MattR

We had several exchange students live with us and we heard the exact same thing. The difference seems to be the level of trust between parents and kids here vs elsewhere. I see a lot of parents in scouts that very explicitly develop trust with their kids. I also see a lot that are flat out afraid of what their kids will do on their own. Boy led/patrol method/the heart of scouting/whatever anyone wants to call it implies trust between the scouts and adults. Many parents don't trust their kids so scouting has a big challenge. I don't see this having much to do with girls, moms, or previous scouting experience. I've seen moms make it worse but a lot of dads, eagle or not, are also guilty. There were comments on this forum that as soon as girls are let in the male scouters are going to be regularly implicated in sexual misconduct because ... we can't trust girls. I stepped down as SM a month ago and the adults have already started taking over. "We need those tents checked in and the scouts are busy so the adults just decided to do it." I guess we can't trust the scouts anymore. These are all the Eagle scouts that don't trust the boys. A month ago, when I was still the SM, I would have gently asked all the adult Eagle scouts to put the tents down and walk away. I would have asked a few questions of the SPL and then I would have walked away. Not only do I trust the SPL but I trust the system as well. Getting back to the exchange program, those kids have to figure out much much more than any scout I've ever seen. Imagine a 16 year old get on a plane and fly half way around the world and mom and dad are told not to talk to them for the first month. It's not 300 feet, it's more like 10,000 miles. Some kids fail because they won't let go of mom and dad. A few get in trouble. For the most part they learn self reliance.

To contact the Daleks you'll need a pointier hat than that.

I've seen people name things that are quirky and unique. If it can have a personality of its own, it can be named. Guns could fall into that. Cars definitely fall into that. My guess is it started with boats. The older and more you've worked on it, the easier it is to name it. As far as your shooting range instructor goes, speaking of quirky, I've met interesting young people all over the world. They are happy, confident, and content with who they are and don't mind using their character to facilitate creating a relationship. They tend not to worry about what others think, see the good in others, and they enjoy what they do.

2 cents: We live in an area that can get windy and tents with just tent stakes can get pulled up and roll away like tumble weeds. All 4 season tents have tie downs that are fairly high up the tent but they are expensive. We found 3 season tents that have tie downs and they are much better in the wind. I believe they are ALPS Mountaineering.

How about let them "see" V=IR. Voltage is how high water is in a bucket. R is how big a hole is in the bottom of the bucket (or the diameter of a tube sticking out of the bottom of the bucket that you can pinch). I is how fast the water comes out. Give them a stop watch and a cup and see how long it takes to fill up the cup given different sized tubes. Open up two tubes the same size and see if it fills the cup in half the time. Or use a bigger tube. Use a bucket with only 3" of water in it vs 3' of water. In parallel they could make an electrical circuit with a battery, a light bulb and a resister. The water bucket model isn't as simple as V=IR but close enough. And they get to play with water. A 50 gallon drum would make a good "battery."

I've used this as much as possible. But it's not fool proof, in an odd way. I had a training campout and I packed it really tight, just to add a time stress. I told the scouts if they didn't work together they'd fail. They had fun and at the end I asked them what they thought of the training and they said it was great. The thing they liked the most was how much time they had to do things. Say what? Turns out they took my advice to heart and worked so well together that everything went much more smoothly than normal. So, did it work when they got back to their patrols? They certainly are much better than before, but not nearly as good as they were on that training. Eagledad, you said earlier that cooking took up time from training. We put some challenges in their cooking. We gave them something they hadn't cooked with before (ingredients, methods, equipment). It worked well. Something like the banana split thing. They knew there was a challenge so they got into it. I think that's why the time stress training worked so well.

Charity goes to the poor, whether that be money or ability or some other hardship. Giving charity to those that aren't poor, in whatever definition of poor being used, is just being foolish. There are plenty of other people that do need that help. In your example the old lady presumably is not very mobile and helping her with the newspaper or her groceries is a good deed. You say it's not about money for this lady, which means it's probably more about community and interacting with someone that doesn't get out very often. That's the poverty in this case, a poor social network. So the kid that helps out is doing a good deed. The homeowners, however, are young and able, as a neighborhood, to pick up their own garbage, and just as importantly, they have a strong social network. They are not poor in any way. They don't need our charity.

