MattR

On 8/5/2021 at 10:03 PM, fred8033 said:

Better give up everything from every institution you ever valued and every person you ever respected.   Not much from the past withstands the scrutiny of the present.  Ya know doctors used leeches and blood letting and celebrated healing when they say laudable pus (aka an infection). 

Choose almost any profession ... almost any institution ... and almost any individual and you can justify outrage.  The past isn't perfect.  It's just the past and how we got to where we are.  

 

I don't believe the KKK was ever considered a noble organization. 

It's less that "almost any institution" from the past can't "withstand the scrutiny of the present" so much as no institution can withstand scrutiny based on its own grandiose view of itself. 

It's where humility should come in.

One way to speed up the validation would be to hold the lawyers that signed the claims accountable. My understanding is that they were supposed to vet the claims they signed. So, just take the lost money out of their earnings where they didn't do their job.  They make 40% if they did their job but they lose 100% if they were sloppy. Call it a cost of doing business.

I'm sure I could come up with more rules to reduce the bad voting as well. 

21 minutes ago, SiouxRanger said:

So, are we likely to see required or elective merit badges fill in for the merged Citizenship merit badges? And if required, what would they likely be? (Surely, 21 will remain the number to earn Eagle?)

You didn't quote my entire post. In this case you should have.   look closely at the small print way at the bottom. I was joking.

Have a good day!

In my neck of the woods it's not the knots you need to hide so much as your pulse.

@lklawson, welcome to the forum, and good luck. It sounds like a fun hobby.

Nice article. Nice troop as well. 

Welcome to the forum, @Life. It's really hard for me to believe you're the first person to grab the user name "Life". Don't get me wrong, I was a life scout when I left scouts.

17 hours ago, Life said:

Comedy has been my saving grace, once I pulled out of the self destructive path I had found as a solution. When all this is over I’m going to have a lot of new material. 😉

Humor is a good way to deal with pain. Best of luck.

17 hours ago, Life said:

I use to feel alone in this, now I feel I have 84000 compadres,

I'm hoping this forum helps some of those victims. So thank you for being brave and speaking up.

9 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

When I enter information in my Profile "About Me" tab, who can see it?

Anyone, I believe. But I'm not sure, as I can see a bit more because I'm a moderator.

9 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

And there are other features like articles, reputation, etc.  How and where-how does this work?  I am new and probably missing what everyone else knows.

Articles aren't used. Reputation is driven by an algorithm - so take it with a grain of salt. As long as you're not really getting everyone angry my guess is the reputation is proportional to how long and how much you've posted.

9 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

I don't understand how "reputationa' works and if I should be up liking or down liking posts and all of the mechanics of this forum.

As @qwazse said, there are two camp (fires?) on down posts. My version is "praise publicly and punish privately," so I don't use the down arrows. I guess it depends on how you see the down arrow. Is it disagreeing or booing? I can never tell unless someone writes why. But to each his/her own. I don't see them as helpful or harmful, so I mostly ignore them.

9 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

Perhaps there could be an introductory response to newbies like me to introduce them to the basics of the forums.  (And I may have missed this entirely.)

There are some pinned posts on rules in the New to the Forum" sub forum. Given that this has been the 3rd, I believe, version of the software since I've joined we've tended to ignore the differences. Asking works, so you're doing fine.

9 hours ago, SiouxRanger said:

And if I am totally lame, just throw me from the bridge.

Not sure that's allowed in the G2SS. We might send you looking for a smoke shifter, though. Oh wait .....

1 hour ago, skeptic said:

You do realize that the COR has had the right to sit on the Executive board for decades do you not?

I do. I also realize that nobody does, and the councils like it that way. If just a third of the CC's in my district voted on council issues there would be real feedback. They are the ones that have to deal with council, the CO's have no idea what council does.

21 hours ago, Eagledad said:

This all may true. I believe Scouts will survive at a minimum as just an outdoors program. The problem is when a program is only focused on activities without the virtues of behavior values as a by-product, the adults will turn it into an after school/weekend activity program. Basically a babysitting program. The hallmark of if giving scouts the independence of running program will fade away. We struggle with adult intrusiveness now, making values a lower priority will finish if off. I understand this is what happened to Canadian Scouts. 

Barry

19 hours ago, fred8033 said:

Absolutely.  Ditch the stuff scouting does not shine at.  .... at least minimize.  

Scouting SHINES when it takes kids outside.  Hiking.  Biking.  Canoe.  Teaching outdoor skills.  

