MattR

Wow. The things I never knew about scouter.com. Hey guys, bring your friends.

I copied and pasted the text here, as @SSScout's link didn't work. .

I think scouting is missing a huge opportunity right now. I was reading a discussion about positive ways to reform police departments and there was a really interesting observation. A study was done on ways to reduce crime in poorer sections of cities and they tried 3 things: increase police, increase social aid, and just tearing down abandoned buildings and putting in parks. The most effective was putting in parks. It created community and places for kids to play. They then mentioned that youth programs greatly help police. They mentioned Boys and Girls Clubs but didn't mention scouts. That kind of hurt. It hurt even more realizing that, as scouts currently stands, it would likely not work. And yet if there's ever a part of our cities that could use scouting, these are the places. Put another way, if scouting can't figure out how to work in these places then I think scouting has become irrelevant. And it's not because parents don't care for character development, it's that the current program is all twisted out of shape from what it started as. Didn't scouting start for kids in cities? To me it seems that the target group of kids are those in suburbs.

Any chance we can borrow Bear for a few years?

Sometime I wonder if BP's push for scouts was a case of trying to make amends for what happened in his military career. If so, I think his statue should stay up. Plenty of people with problems have turned things around.

I almost went to Philmont. Other than that I've done about 15 trips with my troop, all of which we put on ourselves. I will admit, it does take more work than just writing a check but a wiki full of ideas would cover that.

Well what do you know, that's the perfect description of why I'm not a fan of BSA training. I keep telling scouts if they really knew the material they were trying to teach it would be really easy to both teach it and easier to come up with fun events to use it. I went and read the BPSA Pathfinder manual. In all honesty I really liked it. It stops at First Class. Very little describe, discuss, explain. Lots of practical do. Some MB's, like first aid, require retesting every year, just like the adults. Senior proficiency badges. And the capstone req for First Class is to go on a 14 mile backpacking trip or 30 mile bike trip on your own or with another scout that goes overnight. No eagle, but hey, no eagle! The scouts would have to figure out what they want to do. That and it would be a lot cheaper.

One of our camps is used by a local university's forestry program as a lab on how to thin forests. Is that the type of logging you're talking about? Or is it logging wood to sell? If the latter then not us, as all we have is Ponderosa Pine.

Hey everyone, this thread is not in Issues and Politics, so please keep your issues about politics for another thread Just to be clear, this thread is about Philmont not opening.

I recently drove from Iowa to Colorado. The traffic on I80 is mostly back to normal. Lots of semis. Lots of RV's. Lots of traffic cones. Lots of people without cruise control that can't make up their mind if they want to tailgate, pass, or just slow down in front of you. Lots of extra wide wind turbine blades. It cleared up a bit somewhere around Grand Island and the last part, after the I76 interchange, was just open and crank up the sound system. So, pretty normal.

Isn't the google/apple contact tracing app supposed to be ready real soon? I know the API has been out for a week or so.

So so close! I like the idea of a pod deciding what they want to do together. How about, rather than an adult, pick one scout as the pod leader. Oh! And the scouts could vote on their pod leader. And if the scout struggles there could be a senior pod leader that could help him out. As for adults, maybe just a couple in camp would be needed for guidance. They could be called the pod master and assistant pod master. Sarcasm aside, using the patrol method at summer camp could solve a lot of problems and be a lot of fun. This is exactly the patrol method. I think it's how all summer camps should run.

Sounds easy. A sack full of silly toys along with a nice plaque buried down in the toys. A nice mix of fun and serious.

Oh, now I understand. I guess I also read that differently than what you had intended. Thanks for clarifying that.

This sub thread to "major changes announced - councils impacted" sounds like a question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. So, putting on my moderator hat, let's just have our better angels out on the dance floor. There are protests, violence, frustration, fear, a pandemic and a whole lot of anger going on in our nation. If there's ever a time for the Scout Oath and Law it's right now. I seem to have lost my cheerful. Has anyone seen it? It's probably with my glasses.

I wonder how BPSA is doing.

Welcome to the forum, @vtcchokie92.

My guess is accidental fat fingering and zooming in. I think it depends on your browser on how to get out of it. Worst case, restart your browser.

After 2:30 I got impatient. Anything good?

We used to do 2 a year and one of them had to be on the cheap. Those were fun. Of course, it helps when someone in the troop is a river rat and has friends with rafts. Several people have told me Northern Tier is much more expensive than the local outfitters. Same lakes.

