MattR

To BSA national: Work on making scouts cool. Look at scouts from the viewpoint of a kid. Don't talk about having fun and then come up with the cyber chip. Look very hard at what caused the cyber chip to happen and then stop doing that. I don't care how important it is to teach kids about online safety, it has nothing to do with getting kids outdoors, having fun, with their friends. Make Kate Middleton the honorary president of the BSA. I'm serious, your image sucks and hers is off the charts. Or how about Jerry Stritzke, the CEO of REI? Anyone that likes the outdoors would do. How about a professional sports player that likes kids and the outdoors. Just stay away from politicians. If the boys don't think the honorary president is cool then find someone else. There are plenty of people the boys will like that also share our values. For uniforms, keep it uniform, get rid of the banana republic dictator look, and keep the price under $20 for a shirt or pants. If the boys don't want to wear it while outdoors then there's a problem. Get rid of the school work, that is what school is for. MBs should be about doing things, not talking about doing things. Boys do not like to sit around discussing job opportunities in the food industry. They have no idea what career they want so quit thinking if you make them talk about it that they will change. If it's not about having fun in the outdoors then it's a tax on your core mission. Cut taxes. Discussing gun safety is fine, boys want to shoot guns. This is not rocket science. Young boys want fun. Older boys want fun but also want purpose. Develop ways for adults to help boys find that purpose. It can be leadership. It can be adventure. It can be service. It is not three citizenship MBs. Scouts is not about jobs or teaching young men skills for college. It's about what they think about scouts 15 years after they've left. If they think that scouts was an incredible opportunity where they did really great stuff, that they made great friends, that they admired some adults, that they found their niche, then you won. If they think scouts was a never ending advancement meeting where adults did nothing but tell them what to do, then you lost. Focus on your core mission. Play to win.

I agree with everything you say, Stosh, but it's assuming that it already exists. Once a new scout comes in they'll see it working and start doing that. But what does a venture crew do where none of them understand teamwork? I used to tell my scouts almost exactly what you've said, they say sure, and soon they were back to their old ways. It's much better now but it's a constant issue. I'd rather see a sequence of activities that will develop their abilities. And yes, it could be that having a whole patrol work on it together would help. But getting back to venturing crews, what do they do? That's what a lot of troops are dealing with. Most troops don't have this set up.

NJ, as I said before, the gloves are off.

Does anyone know of a series of challenges or levels, kind of like advancement ranks, for developing teamwork and leadership? I'm thinking of something like start off easy with lead your patrol in a cheer and keep rising to the point of leading a district wide event. There are two reasons I ask. First, scouts are coming less prepared for these skills than they used to. They seem to think teamwork means everyone does the same thing together. I don't see many kids playing pickup sports games anymore so the idea that the catcher can't do the first baseman's job is a new idea. The other reason is that advancement has become too important. The result is scouts is more about advancement than what it should be and venturing is just withering. Leadership skills are currently taught in an ad hoc way but outdoor skills have a very well defined program. It starts easy and gets harder. There is lots of recognition for progress. Why not apply that to leadership and teamwork? Think of how much time it takes to learn all the T-FC skills and MBs and compare that to how much time is spent training on leadership and there's a huge mismatch. NYLT takes a week and is about the highest level of leadership development and the idea of getting to FC in a week is ridiculous. I'm not talking about spending all that time in a class room, but just spending more time moving up and leading more difficult situations. We do our own ad-hoc development but one thing we have started on is that the NSP is around long enough for scouts to learn teamwork. The reason I started this is that I noticed it's much easier to get this across to 11 year old scouts than 14 year old scouts. 11 year olds are more willing to try and fail than 14 year olds. Peer pressure for a 14 year old is much worse than for an 11 year old and so fear of failing at doing one's part pushes 14 year olds away from teamwork more than 11 year olds. Why have a duty roster when we can just all do it together? The idea that time might be important is hard to get across. Anyway, I can imagine it's even harder for a crew to deal with these problems. I put this in the venturing forum because it seems like a more critical problem for venturing. A troop that doesn't have good scout leadership and teamwork can always just let the adults take over. It's not good but that's what seems to happen. The crews I've seen have less opportunity for this so they just seem to fold.