Scouting bumbles around in just too many other areas.  Scouting can claim so many positive reasons to be a scout IF IT WOULD JUST STOP DESIGNING THE PROGRAM TO TARGET THOSE REASONS.

The reason to be a scout is simple.  To be outside.  To have adventures.  To try new things.  To make friends.  To explore the world.  To sit by a campfire.  ... The rest is hogwash.  Sure it's neat to point and brag at, but it gets messed as often as it helps. 

I swear ... scouting is an easy win if we just stop pretending it's more grandiose than it is.  

 

I think there's a sweet spot between these 2 posts. As Fred says, scouting is kids outside, learning skills, being challenged and having fun. But think about what challenge means, especially to a teenager. The right challenge is the motivation that brings out the magic in scouts. Somewhere between boring and overwhelming is a good challenge. Not only that but the best motivation is self motivation. The adults sole purpose is to help the scouts find motivation, preferably self motivation. As the scouts become motivated the adults have less to do. That's my interpretation of what Barry has said elsewhere. If the scouts are motivated to try new things then everything else will take care of itself.

Scouts respond to different things. Advancement and recognition, high adventure trips, working with younger scouts, servant leadership. Nearly all scouts respond to just hanging with their friends.

I think the challenge is giving the adults the tools to make this work. How to work with scouts at different levels of maturity to find that which will give them a passion for scouting.

14 minutes ago, mrjohns2 said:

…is at camp! I know I am!

Real camps don't have wifi. Go sit on a rock and enjoy the breeze.

The training for what I call dangerous stuff  seems to shy away from local issues. It's there but not pushed. I will never see Lyme disease or hogweed but I nearly stepped on a sleeping rattler a week ago and altitude sickness is something we have to look out for on several campouts a year. I think it would be great fun for the scouts to learn about all the ways to get hurt in different areas. (I once went on a night hike in the Amazon and they could have called it: all the ways to die in the dark - scouts would love it. "See the colorful frog? If you touch it you will die.")  Anyway, I'd certainly like to see a local dangers presentation if I were going to an area I'm not familiar with. 

5 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

It’s time for BSA to fully embrace a no CO model as a parallel path.  ... and the CC is given ...  voting rights in council activities

I like that last part. 

@ThenNow, it certainly shines a light on the ugly side of "the good guys." To paraphrase a WWII ace that got into plenty of trouble, "show me an organization that claims virtue and I'll show you the dark side to it." Ironic, no?

That said, this document still only represents, at most, 13k cases out of 82k. Do you think that 16% is the tail wagging the dog, so to speak? 

@CynicalScouter, in the future, please quote content that you haven't created. I didn't know whether the paragraph following the link was your synopsis of a credible source or just a random opinion from someone that's annoyed with the BSA. 

Just to make myself clear, I have hidden similar mistakes from other posts.

Welcome to the forum, @Runningwolf

I have no idea what the official policies are for dealing with a scout that has been changed but not convicted of a felony. Sounds like someone making a quick decision with partial information. Maybe assuming that these charges will be dropped is also a quick decision with partial information?

On 7/6/2021 at 12:31 PM, fred8033 said:

I questioned focusing on leadership because troops don't teach it well.  I question focusing on leadership because scout's don't show up to take leadership courses

Maybe, rather than "teaching" leadership there should be focus on giving scouts "opportunities to learn" leadership or even just "an appreciation" of leadership. Encouraging an internal motivation rather than forcing an external motivation is the difference between fun and school. My son had a soccer coach whose goal was for the kids to learn a "love for the game". He figured if the kids had that then they'd figure out the skills on their own.

All of the check boxes and "leadership skills" are external motivation. While some of that is needed to prime the pump, the real goal is beyond that. Making requirements more and more detailed is going the wrong way. 

How to describe and sell this in a phrase, to both new parents and adult leadership, is the basis of making the adult method work. There's an aspect of play that's also important. Learning how to get along and take care of each other while playing in the outdoors sounds more inviting to me.

Could someone summarize the "fish smell"? Something to do with the COs, Coalition and TCC. I don't have the time to read the past few days of posts. Thanks.

5 hours ago, Mrjeff said:

You just don't get it,  carry on my patchy friends and beware of the Patch Police!

Sometimes, when trying to explain something with an example, people forget what you were originally talking about.

Anyway, good luck.

Okay, time for this thread to take a break.

That's a really good observation, @Wëlënakwsu. Why have the most important position held by the least paid? Of course, getting marketing people that know marketing would also help, along with every other position. Maybe, starting with an SE that understands how to run a non profit would be a good place to start.