MattR

There seems to be a common theme here. Either the training is too onorus or it's a good way to get more people outdoors that have no experience. The BSA training is too short and incomplete but cub scout training is too much. Given that many cub scouters get burned out from too much advancement, repetition, etc, maybe there is room for better training. I'm not sure what it would look like or whether the BSA can deliver but I tend towards the side that says one night in the woods is a good idea for cub leaders.

ItsBrian, I'm of the mind that judging someone's religious practice is problamatic at best for someone your age. Talking about it could be good or bad. Find someone you trust to talk. Just know that many people struggle with religion.

Thanks for sharing.

No, but at the time you posted, I was treating the family to dinner at an Argentine steakhouse. The menu - scribbled on a wall size chalk board - was an adventure.

Great minds?

Must be, we found a food court type restaurant that specializes in octopus.

Hey @@qwazse, are you currently on the southern coast of Spain? If not then we are not one and the same

Much philosophy goes here but I'll leave that for another time. This place is an adventure.

Well, it is Friday afternoon at summer camp so people are tired of a week with each other. We don't know what the whole week was like or generally what the relationships are between the various characters. So maybe asking whether it's okay isn't as appropriate as asking whether it's likely and what should happen afterward. I mean, from the face of it it sounds a bit unreasonable but who's always reasonable? Maybe the best scenario is that this is an opportunity for a scout to see a bit of reality after he graduates into the real world.

The reason many troops struggle with the BSA leadership structure is they don’t understand, or even know the BSA Vision. They instead are stuck in the weeds of advancement and leadership. And troops that focus on the methods of the program without understanding the Vision generally do not use servant leadership because advancement and leadership are a lot easier than making moral and ethical decision makers.

 

 

Agreed. I'm seeing this happen in my own troop right now. Advancement is easy so the entire troop is working on one MB. It doesn't matter that a lot of scouts already have it. It was really easy to pick a MB for a month long theme. It was really easy for the plc to divy up the requirements so each pl does some classroom style explaining. Not sure how fun it will be after a few months.

Until the bsa can explain this program in a way that parents can easily catch onto this is what it will be. Btw, the new sm is an eagle scout, so this is not a new problem. Also, this theme came right out of the programming resources documentation that the bsa publishes.

Bsa needs a message for visitors and a message for current parents and a message for leaders. They are all just more detail of the what and how. Prepared for life is nice but maybe "helping your kids grow up, faster" might hit a nerve. Beyond that there is need for more and more detail of how it works.

I think there is a difference with sports since scouts will have more opportunities to make decisions. I still like sports though. They compliment each other.

Hawkwin makes a good point. There's another issue - cost. It's costly to staff shooting and aquatics activities. It's cheap to staff a mb where you can pay a 16 year old less than min wage to stand up and talk. My scouts used to sleep during mb classes to make up for playing hard. Anyway, this problem also needs to be looked at if your council will buy in.

Ask anything you want, just mke sure it's in a foreign language and see how they respond. Ask them where the wc is or what a pancake is. If they have fun with it they're good. Frustrated, not so much. If they start frustrated, you explain what's happening and then they have fun with it, they're also good.

I can easily envision a scenario where a unit with a conservative religious Chartered Organization must choose between leaving the girls behind or canceling a trip for the boys because there are no female leaders available. Imagine the complaints we will be hearing if they leave the girls behind.

That's the issue that's missing in the poll: not enough moms. It doesn't matter if the units are coed or not. Hopefully I'm wrong but we've had moms that will do some challenging campouts once, likely just to say they could do it, and then they're done with that. The problem with GS is the lack of dads. It's not that all moms don't want to do it but the dads are more likely to want to do the adventurous stuff.

The problem with positions like Webmaster, librarian, historian and bugler is that many units have very few expectations for those positions to hold scouts accountable. Without accountability, there is little growth or learning.

 

For a position to have value in the big picture of the whole program, it needs to have value in contributing to the whole program. If scouts don't see themselves contributing to the big picture, then likely the position isn't really required in the program. Our PLC voted to end the bugler position. It was a sad day for the traditional side of me, but the practical side of me agreed.

