisions from the scouts. It's not about making decisions when things go wrong so much as getting the scouts to make decisions and following through. The adults also have to enforce boundaries on decisions, whether it be ethical or staying within the boundaries of the methods of scouting.

Barry, thanks for the "summary." Now I understand what you've been talking about. I have never seen it written anywhere that adults own the aims and the scouts own the methods. It's not that I disagree, it's just not out there. I'm not sure what it means that the boys own the methods. If the boys "own" uniform and decide it's now optional, then what happens? If they own advancement and say first aid is nothing more than call 911, where do adults fit in? Is it that the adults say we will implement the methods but it's up to the scouts to decide how? ​Working with the scouts to deal with troublesome scouts is usually not a problem in my troop. The problem is obvious and the scouts want it solved. But what do you do when the problem isn't obvious? Dealing with a troublesome scout has ethics written all over it but what about dealing with a boring calendar? We'll do thorns and roses and the scouts will never bring up a problem that could be solved. They'll mention the weather or someone snoring, but never the fact that the PL wanted to play cards all day. They are boys, they don't talk about problems.

Unfortunately, it's not rhetorical. I think it would be really useful. It sounds easy but character and leadership are about how people interact with each other and that's about as big a topic as you can get. Maybe that's why it's so hard. Slightly off topic but there are some common problems that keep coming up on these forums. It just seems that someone should be able to write down some guidelines on how to solve them. How to work with a selfish boy with parents that enable it is a current thread. The line between adult and scout decisions. Developing trust. The two dozen most common issues a SM comes up with and how to solve them would help a lot of scouters that want to do the right thing but don't know how.

His POR problems should have been dealt with when he wasn't doing his job. He doesn't respect the troop leadership because he knows they hold nothing over him. Machiavellian rules take precedence when everyone is selfish. When the SPL sends him home because he can't act like a scout then he'll likely start listening. As for the discussion, he won't change unless he wants to. If he wants to he'll listen to what you have to say. He'll listen if he respects you. and there is some other pressure on him to change from, say, the scouts. (BTW, If his PL and SPL gave him the bad news then you could be the good guy and he might listen to you. But that's water under the bridge.) Why is this kid so insecure? Does he like scouts? Is he there because his parents want him there? Offer to tell his parents he shouldn't be in scouts and see what he says. If he doesn't want to be there then you can help him figure out a solution. Maybe it's something at home or school or the troop. If he does want to be there then maybe it would be good to let him know how he comes across to others. Get quotes from the SPL, PL, new scout patrol, and read them to him. Don't judge him, just tell him how others see him and ask him what he'd like to do about it.

Eagledad, is there some description, anywhere, of how the program should work? Scoutgipper, we also used to be able to send scouts out for left handed, blue metallic, telescoping smoke shifters, and we can't do that anymore because it's considered hazing. Underlying allowing scouts to do something on their own is trust. I agree with Eagledad that it can still be developed with the current system. The problem isn't the rules so much as society and the change in adult perception. Maybe the methods of scouting were obvious when we were kids because kids and adults stayed away from each other. The kids were outside and the adults were inside. Kids just played on their own.

My guess is a lot of adults are doing the best they can with what they have. The training doesn't cover 10% of what we talk about here. For some it may be an ego/pride thing but for the rest of us, we've never seen it done right. My solution is to get into arguments with people on this forum to squeeze out bits of wisdom. (BTW, Stosh, now I understand your aversion to the word mentoring.)

The French might not agree with that. But all y'all do have some history with them. Don't pull me into this fight, I've had good food all over the world, even places that speak English.

Stosh, we actually probably agree with each other. If I turned my pyramid upside down then I'd be making all the decisions and the youngest scouts would be coaching the PLs. Mentoring goes down and decisions are done as low as possible. Case in point, tonight's meeting of my troop. The scouts wanted to have a scavenger hunt in our down town area. They put it together and they did a good job. I asked about the buddy system and they already had it taken care of. I did not make any decisions. At the end of the contest a bunch of scouts were hanging around listening to some guy standing on a box telling everyone they were going to hell. Then all of a sudden an angry drunk starts shouting at the soap box guy, and there are half a dozen scouts between them. I stepped in and made a decision to get my scouts out from the middle of that. It was the right thing to do even though some of the scouts wanted to stick around and watch, including some patrol leaders. That's the kind of decisions I'm talking about over ruling. I've dealt with enough drunks to know they're unpredictable and the scouts haven't.

Sounds like a high class problem. What's the cause of the change? My first guess is they don't have enough people at the main office to even fix typos, so they aren't in the way. My second guess is they don't have marching band. What's your guess, Cambridgeskip?