Please push for it. Not only would it make it more fun it would likely make things safer. When the rules are so stifling people tend to ignore them. I did. It isn't just height that should trigger a check. There were some people in my troop that made a monkey bridge without me around and they nearly killed a kid because they didn't make good anchors. Nobody was even scratched but it was close to a disaster. Anyway, this had nothing to do with height, that part was legal. It was about construction and just a mindset that safety is important.

I did. It is definitely not an ad from an outside source. It's clearly a post with a Scoutstuff tag. It's of an adorable little girl in pony tails that's somewhere around six years old. She is wearing a purple shirt that says Scout at Heart, inside a heart shaped graphic. Not guy stuff.

I don't think the issue is making use of or developing the ASMs. The SM doesn't really care about the idea of patrols. You found ASMs for him. Did he work with the ASMs to show them how to advise the patrols? Or did he just say go advise the patrols. I don't think developing the ASMs is the first step in getting the patrol method working. It's important but I'd think the first step is defining how the troop is going to work with patrols, with patrol leaders, with regular PLC meetings, with an SPL. If the SM has been around or 25 years and there are no patrols then there won't be patrols.

I echo the comment that a new SM has no idea how much he's suddenly responsible for and the last thing he wants is a bunch of people trying to "fix the mistakes" of the last SM. So defend him. At the same time, if you see things happening that you might do differently, mention it once out of earshot of everyone else and then drop it. He'll either take it or he won't. When he does something new that you like, say something. It's kind of like working with scouts. As for what to do before he starts it would be nice if he knew what was coming at him. Some things take months to happen and most people only see the last week or two. I made a calendar of when to start working on upcoming things. One more thing, and probably the most fun and most useful, the new SM should make a point of getting to know all the scouts in the troop. It would be a good excuse to have a SMC with each. Ask them what they like and dislike with the troop. An SM will get nowhere if the scouts don't trust him.

I've been working with the new scout patrol and they're going on a campout without the troop to practice doing things on their own before the fall camporee. They are super excited and everyone has a job to do for the campout. Each month they pick a new PL. While their leadership skills are minimal they are starting to look out for each other. One scout got upset and walked off because his idea lost out to another scout's idea but everyone went and found him and brought him back in. Oh, and the best part, I asked them if they had any friends outside of scouts that might want to go camping with us and they came up with at least 4 names. I told them if they got at least one friend to join us I'd make them all dutch oven brownies.

Adding to RememberSchiff's idea, how about doing something scoutlike, and fun, with just your son, during the troop meetings, for the next month? Next week my troop is riding to DQ. That's a slam dunk. After that, how about a geocache? Then give him 3 ideas to choose from. Challenge him to build a fire that he can start with a single match and then not touch. See how long it takes to bring one cup of water to a boil. Then help him come up with 3 ideas of his own. During all this ask him if he'd like to invite some of his friends from scouts. Or maybe do it on another nite other than the troop meeting so you're not poaching. No matter what make sure it's fun. Teach him how to organize fun, scout activities. Make a cardboard canoe. Practice signaling with flags (an old first class requirement) and then see how far away from each other you can send messages. Either you fix things or you don't but at least you'll have fun with your son. Trust us old farts, that's what counts. As for meetings where it's all talk and no doing, that is the kiss of death. While I was SM that was my number one priority for meetings. They had to have minimal talking. If someone finds an expert in some cool field and can bring in lots of neat stuff then that's different, but nobody wants to listen to an older scout or adult blather on. Unfortunately, blathering on is easy to plan.