I removed several PORs because I didn't see any responsibility. One scout asked me one time if he could be bugler and I told him I'd give him credit if he could figure out what the responsibility was and how it helped the troop. I suggested he find an adult to help define it. I did the same for librarian. I'm not against those positions but I don't see the need anymore.

I like @@Eagledad's summary. One of the fundamental problems that I see in many schools as well as in troops, people expect less.

<Rant on>

I have been accused by a few parents lately of being mean because I question the boys on their commitment and attempt to hold them to a standard of scout spirit that means something. The parents of course come at me with books and the guide to advancement which is written very vague and more about not being sued than in the scouts interest. I want them to succeed. If I didn't think they could do it, I wouldn't push them. But, that is a totally different topic.

<Rant off>

<Anti Rant on>

It's nice to know someone else sees the same thing.

<Anti Rang off>

Our scouts are given small responsibilities when they join the troop (Grub Master and Cheer Master). As small as the expectations are, they are still challenging for the age and maturity of the new scouts. We mentored them to used the whole patrol to reach the goals of their responsibilities. Scouts are encouraged to reach out to their buddies for help in all their PORs. Eventually it's just a habit used in all their activities, not just PORs. And without realizing it, they are all of a sudden Life Scouts needing only a service project to finish Eagle.

This point right here needs to be written large in the SM handbook. It's much easier to teach a different way of doing things to the youngest scouts and just keeping it going until they become the older scouts. For years I tried working with the older scouts to change the culture in my troop. I finally decided that working with the younger scouts was the way to go. That was the best move I made. Unfortunately I asked for adults to focus on the new scouts and all I got was having advancement requirements signed off. It didn't matter how much we talked about leadership, teamwork, or character.

Now that I'm no longer responsible for the entire troop I can focus on what I want and so last week I took the new scouts on a campout. They planned the whole thing and I drilled into them responsibility and teamwork. I wanted a duty roster and I wanted them to follow it. They could fill in the details. It was some of the best teamwork I've seen. The adults that went along were real happy with the results and were also sold on the idea. Previously I could tell adults that responsibility was key to teamwork but they just didn't believe me. Once they saw how the patrol worked together they started to see it. Anyway, it would do the BSA a world of good if they would write some training on how to turn a troop around.

For example, one of the results of using the many-hands is discipline. Over time our scouts developed the habit of when a scout was behaving badly, everyone around the scout was held responsible for his actions. Every scout was held accountable for the behavior (good and bad) of the scouts around them.

A few years ago I had a patrol that ran off the rails and I held them all responsible. In all honesty they were all guilty. Some may have been worse than others but none of them stood up for what was right. Anyway, the adult response to this was rather instructive. I had two families quit over that one and the rest were absolutely behind me. The families that left couldn't see that their children did anything wrong. It was the other scouts that caused their children to misbehave. Their kids were perfect after all.

Welcome, @@SFTX. Go ahead and just ask what you want to know about. As Yoda said when he was a den leader, do or do not, there is no lurk.

"Where could pressure be?" He asks NOW (http://nownyc.org/press-releases/national-organization-women-calls-boy-scouts-america-end-discriminatory-policies-let-girls-join/).

That's rich. Apparently the people of NOW were never girl scouts. It must be awkward when the NOW folks and GSUSA folks get together.

That sure is terrible.

Just my guess, but rather than a 1000 ft climb (9.1) he was likely doing 9.2, Backpack, snowshoe, or cross-country ski for at least 4 miles.

That's not the issue, though. There were two other "teenagers" with him and I wonder what kind of training they had. We see plenty of merit badge counselors that don't belong at summer camps. Is this what happened?

ItsBrian, bored is good. That means everyone is doing something. That's teamwork. I''m sure you can find something else to work on. Some other way to make the patrols stronger?