I wonder if there's not a better way to describe the leadership in a troop. Assume there is a pyramid then mentoring and guidance go down and decisions come up from the point closest to the problem. If the decision coming up is not what the leader above likes then he has to either just ignore it and go with it, ask the scout below some questions to make sure he's seeing the entire problem, or, in the worst case, overturn it. The last case is probably reserved for safety and extreme cases of poor scout spirit. The main idea is to develop the leadership and trust of those below. So, say a new scout is given the task of finding a patrol site. The PL mentors the young scout and as long as the scout doesn't, say, pick a campsite in a dried river bed while big, black clouds are forming overhead, the PL goes with the decision. But if the young scout is adament about the river bed then the PL can just say no. The same relationship exists between the SPL and PLs, and the SM and SPL. Part of good leadership is knowing when to step in and overturn a lower decision and when to let it be a learning experience. So, if the SPL says "let's play capture the flag on a freeway" then it's reasonable for the SM to say no. If the whole troop wants to camp in a ravine and it's not a flash flood concern, then it might be best for the adults to camp on higher ground and let it be a learning experience.

It's difficult to quantify and fairly obvious when you see it. Character can be defined as what someone does in the dark (when nobody of consequence is looking). This makes it difficult to measure. So I agree with packsaddle, you have to get to know a scout. And part of that is listening carefully to what other scouts say about him. OA election results, at least in my troop, are very informative. What I tell the scouts is spirit is knowing the right thing to do and then doing it.

I think you just did talk about your faith. We should break beer together and compare notes some time. We have a somewhat similar history. I agree with you that questioning a scouts beliefs in the context of Boy Scouts is bad if it leads to judgement. I've been close to that edge before but stopped after I asked about it on this forum. But just getting a scout to talk about their beliefs in a completely non judgmental way is something I wish someone had done for me when I was that age. Learning how to be that adult is obviously hard. Courteous discussion like we saw here could be a benefit. If a new forum isn't needed then put it under Working with kids. Just realize that anything close to social hot button issues, if they aren't under politics need the Play Nice Police to keep things smooth.

Pack18Alex, thanks for the correction. "wait it out" sounds harsher than I meant. I do the exact same coaching with the Jewish scouts in my troop. AZMike, yes, I like what you have. While I'm not sure how you jumped from an invocation to getting scouts to explore their own beliefs, I would certainly like to get better at encouraging scouts to explore and talk about beliefs. Probably another thread. Not sure if anyone wants to deal with the rules, though. SSScout and Merlyn, great joke, but I knew the punchline before it showed up. He should have pushed him off at about Northern Baptist.

That's a different thread. I'd say closer to soccer, band, and robotics, They don't decide where they go. The other activities decide. A lot of kids are over scheduled and more activities are longer and now require 100% participation. 5 years ago it wasn't nearly this bad in my town.

I quote myself: 1) There will be no mention of anything political or legal, including anything from national. Nothing about Dale or the Constitution. Nothing about polls. Nothing about anything the BSA has written about religion or the meaning of Reverent. No nuanced legalese meanings of some phrase buried in some declaration of religious principles. I made this rule up based on a long history of arguments on this forum. Merlyn, AZMike, please start a new thread. For everyone else, PackSaddle asked for feedback in a previous post. I'm curious what you think. Pack18Alex, it sounds like you're doing what I've done for many years, be polite and wait it out. Which implies, along with most of the rest of the opinions here, drop the invocation. There are a lot of good words of wisdom out there I could use in my troop.

What I meant: One, of the two, should be a PL or APL.

Merlyn, I have a question for you that is 100% respective of your position (which to be honest I'm not completely sure what it is). The original question was how to do an invocation for multiple faiths (or none) and you never answered it. I can see that it's possibly a bad question for you. So let me try and reword it so it works for you. If you were a SM for a troop with all manner of beliefs and you wanted to start or end a meeting with some sort of way for all the scouts to dig a bit deeper and be a little more selfless, what would you want to do? Not many people answered the question but I don't think anyone that defends the rights of atheists as much you do has. I'm looking for a range of opinions before I figure out what to do for my troop. Thanks. Pack, I think you did a good job, thank you. I will recuse myself from any more opinioning and am not emotionally tied to the rules I set. I just made them up as I went. All y'all did play nice and I appreciate that.

There is an issue. If scouts decide who's the next PL by drawing straws ("I don't want it, it's your turn") then nobody respects the position. That's a chicken and egg thing. Nobody respects it so nobody takes it seriously so nobody tries so nobody gets anything done so nobody respects it, and the adults always step in to save the day. Get the adults to stop saving the day, talk to the best scouts and tell them you need their help, ask lots of questions, let them fail, celebrate success. The SPL should be doing most of this but he may be learning at the same time.