Welcome to the forum, @MichelleIsAScout. If I read you correctly you're saying the church ordered some supplies independent of this scout and asked the scout to install them? Question number 1, is there much complexity in the installation? What does this involve? If this is something really simple then this isn't, in my view, an eagle project. If a scout is just providing labor then that's not leadership. Anyone can put out a flier, send some email, and get a half dozen scouts to show up. It might be a great service project but it doesn't involve leadership. Usually when I see projects like this I try and find something else the scout can own and take care of. Figuring out how to make something work, taking a vague idea from the benefactor and turning it into a detailed project and leading that, doing some research as how to best do something. Any simple task, if it's scaled up, presents new challenges that will require leadership. The challenge for the adults is to help the scout find those types of things. Hope that helps.

Thanks for sharing. Good news is always welcome.

I was surprised at how accurate it was. I had nearly identical conversations with scouts. I really respected the reality when the SM got a bit grumpy with the new scout because of something that happened with an old scout and he eventually got over it. Whoever made that film had experience with a troop.

GUESS WHAT, EVERYONE? IT"S TIME TO LOCK THIS THREAD AGAIN! It's hard to type while holding down the shift key so please just assume I'm shouting at you. I'm not really shouting but, for the following people: @HashTagScouts, @MikeS72, @desertrat77, @Eagledad, @Mrjeff, @Jameson76, @BAJ ( @SSScout and @TAHAWK get a pass for trying to make light of it), and everyone else that is complaining about parents complaining about how unfair this virus is to our children. I'm fairly sure that there's another thread for that. Go find it and post there. This thread is supposed to be about chapter 11 and all the lawyer stuff. Well, that and I don't want to split this thread apart again. Just let the whiny parents go, please? But you know, @David CO has a point. 100,000 people have died, a lot more will, and 40million people are newly unemployed. Everyone is struggling. It's time for our better angels to come out. I will unlock this thread as soon as it seems like those that want to post have figured out that won't work. And for those that do post about non legalistic stuff, I'll just hide your post as that's easy.

There are several threads going about how to deal with all of the problems but I wanted to focus on just one thing - money. Or more accurately, why and how to do scouts with little money. Not just belt tightening but cutting the budget by a lot. I have two assumptions. First, scouts for the most part don't really care about eagle or any other skill they might gain from being in the program. Their parents might but that can be more of a negative if the kid doesn't like camping. Scouts like to advance but I don't think it's as important as having fun with their friends. Back in the 60's, at the supposed height of scouting, how many scouts actually completed Eagle compared to today? I can answer that. In 1960 there were 21k eagle ranks awarded and last year there were 61k. Few people cared for eagle back then so why is it such a big deal now? Who is driving that focus and what is it taking away from? Second, what scouts will gain from the program, and it's quite a bit, is not the rank. What scouts learn is not a STEM skill like programming, science or engineering. It's not even a sport that can, many parents believe, be traded for a college education. It's a lot of soft skills like learning how to fail the right way and how to make decisions in a group. It's even how to just take a day off and, as one scout told me, get away from the usual high school drama. Anyway, not many parents are going to pay for it and I can't blame them. There are other ways to gain these skills. This is the crux of the BSA's problem. Their program and budget depends on selling a lot of something that not enough people want. What they're really good at nobody knows about and wouldn't bring in the income they need to stay afloat anyway. Consequently they have been in this downward spiral of spending more time and resources failing to increase membership and donations for something that is not their core product. They say scouts want bigger adventure so they pour money into Summit. They say scouts want to get Eagle so they push for FCFY and insta-palms. They say scouts want hi tech uniforms so they charge a lot of money for that. They say eagle is so important that there's a constant push to crank out eagles even though that's not what scouts really want. Councils are doing the same thing with climbing walls, zip lines and robot classes at summer camp. It's unsustainable and the covid/bankruptcy just sped things up. The only sustainable option that I see is to focus on what the scouts want and keep it cheap enough such that any kid can participate without causing a financial burden. Scouts want to have fun with their friends in the outdoors. The BSA can't compare scouting to premier sports clubs. They have to compare it to 4H (which only has costs for the projects). So what does it take to reduce the cost of scouting down to, say, gear, food and $50-$100 per year to cover trips? No FOS. No council or national fees. No $30/camporee fees. No merit badge fairs. No more dining halls. No donations. No council profits on every event they organize. And the scouts still have a fun time. If they really crank down the costs and include all kids then they can probably write grants for helping out. Donations are welcome but there is no drive for it. The down side? We might not get a DE? I doubt if anyone at council will ever answer a phone call again. When parents are really upset with the SM they might just have to walk away or find another troop. Camps are going to be rustic and few. I'm not sure about how maintenance will be done at camps. All scout shops will be replaced by an Amazon portal. The only thing I'd like to see improved is training for adults on how to run a troop in this environment and a system to support them if they ask for help. How to make fun calendars that the PL's own. How to incorporate advancement and skills as fun and not the goal. All the rest can get scaled down and I'd be fine with it.