But getting back to PLs that won't lead. Given that the PLs have likely never experienced good leadership they are likely learning on the job. Something I realized is that it's easier to learn leadership if the rest of the team is willing and able to follow. In other words, they need to understand teamwork. Each scout has a job and does it. The PLs job is not to plan everything, it's to get everyone busy, helping the patrol reach its goals. Recently I've been working with some younger scouts on teamwork. The result is we have a PL, who's 11 years old, and the only help he needs is a bit of focus. Well, the entire patrol needs to be kept on task, but that's it. They just planned their own campout. The grubmaster brought menus everyone could vote on. There's a scout in charge of the activity and he has a list of ideas the patrol went over last night. The PL is talking to everyone to make sure they're getting things done. Sure, there are a few parents asking if anything needs to be done and how is it going. But the teamwork is developing. Leadership in this case will be easy.

You said that your PLs can't plan. I'm sure that's true. But part of the problem might be that they are frozen with fear in that nobody will help. So one thing you might try is to start working on teamwork. I've tried with 14 and 15 year olds and I'll tell you, it's a lot easier with 11 year olds. Sure, it's like herding cats at times but they want to try.

I had nothing against the OA. I liked the idea of the OA. However, it struggles. In our case the leadership consists of some rather young scouts that are well intentioned but quiet. And they can't seem to follow through on much of anything. I had to run the OA elections on my own. Whether this is just poor leadership or lack of motivation I don't know. But it was hard for me to encourage my scouts, who aren't much better, to show up. If they had good enthusiastic scouts making things happen then it would have been easy to get some scouts over to chapter meetings.

This isn't just the OA, a lot of troops are having the same problems.

They added a FAQ that made them look particularly dumb. Yes, there have been increases an average of once every 5 years. But in this case it's been twice in 7 years and the total has doubled in 5 years? Didn't it used to be $15 five years ago? And yes, soccer costs $400 some place and that doesn't even include uniforms, but guess what, the $33 doesn't include uniforms either, or summer camp, or any camp, or anything within the council. So the $33 national gets just because is suddenly not so far off the $100 the council wants everyone to donate to FOS. For people that don't have much money this has just lowered the amount of money a lot of people will be giving to their council.

Truth be told, if national had less money they might have to focus on what's important so anyone that wants to complain ... go for it. Yes, I'll still pay for it but something about Thrifty is what bothers me about this. What expenses have doubled in the past 5 years? Be honest.

Cubmom07, first of all, welcome.

Secondly, I hate to say this but the reason these kids (sorry, but I won't use the term scouts) "roll their eyes at me and act like they don't hear me every single time" is because there doesn't seem to be a reason why they should. While positive reinforcement and talking to scouts about how they should act scout like is usually a good thing, there are times when they are just figuring out the boundaries. Not the specified boundaries but the real boundaries. If the worst thing that happens is they get a lecture then maybe that's reasonable.

I suspect there is one scout that is leading this, mainly because he doesn't want to be there, and the others are following along because, let's face it, they have power over the adults and power is fun.

How to solve: This is echoing Col. Flag and CambridgeSkip, but what would you do if this were your son doing this? And why? There's most of your answer. No, you can't drag a kid off by his ear but you can get him out of there. These kids need rules and consequences for not following the rules. They should be very clear to the boys and their parents. Do not back down. The reason these boys are running amok is because they know the rules don't apply to them. Make sure that you are willing to follow through on whatever rules you come up with. Also, as an unwritten rule, if one of these scouts does what you ask of him then thank him afterwards. Tell him it made everything go better and it sure is fun having him around. The boys need to know that every interaction with an adult is not a bad thing.

Good luck.

Pretty much anything, assuming they have a responsibility. If you really need two buglers then why not. The point is the scout has responsibility and is fulfilling it.

BTW, APL is usually not a position that gets credit for rank advancement. But that depends on your troop.

I never would have thought it was social media as the cause, or even smart phones, but the results I can see. Lots of scouts no longer get driving licenses when they can. But the bigger problem from the scouting perspective is that kids have less experience making decisions (good or bad), or knowing how to deal with problems, especially people problems. That's making it harder to develop leadership.and that's hurting the program.