The problem with bear bags is that above 9,000' the trees aren't so big. Putting up bags for a dozen people tends to be a lot of weight. I've rarely seen it high enough. The bottom of the bag should be 12' off the ground and more than a bear's arms length away from the tree. Let's say the bag hangs down 3 feet, there's a sag of about 3 feet in the rope, and a pully on the rope. So you have to accurately throw a rope up about 18', and more likely 20' up a tree that's not much taller. And then don't get your rope knotted up that high. People get fed up with fighting it and then end up with a bag that's barely 8' off the ground. They're really just hoping the bear doesn't show up. Col. Flagg is correct in that it's hard to get 5 days of food in a canister that claims to easily hold enough food for one person for a week (not to mention other smellables). Hanging bags can be done but it'll take more time than you think. Besides, a lot of national parks will not allow bear bags. At Rocky Mtn NP you can't get your permit until you show them your canister. The bears are getting smarter. There is a bear someone on the PCT that has figured out how to open up the clear canister. I'm just hoping it doesn't use the EDGE method to teach others because I have one of those. One option is to make sure your first two nights are at places with bear boxes. Or put most of your food in a canister and have a lot less you need to hang. This could be a moot point if they don't allow bear bags. I finally gave up and got a canister. One thing that makes it tolerable is I also have an external frame backpack and a place to attach the canister. It will suck the space out of an internal frame backpack.

Only rule for this thread: Only good news or congratulations are allowed. Pictures are encouraged (you'll need a url). We had a great high adventure trip (Frying Pan Wilderness near Aspen, CO). We did 27 miles in 4 days with an elevation gain of over a mile. After the backpacking we spent a couple of days in Glenwood Springs, rafting and going to the hot springs. Here are some pics. And finally, the view from the loo at a 10th Mountain hut we stayed at one night.

Okay, my apologies. My main point was not to pick on Stosh. Rather, we really don't know what's going to happen until we get specifics. As I said, national has muddied up everything with nomenclature that has a lot of people seeing all sorts of things. Hopefully everyone can find a place they like.

@@Stosh, you've posted North of 12,000 messages in 11 years. You aren't going to quit and you know it. You bleed green. You may be angry, pissed, or going through some 6 step recovery process, but you aren't going to quit. Where else would we get all the hot sauce from? There's no doubt the term Family Scouting is confusing. If parents think that means they get to bring tiger cubs to Philmont then sure, things will explode. And I hope national is reading this thread. Given that they complained before it sounds reasonable. Given that national has done a poor job of explaining other core features I hope they reach out to figure out how to explain this. From what I saw I don't think Family Scouting means Family Camping. If it did I'd be as depressed as some others around here. My interpretation is it means replacing BSA+GSUSA with just BSA. i.e., this is the polite way of saying the gloves are off, we're bigger, and we're taking over GSUSA's territory within scouting families. They can have the scraps that just want to do crafts. Who knows, maybe GSUSA will make a play for cub scouts that want to keep doing crafts.

From my viewpoint this isn't the worst decision. It's not going to have much impact on how my troop delivers a program to our boys. The decision, over time, to make the advancement method resemble school is having a much bigger impact. Not explaining the patrol method is having a bigger impact. These two things are a constant battle. Girls, or more likely their moms, will be a problem for someone else. I agree with "do it correctly." But you know it will be vague. So it gets back to troops pushing back on the rules, just like they've always done. There are things one has control over and things one doesn't. I've seen a lot of adults burn out and get upset. Then they leave, bitter. I hate to say this but some of what I'm hearing here sounds like that. I keep reminding myself that as long as I can work with scouts and see them smile then I'm good.

I just went through something similar. It wasn't scouts. We had a new hiker with us that had never been above 11000 ft. He was fine on the drive up. We started hiking at 12800 ft. He just kept feeling worse. At around 13800 he was stopping a lot, which could just be being tired, but he also complained of feeling sick. I tried staying out of it but nobody else would make a decision. I finally said we're all going down because a helicopter ride is really expensive. This guy didn't want to admit he was having troubles. It's when he said he'd feel better if he could just puke that I put my sm hat on and pulled the plug. I think he was relieved that someone else called it. I took a wilderness first aid course and we have a trauma surgeon that does a lot of high altitude studies in our troop. I got the same message from both. If they can walk, get them down. Don't wait. If they aren't feeling better just sitting around in camp then more time will not help. This guy perked right up once we got down to the highway, around 7000 ft.