Maybe you're misreading what I meant to say. We were free labor for a HOA with million dollar homes. They could afford to pay someone to pick up their garbage.

We wouldn't be allowed to do regular duties. We do seek out projects. We do a bunch of annual projects. We give hours for all of these and that's the score. Assuming the pancake supper (shouldn't that be a breakfast?) is a fundraiser, we never give service hours for fundraisers, mainly because the scouts profit from it. We once had a really nice HOA convince someone in our troop to organize cleaning up garbage around their ponds. It started off that they were going to make a donation to our troop and then they said it was a really nice service project. We kept our word and did the job but that was the end of that. The next year they asked and we told them $10/hr/scout. They didn't call back.

I remember running around for smoke shifters and sky hooks. I tried to restart it and got a "that's hazing" lecture. Everyone is my troop would like to keep it going, though. We sat down at one point and talked about the rules of when to let the scouts in on the deal.

Do this at Berkeley and the camp fires would blend in with the burning cars. (Sorry, tasteless, but...) I could see it being a fun change, once every few years. Cardboard canoes are also a lot of fun.

Yes. Maybe a 3 month long course would do it. And the flip side is if the course doesn't send something home with the scouts then the adults don't know how to emphasize what was taught. So I like the idea of a course just for teaching the adults patrol method. There's another issue here. Today's scouts have much less experience at dealing with each other than scouts did 40 years ago. They don't have any experience at dealing with people problems because they aren't allowed to deal with people problems. The default behavior is to just ignore any difficulty and hope it goes away on its own. The biggest challenge I had was getting scouts to just try. If they'll try - anything - then the rest is easy. It's easier to work with a dictator than a scout that's afraid to rock the boat. It takes a lot of time and impatient parents that don't understand this will be a problem.

Maybe if your trees look like grass, and you rub it like an elk. I've never heard an entomologist say that ticks jump out of trees. Ticks do not jump or fly. Most of their pray is about 18" off the ground so they stay around there. Ticks are in grass and once they get on you they walk upwards till they find a good place to bite. Lots of ticks like scalps.

That sounds like a hoot. Please let us know if it's a good read when you're done.

"You can't always get what you want But if you try sometimes you just might find You get what you need." Keith Richards & Mick Jagger I agree that ironically kids are less social with all the social software tools out there. While they might like teamwork less than before, companies are desperate for people that can work in groups. Even software, the quintessential nerd activity, requires a lot of teamwork these days. I guess all this applies to families as well. So the need is there. But your point is well taken, scouts have fewer chances to learn how to interact with other people than before and consequently struggle with it. I see a lot of scouts struggle with leadership because they don't have a clue how to deal with disagreements. So they don't and problems fester. People problems seem to be the biggest challenge they have and so there's a lot of walking them through the process. What is really rewarding is when they do start figuring it out. Also, introverts can do quite well in teams. They just need a job that can be done by one person. That's another challenge I see. Patrols are like soccer teams. When they're young it's swarm ball. Everyone is trying to do the same thing. As they get better they realize different players have different jobs. So I'd say yes, it's a bigger issue, but it's even more important than before to make patrols work.

I'd really like to see the type of challenge you describe for klondike and camporees as well. Get everyone excited about it. The district has tried a few times and the response is not so great. Some scouts are all in for competition but some just don't like it. Part of that is that some kids are good at some things and not good at others. I'd like to see ideas for patrol competitions that require all sorts of abilities. Does anyone know of resources for that?