Maybe helicopter parents are only part of the problem, we also have helicopter kids. They don't have experience being on their own so they are really uncomfortable doing it.It's not enough to tell a scout he can make a decision for himself. Sounds crazy from my experiences but this explains a lot of what I've been seeing.

On of my ASMs signed off on this months ago....  sigh

Interesting. It's signed off by the SM at the SMC for us. One more thing we likely do wrong. But I don't agree with the idea that a scout only has to not lie for 6 months out of a much longer period to qualify for "scout spirit".

It's fairly clear to me that judging character is hard to do. My suggestion to any SM is make it consistent, be humble, and stick with your principles. No two SMs will look at the same situation and come up with the exact same opinion of what should be done. That doesn't mean everyone should just give up and say character doesn't count. You do your best and call it a day. The odds are in your favor that you're doing better than just ignoring kids that ignore scouting principles.

I will add that I never prevented a scout from getting Eagle and always had a way for them to "make things right." That was never a problem because I always made sure there was time. The problem was the parents that didn't agree that anything needed to be fixed. It didn't happen very often but it sure sucked the fun out of scouts.

I also know I'm no longer SM and I refuse to sign off any sort of advancement anymore, for exactly this issue. It's for someone else to do now. It's not easy and I respect anyone that tries.

Mashmaster, this type of thing just plain sucks. You try and do the right thing and then someone dumps on you. You sound like you're not happy with it and that's a sign that you're doing the right thing. My guess is you're replaying everything that happened and checking your actions. Honestly, you are the keeper of the flame. You set the standard and everyone else will appreciate it and respect you for doing it.

I'm just going to blather on so you know you aren't alone.

I had to talk to parents a couple of times (reference: weed at summer camp) and once or twice we'd get into this discussion where we just didn't agree on what's right and I just wanted to end it. So the parent would say something along the lines of it's not that big a deal, lots of kids do this. Then I would say, but not in my troop, your son is the only one doing it. That pretty much ends the discussion and the family leaves the troop.

It's when the parent tells you that you have to apologize that you know it's over. For me, when I get to the point that I'm telling a scout he has some work to do, I've spent some time thinking about it and replaying what happened to make sure I'm being reasonable. I've apologized to lots of scouts for getting mad or going to far or just having a bad day and taking it out on them so I know when I've made a mistake.

Finally, and most importantly, this will pass and you'll have a good day where a parent or scout thanks you.

Mashmaster, I've been there and I don't miss it. I noticed that the pain a scout has to go through has nothing to do with the crime or the punishment. It has everything to do with whether or not the parent agrees with you. If a parent backs you up then the scout will accept whatever you have to say.

Usually more parents agree with the SM than don't.

Good luck and take care. You're doing the right thing.

What do we do? Try. Fail. Try again.

Do they like it? No.

Do they need it? Yes.

 

It sounds like you're wondering *what* they should try. But that's as varied as the interests of the scouts.

No, I'm wondering how to make this simpler for the adults. I'm done being SM, I don't need this anymore. I used to do exactly what you're talking about. Try and figure out each kid. Be persistent. Keep trying. It takes a lot of time. So every time I hear that it depends on the scouts or that it's more art than science, I see more kids quit scouting because typical adults can't or won't put the time into developing leadership in this way. That's why it's so much easier for the adults to just take over.

That's the crux of the problem that the BSA is having. If the BSA wants to increase membership then they could double their numbers by just keeping the scouts they have. That means having something for the older scouts. But I've seen venturing crews and most of them are just webelos 4 because the scouts are so unprepared. It's not that they don't have leadership skills, they don't even have basic skills like taking notes. I had a friend that works with the OA sit in on one of my PLC meetings and he was impressed that there were scouts taking notes. Kids do not need to take notes in school because everything is online now so I had to teach them that skill. I tried just telling them but they'd just get caught up in the moment and forget to write anything down. This is what the typical scouter is up against.

There's a whole program for developing outdoor skills. It's called Scout to First Class. Why not come up with the equivalent of developing leadership skills? Hawkwin's crawl-walk-run is a perfect description of what's needed. That's what I'm looking for.