There's one thing missing (I think) in the above lists of good points. Scouts must have friends or they will leave. I've seen an entire age leave because they just didn't mesh. Scouts need to make friends quick or by the time they're 13 or they seem to wander away. There's not much you can do about it. At the same time, good friends can probably tolerate a bad program.

First of all, I'd thank him for showing up on his own. Tell him that's hard to do. Ignore the fact that dad made him. Set's the tone that he's not in serious trouble. Next, I'd review the scout law. After that I'd ask him what went against the scout law. If he brings everything up then it's all good. Maybe I'd ask him if there's anything he needs to fix. If he has no idea then I'd remind him. The idea is just to start a discussion. I try not to be the bad guy. Get him to reflect. If I get to that point then he learns on his own.

Going from 8 to 40 scouts is going to be hard for anyone to figure out. What works for8 will not work for 40. It will be hard enough for the adults to figure out what is needed for all the change. For the scouts it will be worse. I don't think you can expect the scouts to lead without some guidance. The question is what guidance is needed? It's important that all the adults are on the same page with this. It can't just be one adult that's developing the leadership. Maybe you can help start that discussion with the SM. With 30 new scouts my guess is there's a need for the young scouts to understand what teamwork means before real leadership can take hold. Everyone having their responsibility, helping out, solving problems, that sort of thing. Not just the words but doing it. After that's in place adding leadership will be much easier.

What's with the snarky replies? Someone enjoyed scouts in their own way and you guys tell him he's wrong because it isn't good enough? Cchoat said he had one of his best experiences. He didn't say he had one of the best experiences. If you don't think it would be your best experience then why not just be happy for him rather than tell him he's doing something wrong? Friendly, courteous, or kind?

I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's nice to hear good news about scouting.

Jason, the official statement is the BSHB. There are no requirements regarding order so you won't find them. In my troop the MBs are usually the last thing wrapped up. I suspect this is because they are neither fun nor challenging and it's just more paperwork to finish them off.

This is one of those situations where I have to remind myself that not all people that talk about morals are good. But still, this is disheartening. The fact that one young women even thought of bringing a body camera says a lot to how bad things are. So why weren't there any boy Scouts backing up Scourge? My guess is the scouts that made all these stupid comments would not have done this if there were adults around or if any scouts had told them to shut up. Something about your character is best shown when nobody important is around. How about the irony of this situation? One of the speakers at the jamboree has a history of saying crude things to women. But we had to invite him or else we'd get into a discussion about freedom of speech. Scouts have a high standard but our elected leaders don't. How confusing is that to a kid? Don't think I'm picking on just one side. So many of us hate the other guy so much that anything is justified.

What do they mean by baggage?

I don't think you'll get flamed. In fact, this seems to be the one thing that keeps coming up. There isn't much concern with girls. Moms are another story. People bring up the idea of girl scouts being the better option for girls but at the same time there's a problem with girl scouts not doing much in the outdoors. I'm sure there are exceptions but on the whole it's a problem. Maybe it's not GSUSA per se but that dads aren't welcome and not enough moms understand the outdoors and/or the patrol method. Well, come to think of it I'm not sure GSUSA is interested in patrol method either. Anyway, on the survey I wrote that if they just recreate girl scouts it will fail. I didn't explain why but it has to do with why moms tend to want to step in earlier and dads tend to be more okay with scraped knees. It's about understanding how the program works. Unfortunately there's not much that the BSA has that describes this. Maybe this will encourage the BSA to improve their training. Okay, okay, stop laughing.