I remember when band was about music. This brings up an important point. Most extracurricular activities are based on a competitive model. Scouting is not competitive. It's challenging and it's about community. It takes time to develop. There are no seasons. There is no major event that everything is culminating towards - after which point everything starts over. Scouts doesn't start over. We don't want patrols reformed every year. It takes time to create that identity or that bond that brings scouts together, where they want to be together. It's not like a sport where x number of players are needed, each is given a job by the coach and he does it. Scouts can't get jammed into this model. Using the sports terminology, If the coach is picking players then there's a huge problem. We want the scouts to come up with their own schedule, have a never ending season, develop their own game plan, design their own plays, solve their own problems, and define what the rules of their game is. And every player needs to do this. This takes time and finesse. I certainly agree with this but there are external pressures making this harder .... There is a certain minimum participation level required for a patrol to be cohesive. If that level is not met then friendships fall apart, there's even less reason to participate, and it becomes a vicious cycle. Mandatory participation from a wide range of extracurricular activities is making this much harder on patrols. This is why I set participation requirements that were against the GTA. I want scouts to do other things outside of scouting so I made them fairly lax. But at the same time I want scouts to decide that if they want to be involved then they need to commit some time to this. I don't care what a scout's goals are. Motivation may come from rank, high adventure, working with youth, service. It doesn't matter. But the program doesn't really work if there's not a minimum participation.

That could be true. I was just thinking of the scouts that can get Eagle by 18, they could be good leaders. And not adult leaders. Look at the UK model and it seems that they go to 21 and it's those older scouts that do a lot with the younger scouts. Yes, college and life does make scouts move but that could be a nice way to mix up some experience. The adults would have to get used to it but that's okay.

This is just my opinion, but Venturing seems to be suffering from the same problems that Boy Scouts has, only it's worse. Namely, scout leadership is even more important in venturing, because there's no advancement carrot such as Eagle, and yet the venturing scouts I've seen have no more leadership skills than the boy scouts. It takes a certain amount of self motivation to make things happen. Without it scouts just sit and wait for someone else to do do it. The parents aren't around in venturing to run things. That's why I think fixing venturing will fix boy scouts. This has little to do with coed.

Jobs can be an issue but rarely. The fumes thing is a farce. The points above about how other activities have strict attendance is very true in my area. It's why we've made attendance requirements for ranks above and beyond. But more likely it's the impact of puberty, and I don't mean girls. There seems to be a gap between childhood and adulthood, roughly 14- to 16++, where boys' brains are just mush. My theory is they're starting to see the size of the world and trying to figure out how they fit in. Consequently they struggle making decisions and commitments. If I can get them to stay until they are close to 17 then suddenly everything gels and they are incredibly fun, capable, and they really get it. They can more easily self motivate. Then they graduate and move away and I start over. That's why I like the idea of raising the age to 21 for boy scouts.

Just for arguments sake, let's assume TAHAWK's better product is created. Strong focus on the boy led, patrol method, outdoor skills, where adults are just trying to work themselves out of a job by developing great youth. In this scenario what would the impact be of adding girls to the boy program? The boys own this. Some would like having girls around and some wouldn't. And just the same, some girls would like having boys around and some wouldn't. Sounds like a good problem not to be wasted on adults. Most of my concerns with girls in the program are mitigated by having a strong youth led program. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests this would be micromanaged from above.

Can't say, but here's the scoutstuff.org phone number: 1-800-323-0736

@@John the Xcar, your complaint that there's too much focus on advancement, that advancement has become the aim of scouting, annoys a lot of people not in LDS units as well. Very well said. I don't know if this is possible but if the LDS church drops boy scouts is there anything preventing you from starting a regular troop?

Good points, Skip. But I'd gauge where the scouts are before talking about it. A lot of kids are not affected by the 24hr news cycle because they're more interested in playing video games. At the same time, if a kid is in shock about it then telling them to ignore it is not going to help. You have to accept where they're at. So maybe "go enjoy a rare day of sunshine, but if you're really upset by this then let's talk." Every problem is an opportunity so who knows, maybe a discussion about the scout law might also help. When 9/11 happened I was a den leader and what we mostly did was just watch the kids for unusual behavior. I think all the parents in my den just turned off the TV when their kids were around so the kids didn't see much. Kids talking doesn't have nearly the impact of seeing it on TV so we never even brought it up at den meetings.

Yes. The MB counselor decides when it's done. And that means nobody else needs to see a worksheet, or that one is required. Just a hunch, but does this troop not use blue cards and uses a worksheet instead? The blue cards are the correct way to do it but ... if there's room for a counselor's signature on the worksheet then maybe your troop twists the rules just a bit for their own convenience. Sounds silly to me but there are much worse things.